Angelus Novus, Nationalism and Progress

Citing Walter Benjamin’s writings on Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus, Thomas Nairn – referenced in Anderson’s text – writes, “[Benjamin] wrote that the appalled Angel of History, who seems to be contemplating in dismay modernity’s piles of wreckage upon wreckage, ‘would like to stay, awaken the dead and make whole what has been smashed’. But through nationalism the dead are awakened, this is the point-- seriously awakened for the first time. All cultures have been obsessed by the dead and placed them in anther world. Nationalism rehouses them in this world. Through its agency the past ceases being ‘immemorial’: it gets memorialized into time present, and so acquires a future. For the first time it is meaningfully projected onto the screen of futurity. ” (page 4, Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited) (nb. The bold is my own)

In his own text, Benjamin clearly does not reference nationalism but simply writes that “[The Angel] would like to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress is this storm” (Teil IX). The fact that the angel both seems to distance himself from and stare at this storm of historical progress (Fortschritt in German à forward + step) does recall the paradoxical self-referentiality and forward vision of nationalism. Nationalism relies on both historically related (so-called inherent, national values) as well as the act of looking forward to (national) “historical destinies” (Anderson 149). It does, as Nairn says, awaken the dead, or, that what has been smashed. (?)

The storm, in Nairn's view, like nationalism, seems to at once piece together what has been smashed and be progress (forward motion). This paradox, again, seems in line with nationalism: it both pieces together the dead and living, it creates unity yet it also divides, feeds feelings of competition and envy (racism?).

If we are to take both Benjamin’s suggestion that this storm blowing from Paradise is progress and Nairn’s suggestion that this storm is like/is nationalism, how might one link Anderson’s discussions of racism? In section may we discuss Anderson’s argument as to why racism and anti-semitism do not derive from nationalism (pg. 148)… How can something like the Holocaust not be derived from inherent intolerance, founded in modern German nationalism?

Perhaps I’m confusing discussions that cannot be linked or drawn together—either way, accepting the link between nationalism and progress suggests to me that racism is unavoidable (??). History has shown this to be and not to be the case.

Ha. Now Shakespeare is involved.