Memory studies in a moment of danger: Fascism, postfascism, and the contemporary political imaginary

Neil Levi
Drew University, USA

Michael Rothberg
University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Abstract

Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s concept of the “moment of danger,” this essay considers the contemporary return of the memory of fascism and Nazism among both far-right political movements and liberal and left critics of the right. We briefly sketch how memories and symbols derived from the fascist and National Socialist era, among other sources, help constitute new political subjects in our moment of danger, and we look extensively at responses to the election of Donald Trump and evaluate the way the invocation of the fascist era as memory and warning shapes versions of resistant remembrance. We argue that transnational memory studies needs to think more about the historical consciousness that buttresses contemporary far right politics and about the potential memory politics that might oppose it.

Keywords
memory studies, Nazism, racism, transnational, Walter Benjamin

In the famous 1940 essay, the German-Jewish cultural critic Walter Benjamin ([1940] 2006)
asserts,

Articulating the past historically does not mean recognizing it “the way it really was.” It means appropriating a memory as it flashes up in a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to hold fast that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to the historical subject in a moment of danger. (pp. 391–392)

https://www.academia.edu/download/56948812/Levi_Rothberg_Memory_in_a_Moment_of_Danger_Fascism_Postfascism.pdf