A Weak Messianic Power

In his famous theses on the philosophy of history, Benjamin writes: We have been endowed with a weak messianic power to which the past has a claim. This claim addresses us not just from the past but from what will have belonged to it only as a missed possibility and unrealised potential. For Benajmin, as for Celan and Derrida, what has never been actualised remains with us, not as a lingering echo but as a secretly insistent appeal. Because such appeals do not pass through normal channels of communication, they require a special attainment, perhaps even a mode of unconscious receptivity. Levine examines the ways in which this attainment is cultivated in Benjamin s philosophical, autobiographical, and photo historical writings; Celan s poetry and poetological addresses; and Derrida s writings on Celan.