An Idea in Combat with Itself: Benjamin, Hölderlin, and “Temporal Plasticity”

Fenves examines Walter Benjamin's "temporal plasticity" as a countermodel to "experience," which, he argues, "represents time as a unidimensional, irreversible flow." For Fenves, the plasticity of time means that it is multidimensional, static, and formable--hence reversible. Temporal plasticity and the thinking day are marked out by Fenves as models of time that signify in unison the opposing temporalities of neo-Kantianism and Bergsonism in Benjamin's thought.