Walter Benjamin and the ‘work of the concept’.

On Benjamin’s notion of task (Aufgabe)

Abstract

The paper pursues to answer three fundamental questions: i) what is a concept for Benjamin? ii) under what rule can they be deduced (or produced)? iii) what can (or cannot) be done with them? To this end, we first discuss the specific relation that philosophy maintains with the concept, on the understanding that this is the framework in which Benjamin’s thought develops. We contend that philosophy requires an account of concepts’ production rules (their provenance) and the rules of application (what can and cannot be done with them). We argue that Benjamin identifies the rule of conceptual production in the notion of task (Aufgabe), with which, appealing to a tradition, the concepts get a force irreducible to the sphere of subjectivity (“whether transcendental or not”). Finally, we contend that in Benjamin’s work, the concepts acquire a “performative” status, and to that extent they enter into a power struggle with the “philistine,” “bourgeois,” or “fascist” conceptuality.