jbml thln 42/76 "[I]f time travel of this type

WERE POSSIBLE:"

I (JB) am reminded, first,
of something you said to me in our college days
~ that history really should make as much sense going back-ward as forward.

This has stood me well, & in fact much of my ethnography POLISH JEWS IN PARIS was an effort
to tell the history of a generation of immigrants backward from the time of my fieldwork encounter with them.

More personally,
I have occasionally speculated,
or tried to comfort myself, with the thought that the past is such a rich country
I need not sorrow overmuch as my personal future or the world's shrinks in relation to that past
that remains infinitely discoverable.

Yet such thoughts seem unworthy historicist self-numbings, precisely the nostalgic temptation Walter Benjamin warned against.

Should they be banned as an ethisticization of history, inimiquel to its real politicization?

Or should we historicize Benjamin as well,
noting the desperation that lead to his bombastic rhetoric
about taking a
"TIGER'S LEAP INTO THE PAST,"
avoiding
"HISTORICISM'S BORDELLO,"
and being
"MAN ENOUGH TO BLAST OPEN
THE CONTINUUM
OF HISTORY?"

If we criticize him less
because of the desperation
of his circumstances, how shall we
evaluate the desperation
of our
own?
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