The Death of Walter Benjamin The German-Jewish …
The Death of Walter Benjamin
The German-Jewish thinker Walter Benjamin is an enigma. Both mystical and materialist, his writings have excited political theorists and students of literature alike. His work ranges from the earliest and most perceptive readings of Kafka, to a monumental orchestration of notes on the Paris Arcades of the 19th Century (published in English as The Arcades Project). One of the generators of the enigma is his mysterious death in 1940. The accepted story is that a fear of being arrested by the Gestapo led him to take his own life, leaving a manuscript in a suitcase that was never recovered. Now an American journalist has put forward a case for this suicide actually being murder. Stephen Schwartz argues that Soviet agents acted as a murderous filter at the various points of escape for those fleeing Europe. And as Benjamin was a disaffected Communist, he would have been a natural target. The article is full of names and links and neat ellipses designed to ease us through the web of possibilities. So I?ll leave to others to judge whether it?s plausible.
What sows doubt in my mind is Schwartz?s need to sneer at those who have studied Benjamin since his work started appearing in translation. He calls it ?a cult amongst leftist academics?. Now I know many people interested in Benjamin, and of those who might be classed as ?leftist academics?, the last thing I can see them in is a ?cult? of any sort. They are the most sceptical of people. Schwartz even claims that the reason why the suicide theory has become the accepted version is due to ?politically correct prejudices? of researchers, as if Benjamin?s work was being used to prop up a latent Stalinism. Anyone familiar with Benjamin knows of his rejection of Stalinism. So why is Schwartz keen to disparage?
He proposes that academic interest is a nostalgia for the Thirties, when the two great forces of totalitarianism were at war. The professors don't want to face the current political atmosphere: "the end of history", as the victors have called it. Schwartz says it was a relief to escape his own research into the period and go ?into the cool evening mist of Washington, capital of the Free World?. Yeah, right. Tell that to the innumerable countries the US has subjugated, terrorised and bled dry over the last 50 years to feed the greedy corporations who paid for Dubya?s dubious election. Tell it to the victims of Waco. Could it be Schwartz prefers us not to read Benjamin, and that his scorn for the promotion of his work is the Capitalists? equivalent of Stalin?s fatal tentacles? In effect he is repeating that memorable phrase out of Bill Hicks: ?keep drinking the beer you fucking morons!?
PS: I wonder if Hollywood will make any more movies about unforgivable attacks on small islands? I can see it now: ?The Bay of Pigs? starring Braindead Prettyboy and a gullible English actress called Kate. It?s not the same of course, as Pearl Harbour was occupied by an expansionist army threatening the security of the dominant country in the region (Japan). Tora! Tora! Tora!
