Abstract

The aim of this study is to develop an integrated perspective on Benjamin's philosophy of memory. Although nowhere subjected to a substantial treatise in its own right, the theme of memory occupies a ubiquitous position in Benjamin's late authorship. It plays a central role in his works of literary criticism, in his studies of material culture, in his sociology of modernity, in his philosophy of history, and in his quest to politicize the past through a controversial fusion of historical materialism and theology. ;The focal point of the study is the concept of Eingedenken---a neologism which Benjamin first employs in translation of Proust's memoire involontaire but which in the course of the 1930s becomes associated with a "Copernican revolution" in the philosophy of memory. The thesis argues that Benjamin employs Eingedenken in a "systematically oriented" fashion to distinguish a concept of memory that is true to the experience of modernity and that posits a radical obligation to the past paradoxically as a means of activating the present. The important conceptual counterpart to this is Hegel's concept of Erinnerung. Like the latter, Eingedenken displays a dialectical structure, but it does this in accordance with Benjamin's notion of "dialectics at a standstill." Against the mediating, conciliatory thrust of Erinnerung, Eingedenken remains true to suffering in the past by refusing reconciliation with past wrongs. ;Structurally, the study is divided into two main parts with three chapters each. Chapters 1--3 develop the context of Benjamin's philosophy of memory and chapters 4--6 develop the concept of Eingedenken. The contextualizing chapters examine, firstly, the general parameters of Benjamin's politics of the past; secondly, the Hegelian backdrop to this; and thirdly, Benjamin's analysis of experience in the context of modernity. The three chapters on the concept of Eingedenken, in turn, examine a moment identifying Eingedenken as involuntary memory; a moment oriented towards seizing the involuntary; and a moment of mobilizing Eingedenken as a political/redemptive force. Benjamin identifies Eingedenken as a weak messianic power; the present study probes the implications of this