Proustian Marxism

Michael Taussig in Walter Benjamin's Grave coins a very interesting phrase and a particularly germane idea in relation to many of our discussions on the class/gender divide, on the issue of labour, and so on. He writes:

Some people think of Benjamin as a Marxist or as a Marxist with a surrealist spin. Other regard him as combining Marxism with the mysticism of the Kabbalah. There is truth to these interpretations, but I myself prefer to think of him as a Proustian Marxist, an eccentric overwhelmed by the avant-garde and the fast-moving political scene of the time. As indication of his eccentricity, take “One-Way Street” where he writes: “If the theory is correct that feeling is not located in the head, that we sentiently experience a window, a cloud, a tree not in our brains but, rather, in the place where we see it, then we are, in looking at our beloved, too, outside ourselves.” (http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/790045.html)

At any rate, perhaps this is just more food for thought, but the idea strikes me as being very rich and yet full of paradox. I'm not sure what to do with it, but, sounds like something that we were all hinting at and not quite sure how to articulate.

J.A.