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the Jews that could not be disproven. The 'Mimickry' article appeals to those men amongst the ranks in a manner that strongly resembles a rhetorically inverted form of
Benjamin's essay 'On the Mimetic Faculty.' "Goebbels certainly wanted to touch upon the crucial point: Hatred for the Jews did not depend on questions of history or doctrine, but went back much further to the time when Homo had developed his capacity for imitation to the point of assimilating himself to his earliest enemies: predators, because were themselves primordial predators. National Socialists, unlike Jews, hadn't had to imitate anyone," Goebbels implies in the article. "They were always and only themselves...The Nazis the belated retaliation by the animal world against the species that had violated its order; and the Jews were the elected representatives of that species...Over the centuries, the most serious and shameful accusations had been heaped on the Jews: the condemnation of Jesus, foul customs, ritual killings, usury. But now all this dissolved and a single intact and sufficient charge remained--an offense that could even be mistaken for a talent:
73:"On the Mimetic Faculty" concentrates and distills certain aspects of the earlier essay but the chronological horizon of issues being considered in the text also moves back further in time. Whereas "On Language" speaks of the invention of the alphabet, and the introduction of the Name as an ontogenetic event constituting the perpetuity of human identity after death (c. 1300-1200 BCE), "On the Mimetic Faculty" moves back towards the earliest prehistoric development of human language as it arose and became increasingly distinct from gesture and pantomime(c. 30
70:, referring both implicitly and explicitly to the Kabbalah. The series of meditations that begins here represents a cosmology based on language with formal and rhetorical aspects that are kabbalistic in character, and is opposed from the outset to the interpretation of being and time which appears in the work of their nemesis, "the great...indeed the only great Nazi philosopher," Martin Heidegger.
124:. Goebbels, who was a showman, understood...the closer the 'terrible punishment' became for the Jews the more the accusation against them had to be reduced to its ultimate essence. And what could be more serious than to go back to that event, lost in the mist of prehistory? Almost everything was the consequence of it."
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propaganda in the Nazi press was composed largely of opportunistic lies deployed to motivate and unify the German masses. They were merely cynically resigned to this strategy. To rely upon them to carry out the process, however, Goebbels apparently thought they should be given some reason for killing
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As scholars have pointed out, "On the
Mimetic Faculty" takes on a certain grim significance in the context of the Holocaust when, in the year 1941, Hitler's propaganda minister delivered an official 'mystical' or transcendent rationale for the extermination of the Jews directed toward the more elite
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thus represents—within this specific dimension—Benjamin's retort to
Goebbels from beyond the grave in regards to Goebbel's proposal that 'Mimickry' should be understood as a sufficient object cause for carrying out the extermination of the Jews, a proposal delivered during the commission of the
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and various other occult sciences arising from the basic ability of humans to interpret occult likeness or "non-sensuous similarity." From these non-sensuous similarities, words seem to arise. But is there a priority of language predating even the earliest human intonations? Benjamin alludes to
77:-200 millennia ago) —with areas of the essay reaching back even further than that. The piece is an attempt, "To read what was never written," as Benjamin writes, "Such reading is the most ancient: reading before all languages, from the entrails, the stars and the dances."
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argues—as a projection and displacement of discomfort and repressive denial about the nature and source of symbolic powers and of the modes by which these symbolic powers establish themselves as nations and principalities ruling over the earth.
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development in the sphere of spoken and written language distinguished human beings from all other members of the animal kingdom in the first place. The Nazis, imitating the mythologically counterfeit and fictionalized Jewish council in the
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around the text. The theme or concern of the piece that he develops is the evolutionary process by which the human capacity of mimicry both culminates in and is liquidated by language and especially in the written word.
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in their own plots to take over the world, had themselves been pantomiming their way to power all along. The genocidal hatred of Jews within the Third Reich's inner circle, then, may be read—at least in part, as
131:, shortly after Benjamin's death. Nevertheless, a student, disciple, and literary executor of Benjamin's estate, Theodor Adorno, cribbed the beginning and ending movements of his masterwork
199:(1928), "Graphology Old and New"(1930), "On Astrology"(1932), "The Lamp"(1933), "Doctrine of the Similar"(1933) "Antithesis Concerning Word and Name"(1933) and others.
27:: Über das mimetische Vermögen; 1933) is the second of an uncompleted trilogy of essays articulating a metaphysics or post-metaphysics of language, written by
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365:. Translated by Jephcott, Edmun. Stanford, NJ: Stanford University Press. pp. 137-172 (See especially sections V and VI, from 147-165).
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In the extraordinarily compressed three or four pages of "On the
Mimetic Faculty", Benjamin outlines connections between mimesis and
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while the war was still unfolding—from
Benjamin's at that time still esoteric and unpublished material on language culminating in
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43:. It was sent as the postscript of a letter to his best friend, a Librarian of Ancient Manuscripts at Hebrew University and
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195:, or partials drafts and early alternative versions of "On the Mimetic Faculty", include: A Review of the Mendelssohn's
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Holocaust. Mimesis is not a specifically ‘Jewish’ ability, Benjamin's essay shows, but a human capacity.
66:," had also been written as a letter to Scholem in the year 1916. That essay speaks of language in and as
145:, reading it against the sentiments broadcast in Goebbels 'Mimickry.' The chapter on Antisemitism in the
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111:'s essay is entitled 'Mimickry.' It addresses itself to a readership of men who knew that most of the
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was being scaled into industrial killing centers in the East. This essay by
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methods of astral conjuring, a subject into which he goes into more depth in the circle of
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in the months leading up to and immediately following the appointment of
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Adorno, Theodor; Horkheimer, Max (1944). "Elements of
Antisemitism".
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amongst anthropologists and linguists over the past several decades.
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285:. New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. pp. 333–336.
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Reflections : essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writings
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Reflections : essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writing
248:"Introduction to Walter Benjamin's "Doctrine of the Similar""
312:. Peter Demetz. New York: Schocken Books. pp. 333–335.
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Scholem, Gershom; Benjamin, Walter (1989). "Letters 27-34".
220:(1st English ed.). New York: Schocken. pp. 60–79.
179:, a major modality of the current working theory about the
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Calasso, Roberto (2015). ""The Vienna Gas
Company"".
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Benjamin, Walter (1978). ""On the
Mimetic Faculty"".
306:Benjamin, Walter (1986). "On the Mimetic Faculty".
175:"On the Mimetic Faculty" finds confirmation in the
425:. THe Harvard University Press. pp. 691–693.
127:Goebbels's article had been released in the book
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54:The first entry in this cycle of reflections on
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120:...No more was needed to establish the age old
171:To a large extent, the framework described in
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64:On Language as Such and on the Language of Man
455:. Harvard University Press. pp. 717–719.
440:. Harvard University Press. pp. 694–698.
410:. Harvard University Press. pp. 684–685.
380:. Harvard University Press. pp. 131–134.
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103:cadres of the Nazis as the
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478:Works by Walter Benjamin
139:Philosophische Fragmente
16:Essay by Walter Benjamin
393:Selected Works vol. 2.1
378:Selected Works vol. 2.1
143:On the Mimetic Faculty
137:—published in 1944 as
129:Die Zeit ohne Beispiel
21:On the Mimetic Faculty
346:The Unnamable Present
81:Summary and reception
395:. pp. 398–399.
252:New German Critique
118:the Jew can imitate
453:Selected Works 2.2
451:Benjamin, Walter.
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91:astrology
75:millennia
423:The Lamp
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