ABSTRACT
This is a retelling of Walter Benjamin’s Thesis IX from “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” the “Angelus Novus” parable. This version is a magical realist trip down a flooding river that ends with the failed intervention of the “Angel of History.” The second half of the chapter explains how the story represents Benjamin’s critique of progress in both liberalism and Marxism. Both, in Benjamin’s view, treat everything that appears in the moment as booty to be looted amidst the inexorable flood of time. In contrast, Benjamin hoped to save the past, both the objects that make up the world and the people who strove to make them, through a messianic moment of memory. Rather than a moment which opens up possibilities in the future for the self, this moment is oriented towards care for the world.
