Abstract:

Since the memory of past experience contributes to our self-identity, the self is often thought to be an historical construct. And perhaps the most obvious aspect of history is that it is always repeating itself. In “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” Walter Benjamin asserts that when one “grasps the constellation which his own era has formed with a definite earlier one,” one “establishes a conception of the present as ‘the time of the now’ which is shot through with chips of Messianic time” 263 . As the eternal present, this time of the now is a form of no time, which implies that even as an historical construct the self has a timeless dimension. Similarly, in “Tales of the Electronic Tribe,” Frank Lentricchia suggests that in America, postmodernism was not invented in the 20th century but came over in the 17th century with the European pilgrims on the Mayflower.

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