Bensaïd’s Jeanne: Strategic Mythopoesis for Difficult Times

Philosophies

article

Bryan Smyth¹ 

[1] Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of Mississippi, University

关键词: Daniel Bensaïd;    Joan of Arc;    mythopoesis;    Marxism;    Walter Benjamin;    historical agency;    phenomenology of embodiment;    heroism;    Prometheanism;   

DOI  :  10.3390/philosophies8010012

学科分类：内科医学

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

In this essay, I consider the significance of Daniel Bensaïd’s work on Jeanne d’Arc with regard to dealing with the “difficult times” in which we live. (1) I first consider some of the background in early critical theory in order to show that Bensaïd’s aim to recover Benjamin’s notion of a “weak messianic power” requires following through with Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of enlightenment, and that this implies a critical rehabilitation of myth and mythopoesis. (2) Approaching Bensaïd’s account of Jeanne in the light of Blumenberg’s notion of “work on myth”, I show how he portrays her in a way that establishes a concrete connection between the discordant temporalities of contingency and necessity, but that this is best understood in the radically immanent terms of prereflective embodied action as based on the corporeal sedimentation of an intercorporeal ethical habitus. Bensaïd’s account of Jeanne thus offers a new lens of historical perception that can help reveal otherwise hidden possibilities for transformative historical agency in embodied coexistence today. (3) By way of conclusion, I briefly consider the deeper meaning and significance of this in terms of offering a non-Promethean mythico-political framework.

【 授权许可】

CC BY