Extra-Mural Psychoanalysis (Forum‪)‬

Introduction HISTORICAL STUDY is generally thought of as reliable and down-to-earth, so Walter Benjamin's fanciful mention of a "puppet called 'historical materialism'" seems a bit shocking. The surprise is not so much the puppet's "Turkish attire" or the "hookah in its mouth" as its purpose-built role--to win philosophical disputes by dealing out empirical facts while secretly relying on theology. Benjamin is critiquing a historicist practice lacking "theoretical armature"; he advocates instead engagements capable of "brush[ing] history against the grain"--the sort of approach New Historicism subsequently adopted. (1) Still, the image of an automaton carries unsettling implications of a mechanical, manipulable, and, at worst, potentially deceptive capacity in historicist study. Because historical materialism may mystify its own theoretical principles, Benjamin calls for a methodology bolstered and tempered by philosophical consideration.