Benjamin's Blotting Paper: Writing and Erasing a Theological Figure of Thought

Abstract

The question as to the significance of theology in Benjamin's variegated writings and in the specific modes of thinking that they sponsor has long been contested. This study investigates a certain double gesture in which his texts perform a radically secular dismantling of the category of the theological in all its political, cultural, and aesthetic manifestations, while at the same time exposing the idea of a fully posttheological thinking as a premature foreclosure, a dangerous fallacy, even a metaphysical aberration. It is argued that the theological in Benjamin can only ever be thought and talked about in relation to specific passages and contextual reinscriptions, which is to say, as matters of language, textual iterations that always point elsewhere in order to become what they are. The study shows how, from Benjamin's perspective, to believe that our thinking has finally overcome theology for good—that it is no longer tacitly attached to a residual, unsublatable, and unacknowledged theological commitment—may well turn out to be the most theological position of all.