Theology and history

pp. 38-80

in: Graham Ward, Theology and contemporary critical theory, Berlin, Springer, 2000

Abstract

At the Spanish border town of Port Bou, late one night towards the end of September 1940, the German culture critic, Walter Benjamin, took his life in despair at being unable to leave Nazi-occupied France. Like the Master in Kafka's parable "The Departure" who hears in the distance the sound of a trumpet, Benjamin, panic-stricken, simply wanted "Out of here, nothing else, it's the only way I can reach my goal."¹ His predicament, the very facts of what occurred in the dark on a frontier promising deliverance, might have come from Kafka's pen. Hannah Arendt underlines the tragic irony, the fatalism, of Benjamin's position: "Only on that particular day was the catastrophe possible."² History and story — how distinct are the categories?