Promise of Memory

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