Grasping the messianic moment
This text is a reflection on the 2016 “History and Cultural Memory Forum” seminar which focused on the works of Walter Benjamin and in which several of his works were read as a backdrop to analyze the Egyptian revolution. Benjamin’s postdoctoral research, The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1925) was on Baroque German drama and how it can be understood as an imaginary plane to understand the modern evolving political landscape of Europe. These reflections are not solely premised on this particular work, but appeal to the idea that many of Benjamin’s insights mirror psychological ideas contained in drama, and that the 2011 revolution presented a specific dramaturgy of action in many instances, bearing heroic/tragic consequences. I. “What characterizes revolutionary classes at their moment of action is the awareness that they are about to make the continuum of history explode.” – Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History By all possible permutations of l...