The dialogic lacuna in Fenves's Messianic Reduction

This paper is a rereading of Peter Fenves's readings of leading texts among Benjamin's early writings; readings contained in Fenves's important work Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time. Of chief concern here is a crucial lacuna in Fenves's idea of Benjamin's thought, a blind-spot that reveals, in relief, Benjamin's radical and consistent rejection of a fundamental Cartesian/Kantian premise: what is commonly termed the ergodic axiom (aka “identity axiom”). In these early writings, it is argued, Benjamin was indeed constructing a new philosophical foundation, residing in dialogism. And remarkably, an almost identical foundation simultaneously was being built in Russia by Mikhail Bakhtin and Valentin Volosinov, leading members of the Bakhtin circle (1918–1929)

Aesthetics · Axiom · Dialogic · Epistemology · Foundation (evidence) · Identity (music) · Premise · Solipsism · History · Literature, Culture, and Criticism · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Walter Benjamin Studies Compilation