Abstract:
Based on an original and inventive reading of
Walter Benjamin’s seventh thesis on the concept of
history (1940), this article discusses the possibility
and the necessity of a dialectical conception
of culture. Guided by concrete examples from
Latin American history, the author demonstrates
the timeliness of the necessity – proclaimed
by Benjamin – of “writing history against the
grain,” conceiving it from the point of view of the
vanquished, in opposition to the official history of
“progress,” whose identification with the dominant
classes hides the utopian ideas inscribed in the
struggles of the oppressed, past and the present.
Keywords: Walter Benjamin. Cultural dialectic.
History against the grain. Tradition of the
oppressed.
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