Organizing Pessimism

Abstract

If history is a “pile of debris”, the politics– the order of the profane–emerges as organizing of pessimism. Benjamin builds a “secret agreement” between Marx and Nietzsche, extrapolating some elements from them and then discarding them as empty husks. Marx’s system, without the in history immanent necessity does not work; and the thought of Nietzsche without the centrality of the “bare life” loses all those “vital” impulses. Nietzsche conceives his thoughts to be “untimely”, i.e. in opposition to his time. Benjamin prefers the moment of “awakening” towards the dream to overcome the “mythical” interpretation of modernity. All of the mythology, the vision of Surrealists undergoes a “reversal” in political action. Organizing the pessimism therefore means “to win the power of rapture for the revolution”.