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Abstract
This article argues that Walter Benjamin’s aesthetico-political philosophy cannot be understood without reconsidering Hamlet. It elucidates Benjamin’s Hamlet via his theory of Baroque “mourning” and its counter-measure, the “Saturnine Dialectic.” It likewise offers an analysis of the 1877 Herman Ulrici edition of Hamlet, the German edition Benjamin cites exclusively. This analysis reconciles the differences in the secondary literature regarding Benjamin’s Hamlet, expounding upon the edition’s singular use of the word “foreordination” (Fügung). Finally, by rereading Benjamin’s Hamlet through Carl Schmitt’s Hamlet or Hecuba, it argues that Fortinbras’s succession, effectuated by Hamlet’s dying voice, conditions the repetition of sovereignty in Hamlet, betraying the emergence of the new. Despite this betrayal, the revolutionary potential that is sunken into the content of Hamlet is disjunctively brought to the surface by examining the “dialectical image” of Laertes’s rebellion, rescuing what I term the revolutionary-new from the jaws of defeat.
disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Walter Benjamin, “Theories of German Fascism” in Selected Writings: Volume 2, part 1, 1927–1930 318.
2 Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften 532.
3 Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Referred to as the Trauerspiel book.
4 Benjamin, Trauerspiel 135.
5 Ibid. 158.
6 Ibid.
7
Actual grace is, in Roman Catholic theology, a share in God’s life. It is contrasted with sanctifying grace […] “Actual” grace [is named actual], because it is given for action, as opposed to altering a person’s state (cp. Sanctifying Grace). However, the distinction is not total since actual grace can lead to righteous action and good works. (Pohle)
8 Benjamin, Trauerspiel 66.
9 Andrew Benjamin, Art’s Philosophical Work 69.
10 Benjamin, Trauerspiel 80.
11 Osborne and Charles, “Walter Benjamin.”
12 In lieu of closely reading Benjamin’s Hamlet section, Rebecca Cormay admits the following: “Benjamin’s remarks on Hamlet are unbearably elliptical and even more hermetic than usual, so I’m going to do some reconstruction and extrapolation.” This may be why she writes: “If Hamlet is paradigmatic of the German Trauerspiel, this is because it dramatizes the antinomies of secular modernity at the point of their most acute disturbance.” But it is clear that Hamlet is not paradigmatic of German Trauerspiele, for it is Shakespearian. Cormay 267.
13 Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings: Volume 1, 1913–1926 203.
14 Benjamin, Trauerspiel 44.
15 Ibid. 158.
16 Critchley and Webster; Newman; Grady; Boccon-Gibod; Bredekamp; Caygill, “Benjamin, Heidegger, and Tradition” Reinhard Lupton, “Trauerspiel of Criticism”; Nägele.
17 Benjamin, Selected Writings: Volume 1 378.
18 Ibid. 242.
19 Ibid. 378.
20 Benjamin, Trauerspiel 130.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid. 133.
23 Ibid. 134.
24 Benjamin, Selected Writings: Volume 1 376.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid. 378.
27 Benjamin, Trauerspiel 135.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid. 136.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid. 137.
37 Ibid.
38 Caygill, “Benjamin” 19.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Benjamin, Trauerspiel 137.
42 Ibid. 139.
43 Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia” 243; Sontag; Sebald.
44 Benjamin, Trauerspiel 157.
45 Ibid. 139.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid. 138.
48 Ibid.; emphasis added.
49 Andrew Benjamin, Art’s Philosophical Work.
50 Benjamin, Trauerspiel 147.
51 Ibid. 131–32.
52 Ibid. 149.
53 Panofsky and Saxl 259.
54 Pensky 104.
55 Benjamin, Trauerspiel 154.
56 Ibid. 131.
57 Ibid. 158.
58 Ibid.; emphasis added.
59 Ibid. 138; emphasis added.
60 Andrew Benjamin, Working with Walter Benjamin 232.
61 Critchley and Webster 159.
62 Ibid.
63 Shakespeare, Hamlet 448.
64 Shakespeare, “Hamlet” in Dramatische Werke 157.
65 Shakespeare, The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare 422.
66 Shakespeare, “Hamlet” in Dramatische Werke 63.
67 Schmitt, “On the Barbaric Character of Shakespearean Drama” in Hamlet or Hecuba 60.
68 Ibid. 62.
69 Benjamin, Trauerspiel 158.
70 Schmitt, Hamlet or Hecuba 53–68.
71 Jones 21.
72 Kantorowicz.
73 Schmitt, Hamlet or Hecuba 54.
74 Ibid.
75 Reinhard Lupton, “Hamlet, Prince” 198.
76 Similarities can be seen here with Derrida’s “Force of Law.” Similarities, however, that find their textual origin in Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” in Selected Writings: Volume 1, 1913–1926.
77 Benjamin, Trauerspiel 74.
78 As if prophetic, the state of Norway-Denmark, after a declared state of emergency, becomes an absolutist monarchy in 1660. Frederick II would be our Fortinbras.
79 Caygill, On Resistance 144.
80 Walter Benjamin, Arcades Project 474.
81 Ibid. 473.
82 Ibid. 463.
83 Osborne and Charles, The Politics of Time 116.
84 Benjamin, Arcades Project 463.
85 Drakakis 79.
86 Caygill, “Laertes’ Revolt.”
87 Ibid.
88 Benjamin, Arcades Project 475.
89 Ibid.
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