Reawakening the meaning beyond the present. Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin: a historiography open to the future

Abstract

For Derrida the event is guiding principle of historicity, he also defined the notions of “the messianic without messianism” to account for the way any now is open to the future (avenir), to what is to come, like the event, but that cannot be anticipated. The event is excluded in Husserl’s teleological historicity in which the present is the time when past meanings are reawakened, so ensuring the continuous unveiling of reason through history. On the contrary, in Walter Benjamin’s On the concept of history, the messianic-revolutionary event gains much importance in the idea of history, and it becomes so impossible to detach from the historiographical work that the reawakening of past meanings should exceed the present. Thus the concept of history and historical knowledge need to consider the present in its opening to what is to come, as well as a messianic dimension of time that transforms the present (as a time of anticipation and awaiting) into a moment open to uncertainty in which the event may come unexpectedly.