In a general way, our present is far from having come to terms with its recent nazi and fascist past … One is called to vigilence before possible returns – it is the motive of the "never again". … Nevertheless, prudence demands that this vigilence be doubled by another, which would be vigilence towards what does not appear as a simple "return", or what cannot be easily thought of as "reaction". Simple returns or repetitions are in fact rare, if non-existent, in history. And if the carrying or inscription of a swastika is loathsome, they are not necessarily the signs of a true, living and dangerous nazi resurgence. They could be more of the order of debility or weakness. But there are other kinds of repetition, which may in fact be ignored as such, of which the evidence is largely dissimulated, of which the development is more complex and discrete – and of which the dangers are no less real.
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, Le Mythe Nazi
Metamorphoses of Occupy
History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogeneous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now.
The awareness that they are about to make the continuum of history explode is characteristic of the revolutionary classes at the moment of their action. … In the July revolution an incident occurred which showed this consciousness still alive. On the first evening of fighting it turned out that the clocks in towers were being fired on simultaneously and independently from several places in Paris.
The present, which, as a model of Messianis time, comprises the entire history of mankind in an enormous abridgement, coincides exactly with the stature which the history of mankind has in the universe.
Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History
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