Historicism and Historical Materialism

Historicism and Historical Materialism

There exist a perceptible difference between historicism and historical materialism. However, these differences have been explored exponentially by different scholars with several critiques and philosophical explorative proofs. Generally, historicism is defined as the idea of characterizing expressive connotation to both space and time. For example, the historical period of a given phenomenon, exploration of a local culture, and geographical space. Precisely, it is a well-documented official history. On the other hand, historical materialism is a methodological approach focusing on human and social societies and also their historical development trajectory, which postulates that history results from material conditions instead of ideas. However, Benjamin takes a different path to challenge the above postulate by Karl Max, by rejecting the truth that history is an act of automation. To well exemplify his hypothesis, Benjamin uses the example of The Turk, an 18^th century famously known chess-playing device, as a perfect analogy of historical materialism. The device was a set automation that had the ability to defeat skilled human players. It was in the form of a human-allegedly dwarf who was in the control of the entire game by controlling the machine. Benjamin argues that historical materialism is well-defined through particular elements that relates to the past, which is named as redemptive relation.     

Benjamin doesn’t rely upon messianic guarantees: “Like each age that went before us, we have been enriched with a feeble messianic force.” That “messianic force” is a drive, a guarantee that doesn’t transform it into a fixation of what it guarantees. How this force with which humanity is enriched is to be put to work? Benjamin doesn’t treat this inquiry in the proposals. Be that as it may, he has no questions about who is to given it something to do – the chronicled realist. In theory II, Benjamin plots the errand of the recorded realist, and in theory XVII, he depicts the strategy. Benjamin initially gives an outline of “materialistic historiography,” under which he subsumes his works: it “is in light of a useful rule. Thinking includes not just the development of contemplations, yet their capture too.” The “development of considerations” appears to remain alongside “their capture.” This shows Benjamin’s trademark type of philosophizing, which utilizes “persuasive pictures” to translate profane presence as the puzzling type of something past presence. Benjamin moreover consolidated these thoughts in the dumbfounding plan “logic at a halt.” His emphasis on the capture of the progression of considerations contradicts Hegel’s arguments. Benjamin doesn’t look to acclimatize itself into the fleeting course of history through comprehension or instinct. The information — uncovered by the capture of the development—”flashes up at the snapshot of its obviousness” (postulation V):

Based on Benjamin’s argument on historicism is that, historicism is made to depict the eternal image for the past; the historical materialism and its accrued experience that appear to stand on its own. However, he argues deeply against eternal image and thus prefers on history as a self-standing experience idea. He further postulates that that the proper articulation of history is to seize hold a memory just like it appears to flash in the times of danger, other than recognizing it the way it actually existed.

Transmission of traumatic memories

Transmission of traumatic memories across distinctive generations is possible through various ways. According Ararat, there exist several ways via which ancient traumatic memories can mad their way to the current generation across other previous generations. His major focus is based on the way characters involved would understand and reiterate stories. The stories can be of themselves, other people and those of the Armenian Genocide. He majorly uses the Armenian Genocide to well-express his ideas on how it is possible to retain and transfer of traumatic memories to other generations and create a certain impart on such a generation or generations.

According to Ararat, history is not only located in the past, which implies that the ideology in which an event is taken to occupy a certain enclosed temporal scope does not hold as essentially important. His reasoning thus implies on the idea that the stories that people tell and listen, as they respond to so called interlocutor thus tend to be interlinked to the perceptive understanding of the Armenian Genocide besides its denial day.

Philosophically, Ararat brings out the idea of passing traumatic information through the form of other to be in line with the Levinas’ philosophy.  However to some extent he opposes this ethical idea of creating traumatic emotions via the sufferings of others such as the use of films, the idea remains that there is a possibility though based on the lower case scenario that a an individual may get obsessed out of other people’s terrible experience.

Egoyan utilizes various techniques to portray the tangled theme of stories and retelling of certainties. Jonathan Markovitz battles that ”Egoyan presents choices about how to speak to history as exceptionally determined and a long way from characteristic or programmed”; in any case, it is apparent that the chief is likewise profoundly worried about the predicament related with portrayal. For example, as opposed to Raffi’s torment about the inheritance of the Armenian individuals, Saroyan certainly attests the simplicity of speaking to the annihilation. In contrast to Ararat, Saroyan’s film is punctuated with clearing symphonic music, wide-calculated all-encompassing shots, and successions that are regularly over-lit. Be that as it may, there is an inquisitive incoherency between Saroyan’s film and the ”story” he wishes to tell. As Whyte calls attention to, Saroyan is ”bristling with his own feeling of good predominance … responsibility for untold history as his to tell.” But he attempts to have it the two different ways: from one viewpoint, he is determined this is his mom’s story, while then again he proposes to tell the goal ”truth” of the decimation. By the by, as Egoyan concedes, ”There are numerous accounts in the film that are being borne by tellers who are problematic … however, that doesn’t decrease the need to tell it.” Stories penetrate both Ararat and Saroyan’s film as the slaughter is lost in hermeneutic circles. When a character relates a story, the responsibility for story is tested. The equivalent applies to the characters’ comprehension of the annihilation, vindicates and explains Ararat’s non-sequential structure, and weds with the moral duty of tuning in to stories.

The Notion of “Bare Life”

            The notion of bare life has a wide spectra of interpretation. Based on the Hariets experiences, life can at times lose meaning and only become full of painful incidences that no one can be proud of living. Jacobs utilizes the alias Brent to portray her first-individual record. Naturally introduced to subjugation, Linda spends her initial a long time in a cheerful home with her mom and father, who are moderately wealthy slaves. At the point when her mom kicks the bucket, six-year-old Linda is sent to live with her mom’s escort, who treats her well and instructs her to peruse. Following a couple of years, this paramour bites the dust and passes on Linda to a family member. Her new bosses are remorseless and careless, and Dr. Rock, the dad, before long starts forcing Linda to have a sexual relationship with him. Linda battles against Flint’s suggestions for quite a long while. He pressures and compromises her, and she resists and outsmarts him. Realizing that Flint will inevitably get his direction, Linda agrees to a relationship with a white neighbor, Mr. Sands, saying that she is embarrassed about this unlawful relationship yet thinks that its desirable over being assaulted by the evil Dr. Rock. With Mr. Sands, she has two youngsters, Benny and Ellen. Linda contends that a weak slave young lady can’t be held to indistinguishable guidelines of ethical quality from a liberated person. She additionally has down to earth purposes behind consenting to the issue: she trusts that when Flint gets some answers concerning it, he will offer her to Sands in nauseate. Rather, the vindictive Flint sends Linda to his estate to be broken in as a field hand.

The above extreme suffering that Jacobs went through proves to have life as a nothing else other than a bare struggle to exist in the most animalistic world. At any rate, it is hard to handle and difficult to hang on to. Bareness is accordingly characterized by non-nakedness, by the robe of which it has been stripped. It is in this manner “incomprehensible”: there is just denudation, just uncovering, and the exposed body remains unyieldingly inaccessible. Again the similarity with biopolitics is uncovering: stripped corporeality, as bare life, is just the dark and vague carrier of blame. In truth, there is just uncovering, just the limitless gestures that take off garments and effortlessness from the body.

Works Cited

Finkelde, Dominik. “Lack and Excess/Zero and One: On Concrete Universality in Dialectical Materialism.” Philosophy Today 63.1 (2019): 55-71.

Frieze, Donna-Lee. “Cycles of Genocide, Stories of Denial: Atom Egoyan’s Ararat.” Genocide studies and prevention 3.2 (2008): 243-262.

Salzani, Carlo. “The notion of life in the work of Agamben.” CLCWeb: Comparative literature and culture 14.1 (2012): 1.