The illusion of the future: notes on Benjamin and Freud.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Benjamin, Andrew
• Date: 22 September 2005

The future's inevitability makes it a matter of continual concern. (1) (A concern, more significantly, that is played out in divergent ways; a state of affairs already signalled by the interplay of the inevitable and the continuous.) If the future's inevitability works as a continual refrain, what then of the future? What would comprise an account of its presence? What is it to think the future? Allowing for the future--though not just as a mere event but also as part of a discursive possibility--makes demands. Thinking the future is already to allow time, and consequently both a philosophy as well as a politics of time, to have a direct impact on how thought is constructed. Once it is conceded that the future exists as that which demands to be thought, then more is at stake than its simple occurrence. What is of significance is that thought--understood as a practice--is 'placed' (place allowing for an intersection of history--understood as the work of time--and geography). Indeed it is possible to conjecture that thinking is 'placed' even if that state of affairs is not recognized as such. The place of thought is of course the 'now' of its happening: thought occurs in the present (thereby having presence). And yet, inherent in these concerns is the question of whether the future need be envisaged. In other words, the general question is whether thought is always to be accompanied by an image. More specifically, as indicated, what is of concern is the presence of the future within and as an image.

While the history of art and literature provides a divergent range of imagined futures, it is also the case that ritual (and in a certain sense the theological) works to guarantee the content of the future. This means that elements of ritual can be understood as linked to an attempt to guide the future's inevitability by providing it with its form. Hence, there is an immediate distinction between the future's insistent reality and that reality having one particular determination (and thus image) rather than another. The disjunction between two particular forms of the political can be situated in relation to this distinction. In fact, what is brought into stark contrast are two different conceptions of a politics of time. In the first instance there is one that works in relation to the image. In the second, there is a different conception of the political and with it a different conception of time. Their combination distances the hold of the image by linking the future--not its inevitability, but its quality--to an undertaking no longer structured by the image but by action.

Benjamin

If nothing else, these opening reflections prepare the way for one of Walter Benjamin's more emphatic statements concerning the future. In one of the final sections of 'On the Concept of History' he writes the following:

The soothsayers who found out from time what it had in store certainly did not experience time as either homogeneous or empty. Anyone who keeps this in mind will perhaps get an idea of how past times were experienced in remembrance--namely, in just the same way. We know that the Jews were prohibited from investigating the future. The Torah and the prayers instruct them in remembrance, however. This stripped the future of its magic, to which all those succumb who turn to the soothsayers for enlightenment. This does not imply, however, that for the Jews the future turned into homogeneous, empty time. For every second of time was the strait gate through which Messiah might enter. (2) The significance of this passage, in this context, lies in the claim that there was a prohibition on Jews investigating the future. On one level this underscores the centrality of the concept of zakhor within Judaism. (3) In this regard Benjamin's position is quite correct. For example, the mitzvah concerning the observation of the Sabbath is formulated in terms of its being remembered ('Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy'). In addition, though perhaps more problematically, the festival of Purim, it can be argued, is structured around the evocation to remember--Devarim 25:17-19: 'Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt'. Nonetheless, the significance of Benjamin's observation is intended to be greater.

If there is a straightforward way of positioning Benjamin's claim, then that to which the interdiction refers is not the future per se but the creation of an image of the future. Again, Benjamin would have been familiar with the elements of the synagogue service in which, during the period from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, the words 'Remember us into life' are introduced. Here there is a sense of remembering that evokes both the present and the future. Allowing for a place in the future is given in relation to the present. Hence there isn't a real sense in which the future is expressly forbidden except insofar as there is the possible creation of its presence (the presence of the future) in an image. In other words, bound up with Benjamin's position is an iconoclasm in relation to the future. If there is to be a sense of the future--the future given within memory--then it is the future without an image and therefore without an already given and thus present topos. (The relationship between topology and the present is one to which it will be essential to return.)

This interpretation can be reinforced by recognizing that Benjamin identifies immediately what may be taken as one of the obvious consequences of the position that he is developing. In sum, the consequence is that if the future has to be imageless then, so the argument would proceed, it would be empty. The response is to argue that the absence of an image does not entail emptiness. The contrary is the case. The image's absence is a precondition for the present to be charged with potentiality. The present's intensity is that which allows for the future. An allowing that would be undone by its...