Walter Benjamin Decolonial: Exploding the Continuum of Coloniality

Abstract

This article reinterprets some central theorems of Walter Benjamin’s work, reconsidering them from a decolonial/postcolonial perspective. In this sense, the article revisits Benjamin’s Copernican shifts in historical knowledge, namely, his conception of the now-time from which history should be written (exploding the false triumphal narratives of modernity) and the thesis that the authors of history must be part of subalternized classes and groups. It also demonstrates the complicity between Benjamin’s theory of images, his theory of dreams, and his theory of awakening as categories that, by directly opposing Western logocentric thought, present themselves as a threshold, a site of communication with de- and postcolonial knowledge. Without being a post- or decolonial theorist in the strict sense, the Berlin thinker has served as an inspiration to authors in these traditions. His relational ecology aligns with epistemologies of the South that link decolonial thought with ecology. In short, Benjamin’s work is updated to reinforce the struggle for pluriversal epistemologies, constructing dialectical images that forge an ethical future of collective emancipation.