http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/1744461885

A Weak Messianic Power Figures of a Time to Come in Benjamin, Derrida, and Celan

In his famous theses on the philosophy of history, Benjamin writes: ""We have been endowed with a weak messianic power to which the past has a claim."" This claim addresses us not just from the past but from what will have belonged to it only as a missed possibility and unrealized potential. For Benajmin, as for Celan and Derrida, what has never been actualized remains with us, not as a lingering echo but as a secretly insistent appeal. Because such appeals do not pass through normal channels of communication, they require a special attunement, perhaps even a mode of unconscious receptivity. L

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