Imagens em fuga de um mundo em miniatura: a constelação do despertar nas Passagens de Walter Benjamin

Abstract

The present research aims at characterizing the problematic of the multiple meanings of the constellation of historical awakening as a point of convergence for the constitution of the "dialectical turnaround" outlined in Passage Project (1927-1940) held by Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). This dialectical conception of historical time unfolds on the basis of Benjamin's appreciation of the notion of image. It is about presenting the symbolic space of oneiric images as determinated social and historical productions – the flashy imagerie of nineteenthcentury Paris, which interpenetrate the old and the new, and form all the constructions of modern sociability – and configure all of the constructions of modern sociability – and how they make up the framework of its respective interpretation in the construction of the dialectical image. It is initially pointed out the need to address the conceptual determinations of the collective dream in the cultural phenomena themselves, in their material visibility, whose main sources will be the documents rejected by bourgeois historiography, the historical residue. Therefore, the genesis of this procedure will be approached in some Benjamin´s youth texts and, later, in his texts related to the Marxist concept of commodity fetishism. Taking as concrete historical indexes the main phenomena worked on the thematic archives of the Passages, it´s glimpsed how these concepts relate themselves. Thus, the constellation of the awakening is presented as a set of expository strategies that offer a polarized image of Benjamin's political and aesthetic thinking that uniquely interslace philological and philosophical criticism, dialectical materialism, and Jewish messianism. With the primacy of political reflection on history, it is placed the internal architecture of the Passages that configure the construction of critical cognitive concepts: the verification of archaic images and their respective interpretation in the dialectical image. According to the methodological steps of the Benjaminian historical materialism is added a third dimension that encompasses both and provides its critical core: the utopian-messianic element. With this, it is tried to show the fundamental elements of a revolutionary writing of the history in Benjamin, valid for the reading of the other texts of his late work.