Who Is Walter Benjamin's Essay On The Destructive Character

Walter Benjamin’s essay on The Destructive Character can be read as a difficult piece of text, which in itself can be hard to interpret; however, it is evident of the historically oppressed 20th century and can be traced to today. This piece of text can be easily misinterpreted due to the lack of providing the reader the philology of Walter Benjamin’s oppressed past. Reading this piece of text and attempting to interpret it without the philology of Walter Benjamin’s oppressed past can be viewed as an act of the ‘destructive character’. One needs to be informed of Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Criticism before one can deconstruct this text. Criticism is in itself a ‘destructive’ act. I believe Benjamin is asking us to read his essay on The Destructive Character the same way as we would be reading his essay on the Theory of Criticism. Reading this piece of text today, creates an alien relation between the

In a few years, this present will have been erased. The text of the present will look like very strange indecipherable relics from the past. By reading this text, one can be forced to engage in the destruction of the present. Trying to interpret the embedded mythical continuities of our days. This text gives us some skill, which is enabling us to detach ourselves from the mythical present and interrupted by the breech in-between. This breech can be seen as a path to in which the now and the then can compose in a tension; however, a productive tension. So history itself is ‘destruction’. That is the ‘destruction’ of the 20th century. In such making texts difficult to understand. Walter Benjamin is forcing us to know everything that has happened in early 20th century Europe in order to decipher his essay on The Destructive Character. We need to know Walter Benjamin’s relation to communism and of his relation to the historically oppressed to decipher his essay in a thorough