Argues for a closer connection between memories of injustice and promises of justice as a means to overcome violence.Rereading Marx through Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, The Promise of Memory attempts to establish a philosophy of liberation. Matthias Fritsch explores how memories of injustice relate to the promises of justice that democratic societies have inherited from the Enlightenment. Focusing on the Marxist promise for a classless society, since it contains a political promise whose institutionalization led to totalitarian outcomes, Fritsch argues that both memories and promises, if taken by themselves, are one-sided and potentially justify violence if they do not reflect on the implicit relation between them. He examines Benjamin's reinterpretation of Marxism after the disappointment of the Russian and German revolutions and Derrida's "messianic" inheritance of Marx after the breakdown of the Soviet Union. The book also contributes to contemporary political philosophy by relating Marxist social goals and German critical theory to debates about deconstructive ethics and politics.
Matthias Fritsch is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University and cotranslator (with Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei) of Martin Heidegger's The Phenomenology of Religious Life.
Acknowledgments Abbreviations Exordium Introduction 1. Benjamin’s Reading of MarxRemembering the Instituting Violence of CapitalismThe Primacy of Politics over HistoryRevising the Question of HistoryBenjamin’s Critique of Marx’s Teleo-LogicMessianic Time: Seizing the MomentSecularizing MessianismFour Issues in the "Theses"2. Derrida’s Reading of Marx Benjamin and Derrida: Common Starting PointsTwo Ways to Inherit Marx’s PromiseThe Empirical and the TranscendentalThe Promise of RepetitionFour Features of the Quasi-TranscendentalModernity, Trauma, and Deferred ActionResponsibility in Disjointed TimesWhy Marx’s Messianism Needs the MessianicHow to Tell Good from Bad GhostsPostutopian Marxism: Kantian and Deconstructive3. The Critique of Violence Law as Violent MeansOscillation of Instituting and Conserving PowerParliamentary and Radical Democracy: How to Make the Revolution PermanentVictor-History and Its Messianic CessationDepositing: The Finitude of PowerPure Means: The Proletarian StrikeBenjamin’s Utopian AmbiguitiesDepositing and Iterability in the Founding of a StateJustice and Singularity: Derrida’s Objections to Benjamin’s CritiqueThe Disunity of Victor-History4. The Claim of the Dead on the Living Critique of Cultural HistoryCommodified Culture as FetishReading the Voice of the Nameless in HistoryConstructing a Montage of History’s RagsThe Anteriority of ResponsibilityThe Absolute VictimWhy Derrida’s Injunction Needs Benjamin’s ClaimWhy Benjamin’s Claim Needs Derrida’s InjunctionNotes Bibliography Index