AGAINST THE STORM OF PROGRESS

EXPERIENCE, MEMORY, AND TRADITION IN WALTER BENJAMIN

Abstract

This paper revisits Walter Benjamin’s critique of modernity and the ideology of progress, articulated through the image of the Angelus Novus, aiming to discuss how the categories of “reminiscence”, “memory”, and “remembrance” help ground a critical reflection on the importance of social memory in contemporary times. Methodologically, it carries out a bibliographical study grounded in the theoretical-conceptual analysis of the essays Sobre o conceito de história, Experiência e pobreza e O narrador, as well as their critical reception. The results indicate that technical acceleration, capitalism, and the excess of information promote the decline of shared collective experience (Erfahrung) in favor of isolated individual lived experience (Erlebnis). The paper concludes that Benjamin’s formulations call forth a critical labor of rehabilitation the “tradition of the oppressed,” qualifying the political uses of the past as a strategy of resistance to the “storm of progress” and as a resource for bringing to light experiences silenced by official history.