Surrealism, Messianism, and the Occult: Toward a Modern Materialist Theology in Benjamin

Walter Benjamin wrote about the occult, surrealism, dreams and intoxication on numerous occasions, often conflating them as parallel phenomena. The language and concepts he borrowed from occult usage were deeply intriguing to him because they refused modern forms of abstraction, which Western theology and its long history of metaphysics embraced but perhaps should have avoided. Instead of simply critiquing theology for its abstract tendencies, however, most robustly noted in the history of metaphysics and its ‘death’ in the modern period, Benjamin sought to formulate a highly original materialist theology that sought its contours from surreal encounters at the limits of human understanding and experience. In contrast to Theodor Adorno’s attempts to define his own brand of an ‘inverse theology’, articulated at the conclusion to Negative Dialectics, Benjamin’s writings embraced these extreme phenomena taking place beyond human sense (understanding, logic and language) in order to illuminate the limits of experience and to open a door toward a materialist theology humanity has yet to more fully comprehend.