Guilt History: Benjamin's Sketch "Capitalism as Religion"

Hamacher, Werner; Wetters, Kirk

doi:10.1353/dia.2005.0010

Cited by 46 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…3, pp. [75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90]. Gustav Wyneken (1875-1964), whose radical pedagogy of awakening youth would considerably influence the early Benjamin ([12], pp.…”

Section: Time Life and Walter Benjaminmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Messianic Time and Monetary Value1

Thate

2016

Religions

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Abstract:In this essay we return to Walter Benjamin's notion of messianic time as outlined in his Theses on the Philosophy of History. Messianic time is read with Benjamin's Sonnette as a "divestment" from historical time. That is, messianic time is a relinquishing of historical time's formation of identities within late capitalism. Messianism represents that opening which whispers the possibility of bringing asymmetrical accumulation and subjective formation to a standstill. The aim of the essay is thus to push a rereading of Benjamin's notion of messianic time as subjective divestment from historical time which in turn breaks the uneven distribution of time, accumulation, and the monetary value of market time at work in our current world of global finance.Keywords: Walter Benjamin; messianism; time; money; value We need to fetch back the time they have stolen from us.Every line we succeed in publishing today-no matter how uncertain the future to which we entrust it-is a victory wrested from the powers of darkness.Walter Benjamin ([2], p. 262).

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Section: Time Life and Walter Benjaminmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[89], Benjamin suggests four features of the "religious structure" (religiöse Struktur) operative within capitalism that elicit these themes ( [8], vol. 6, p. 100).…”

Section: Messianic Divestmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Messianic Time and Monetary Value1

Thate

2016

Religions

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“…This is a structural affinity: capitalism and religion occupy the same space of articulation. There is, Benjamin suggests, a fundamental equivalence between the Christian guilt economy and the deterministic debt religion on which modern capitalism depends (Hamacher, 2002: 85). It is this emphasis on the profound importance of debt to capitalism that makes his argument both distinctive and prescient.…”

Section: Capitalism Debt and Religionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A true theology would promise redemption: forgiveness, an encounter with God, resolution of life’s underlying tensions. A cult offers only distractions: it is closed and inward looking, everything is drawn back into its nexus of value – ‘things have a meaning only in their relationship to the cult’ (Benjamin, 1996a: 288) – while every action and every deed is assigned a rating in its shallow moral economy (Hamacher, 2002: 87). A cult offers ritual, but not transcendence.…”

Section: Capitalism Debt and Religionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nietzsche’s money

Dodd

2012

Journal of Classical Sociology

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Although Nietzsche rarely features in discussions of money, he offered important insights into such matters as the relationship between the money economy and the permanent decadence of modernity, money’s impact on social hierarchy and individualism and the moral economy of debt. His remarks on these themes are closely connected to two of his best known, but controversial, ideas: the eternal return and the Übermensch. In this paper, I explore how Nietzsche’s arguments, and these two concepts in particular, have been taken up by three thinkers who have made distinctive and original contributions to the sociological and philosophical understanding of money, credit and debt: Georg Simmel in The Philosophy of Money (1907), Walter Benjamin in ‘Capitalism as Religion’ (1921), and Norman Brown in Life Against Death (1959). Nietzsche’s ideas fulfil a pivotal role in each of these treatments of money: in particular, he informs Simmel’s exploration of the relationship between money, individualism and socialism; Benjamin’s examination of the ‘guilt history’ of modern capitalism and its moral economy of debt; and, finally, Brown’s explorations of the roots and consequences of our neurotic money complex. Each of these thinkers puts a different complexion on Nietzsche’s own thoughts regarding money, as well as his broader philosophy. Nevertheless, he provides all three thinkers with a sharply critical perspective on the idea that money’s expansion in the modern world reflects the individual’s liberation from traditional social ties and ancient moral bonds.

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“…Outside anthropology, J. Hillis Miller () and Werner Hamacher () offer indispensable exegeses. Their interpretations of Schicksal diverge markedly, indicating the concept's problematic status within Benjamin's work.…”

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confidence: 99%

Cocaine's minor destinies: Ephemerality and legal threat on the margins of the Peruvian state

Kernaghan

2015

American Ethnologist

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How do fate and luck become decisive legal temporalities in the social worlds of Peruvian cocaine traders? This article retells an episode from the life of a woman who excelled at running cocaine in Peru's Upper Huallaga Valley. Drawing on her story, I consider how state predations affect experiences of law in a coca‐growing region where police have historically exercised a right of spoils. Against legal fate—a threatening “state time” oriented toward misfortune—cocaine traders seek la suerte (luck), which they grasp through sensitivity to mundane details and a willingness to act on unforeseeable opportunities. Their accounts of police encounters reveal how the art of coordinating temporality and movement becomes essential to navigating margins of the state. I suggest that they also demonstrate the relevance of ephemerality to ethnographies of law.

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Guilt History: Benjamin's Sketch "Capitalism as Religion"

Cited by 46 publications

References 5 publications

Messianic Time and Monetary Value1

Messianic Time and Monetary Value1

Nietzsche’s money

Cocaine's minor destinies: Ephemerality and legal threat on the margins of the Peruvian state

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