These two days I spent some substantial amount of time to read Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History" in the original, in two English translations, and in the French translation by Gandillac. But I still don't quite understand this text...beautiful imageries, different temporalities, the messianic, the past in danger, historical materialism...I discern some crucial threads, but I'm still wondering: what this text is (about)? Anyway, it's unmistakable that section 98 of _Minima Moralia_ is an homage to Benjamin: "Theory must needs deal with cross-gained, opaque, unassimilated material, which as such admittedly has from the start an anachronistic quality, but is not wholly obsolete since it has outwitted the historical dynamics" (Adorno. 151).
