El anarchivismo en Walter Benjamin. Sobre la práctica del coleccionista y la filosofía materialista de la historia

Abstract

The aim of this article is to delve into the philosophical reflection of Walter Benjamin on collecting, explaining in detail its intimate bond with the particular notion of historical materialism developed by the author of the Passagen­Werk at the same time. Based on the analysis of various texts and documents in which Benjamin referred to the problem of collecting, written mainly between 1928 and 1940, we stated that a possible way to understand the connection between the practice of collector and historical materialism, is through what we name here anarchivism. With this term, we refer primarily to the radical alteration of the order and institutional classifications that make up the historical and cultural archives. Our thesis finally suggests that the notion of anarchivism makes possible understanding not only Benjamin's philosophical reflection on collecting and historical materialism, but also how his own thought puts them into practice.