Walter Benjamin and the Violence of Seal: Making History Legible by Interrupting the Myth

This chapter focuses on the notion of seal in the last sentence of Walter Benjamin’s “Toward the Critique of Violence.” Benjamin uses seal as a metaphor of divine violence. By putting this metaphor in the broader context of Benjamin’s work, the author demonstrates that it plays a strategic role in the conceptualization of divine violence. By turning to works like Origin of the German Trauerspiel, “Fate and Character,” fragments on painting, and “The Work of Art in the Age of its Reproducibility” the author demonstrates that in Benjamin’s thought printing and sealing which are necessarily connected to iterability are endowed with an anti-mythical potential. Special attention is paid to the examples of mythical and divine violence—Niobe and Korah. Iterability of the seal interrupts the homogeneous temporality of myth and brings about legibility which is understood as a rhythm of interruptions and legible imprints. Relying on Derrida’s reading of the essay on violence, the author establishes a connection between the notion of seal and Benjamin’s signature at the end of the essay. This chapter demonstrates that the motif of sealing is associated with liberation from myth throughout Benjamin’s entire oeuvre from early essays and the text on violence to “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Reproducibility.”