The Economic Body and the Incompletion of Time: On Walter Benjamin’s “Capitalism as Religion”

Abstract:

The essay demonstrates how the notion of the economic body is conceptualised in Walter Benjamin’s posthumously published fragmentary text “Kapitalismus als Religion” (1921). The three sections of the essay extend from this fragment to other areas of Benjamin’s thought. The first move links “Capitalism as Religion” to Benjamin’s appropriation of myth and shows how the consideration of mythic violence is underlined by the banishment of the maternal-feminine to the domain of the image. In the second move, the concepts of the “dialectical image” and “natural history” are discussed in relation to the indebtedness of having a body. The final section turns to another early fragment, “Wahrnehmung und Leib” (1918/9), in which the distinction between “Schein” and “Sein” is contemplated against the backdrop of the “messianic”. Drawing these threads together, the essay uncovers the role of bodiliness, perception and sexuality in Benjamin’s critique of secularisation and of myth, released by the formula “capitalism as religion”.