Walter Benjamin, the actuality of philosophical archeology and the Future of Philology

Abstract

The work proposes to read the actuality of philosophical archeology in connection with the present and the future of philology, in the context of the current debate about the method in literary studies and, specifically, in the concern for the place of the theory. To acquire new validity, philosophical archeology is reformed (it does the archeology of itself) and in that journey it incorporates variables and proper names that initially were not part of its repertoire: the most significant is Walter Benjamin. In this way, archeology becomes, more than ever, philological and, at the same time, it modifies its perspective on the concept of “origin” to hold now a double look (ruin and persistence of origin). The work, therefore, reviews the definition of origin [Ursprung] in Benjamin and the way in which that definition is incorporated into contemporary archeology (mainly Giorgio Agamben and Georges Didi-Huberman) to propose, finally, a few considerations about the effect of that conjunction between archeology and philology and about the way in which that future philology participates in the present as a “kidnapped” perspective.