![]() It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to suggest that the hunchback is to Europe as the Indian is to North America: a figure whose image has been subjected to every kind of ridicule and distortion but whose mind is all the more perspicacious, in part, because of these indignities. The hunchback-as-theology is part of the motley crew of archaic but clairvoyant figures whom Benjamin sought to recuperate, because it is they who upend modern orientations to history and with that, the structures of political formation. The puppet in Benjamin’s parable is “historical materialism” and the little hunchback is “theology.” It is the hunchback who is clued into the illusory artifice of modernity to which most are oblivious, who continues to move influentially and astutely within contemporary society even if his stature has been diminished. Who has understood the course of history? Who can channel its world-making power? In the opening to his Theses on the Concept of History in 1940, Walter Benjamin, the German Jewish, Marxist mystic, imagined an expert chess-playing puppet whose hands are guided by a “little hunchback” who has “wisened, and keeps out of sight” (i). Taken together, their penetrating visions not only elucidate the violent currents moving through discourses of time but disrupt the spatial and temporal terrains within which the oppressive and redemptive work of political theology, very literally, “takes place.” William Apess, the surprising-to-many nineteenth-century Pequot performer/minister/activist, fiercely articulates the colonial and anti-colonial stakes of the political theological imaginary from an Indigenous New England vantage point. PDM Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.How do the past and future impinge upon the “now” of political theology? This two-part essay triangulates temporality from the vantage points of two thinkers: the well-known, if perplexing German Jewish political theologian, Walter Benjamin, offers a riveting twentieth-century, European Marxist perspective. This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights. Copyright may extend on works created by French who died for France in World War II ( more information), Russians who served in the Eastern Front of World War II (known as the Great Patriotic War in Russia) and posthumously rehabilitated victims of Soviet repressions ( more information). Honduras has a general copyright term of 75 years, but it does implement the rule of the shorter term. ![]() This image may not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the rule of the shorter term. You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States. Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Jamaica has 95 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer. Licensing Public domain Public domain false false Image from William Apess, A Son of the Forest (New York: The author, 1831).
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