Saturnine Vision and the Question of Difference: Reflections on Walter Benjamin's Theory of Language

Abstract

Walter Benjamin's writings do not owe their intelligibility to their indebtedness to one or more specific brands of philosophical thought, but to Benjamin's primary concern with the most elementary distinctions of philosophy itself. Chief among these distinctions is that of philosophical thought itself, or the difference it makes with respect to the realms of nature, myth, or the appearances. By focusing on the notions of "communicability" and "translatability," philosophical difference, for Benjamin, shall be shown to rest on structures within the language of man and art that aim at breaking through language's mythical interconnectedness, its weblike quality, its textuality, toward the absolute Other of divine language. Yet, the fundamental philosophical law not to mix genres or realms, as well as the transcending power of philosophical difference, because it remains caught in what it seeks to transgress, are dependent, as far as their success is concerned, on the ultimate justification by the (theological) difference of the absolute Other of divine language. It is, however, not in the power of philosophy to secure all by itself this necessary legitimation. This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol11/iss1/5 SATURNINE VISION AND THE QUESTION OF DIFFERENCE: REFLECTIONS ON WALTER BENJAMIN'S THEORY OF LANGUAGE RODOLPHE GASCHE SUNY, Bu a lo The history of the criticism to which Benjamin's writings have given rise, is the story of many friendships. Whether he has been linked up with Hegelian thought, coupled to the theology of the Jewish religion of revelation, tied to Romantic linguistic philosophy, paired off with historical materialism, or even related to Lutheran theology, the critics have primarily sought to appropriate Benjamin's thought for their own philosophical viewpoint.' Yet Benjamin, as is well known, did not fraternize easily. As reserved as he was, how could he have held all those views, or been all those things that critics have suggested? Undoubtedly, Benjamin's philosophical allegiances that critics have pointed out have significantly contributed to our understanding of this complex author. If Benjamin, as Gershom Scholem has insisted time and again, was indeed a philosopher-a metaphysician-it ought to be possible, in principle, to assign a definite place to his writings in the history of philosophical thought.' But can Scholem's characterization of Benjamin as a philosopher (and hence the possibility of assigning his affiliation) simply be taken for granted? How is one, indeed, to explain the lack in Benjamin's writing of almost everything usually associated with the philosophical enterprise: a homogenous conceptuality, canonized rules of argumentation, and reference to the traditional set of problems? Bernd Witte, on this basis, has convincingly argued that Benjamin is no philosopher at all.' The total disregard in Benjamin for any form of sustained conceptuality and argumentation, as well as the elitist, esoterical, if not idiosyncratic nature of at least Benjamin's early writings-an aspect that Witte is so far the only one to have systematically explored-runs