Benjamin–Agamben: Politik, Messianismus, Kabbala

The original perspective of the latter is the subject of Vivian Liska's dense and illuminating essay, which appropriately begins with a brief analysis of Paul's "hos me" ("as if not"-but would it not be better to translate it literally "as not"?), a pattern underlying "Agamben's entire structure of the messianic," as Liska states. [...]through a careful analysis of Agamben's texts devoted to Kafka (especially in his disturbing reading of In the Penal Colony), Liska shows how Agamben "illustrates his idea of the oppressive state of exception and its reversal through the suspension of the law," which has to be seen at the same time as "a redemptive halt to the sheer endlessness of exegesis, and ultimately of the written word itself." [...]the German expression "in ungeheuren Fällen" is rather inadequately rendered as "in exceptional cases," an expression which could lead to assimilating Benjamin to a Schmittian political theology. [...]criticizing Agamben by means of a philological argument, Weigel draws attention to Benjamin's real problem: "What is at issue in Benjamin is the responsibility for an act which does harm to the commandment in a single case without establishing a new law through this action."