Le poète et le mythe

This article aims to draw, from Benjamin's early writings, the lineaments of a critical theory that becomes, in the texts of maturity, his method of philosophical practice. This article provides the first elements required to understand the speculative structure of the critique as the reflective and expansive activity of the creator – such as an intellectual or, in this case, a poet. We will focus on the concept of Gedichtete (the poetized) seen as a space of plasticity where the transformations of the subject and the object can be taken into account in a broader understanding of the critical output of a reconstruction of history. This conception of history as a structure of plastic will help us to anticipate how Benjamin will study the construction of history in reaction with a linear history of progress or a cyclic history manifested by the eternal return of the structures of oppression. For Benjamin, achieving to think a critical space within the subject is the only way to guarantee his freedom against the structures of domination that surround it. The emancipation of a mythology for the benefit of a subjective creation can only be done using this dual deconstruction. The first one concerns the object as defined in a closed system that sets out its own laws (such as Benjamin identifies it in the mythology of progress) and of the subject as fully determined by what defines it from the outside. The challenge of this paper will be to situate a space of seizure of power for the subject before the world that precedes him and want to submit him

Art · Historical and Literary Analyses

• Benjamin as a Reader of Holderlin

  Michael W Jennings•The German Quarterly•1983

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• Il faut

  Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe•Modern Language Notes•1992

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