Pain and Melancholy in the Concept of History.

Benjaminian thought on the horizon of the archive

Abstract

This article starts by arguing that Walter Benjamin's concept of history puts the pain at the center of the scene, not to configure a learning experience or to settle for remembrance, but to underline the state of debt to the past and to show that only in these terms does reflection on political action make sense. The attention to the pain of the vanquished is articulated in Benjamin with an affection that flies over his entire theoretical production -and also his life- such as the melancholy for the truncated past. In this way, pain and melancholy become the conditions for the possibility of the understanding of history. Likewise, in a context such as the current one that has been called the era of the archive, in which the collection and the techniques and policies of archiving and declassification seem to be unavoidable devices of the thought of history, it becomes central to inquire about the way in which pain and melancholy deepen the experience and are the privileged vectors of its knowledge.