January 11th, 2017
7pm
Salon of former Palais Dürckheim, Cranachstraße 47, Weimar

Detouring History: Thoughts on Walter Benjamin's Method Lecture by Christine Blaettler

The notion of history remains contested. Does it emerge by condensing and dispersing time? Even though the philosophy of history no longer aims to render a meaningful ‚grand narrative’, it is concerned with the question of the dynamic of history and its availability to humans and collectives. The lecture addresses this very question concerning history versus an ontological historicity of humans and things. Departing from Benjamin’s pathos of Mittelbarkeit (mediability) the lecture makes a plea for exposing tensions between singular entities and the ‘wind’ or ‘storm’ of history.