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This paper explores Walter Benjamin’s relationship with French Surrealism from sources rarely studied or practically unknown until now. First, I will set out the direct link between the theses on “profane illumination” and the “organization of pessimism” in Der Sürrealismus. Die letzte Momentaufnahme der europäischen Intelligenz, and various texts by Pierre Naville, one of the most active figures in the Surrealist movement between 1925 and 1929. Second, I will consider Benjamin’s commentaries in Pariser Passagen <I> and convolute “S” of the Passagen-Werk about Surrealist writings and Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, flagging up the implications of this confrontation for Benjamin’s ideas of secularization of mysticism and messianism. Lastly, I will seek to refine the meaning of Benjamin’s “anthropological materialism” and its relevance to those sections of the Passagenarbeit that are dedicated to the evolution of social movements since the French Revolution.

This study develops a utopia, named distopia, positioned as a utopia of dissidence and cultural pluralism, also described as difference. The term distopia is a neologism formulated to invoke productive elements of utopia (such as a vision for an improved sociocultural sphere), with aspects of dystopia (namely, scepticism regarding the prevalent), whilst evading the potential naiveté of utopia as well as the hopeless resignation that dystopia can encourage. The term also denotes the political expedience of dissent. Utopia is analysed in terms of its form, content, or function, and according to its underlying sociocultural dynamic, which is, in turn, determined by intersecting permutations of space and time. This study furthermore categorises utopias as either representative of the same (that is, of the institutional, political, discursive, ideological and sociocultural status quo), or of the other. The other is defined here as an agent marginalised along the vectors of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Distopia is, accordingly, a dissenting utopia of the other, formulated to address, in particular, sociocultural exclusion and human rights violations linked to the parallel projects of neocolonial exploitation and of destabilising globalisation practices driven by neoliberal ideology. The utopias of three Dutch visual artists, namely Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), Constant Nieuwenhuys (1920-2005), and Jonas Staal (b. 1981) in collaboration with Moussa Ag Assarid (b. c.1975), are critiqued through the lens of distopia. This is done in order to assess the status of productive difference and engagement with the other in their respective utopias, created over the course of a century.

Este trabalho filia-se ao campo das investigações acerca de uma antropologia histórica da linguagem, especialmente no que toca à busca de uma interface entre a linguística e a literatura. Presente nas reflexões de Walter Benjamin e de Émile Benveniste, a crítica à instrumentalidade da linguagem traz consigo desdobramentos para a forma como os autores concebem o tempo e a história. A partir da problematização da relação entre linguagem e experiência, proposta por Giorgio Agamben, objetiva-se observar a expressão da temporalidade nas obras de ambos autores. Para tanto, serão discutidas e aproximadas noções fundamentais como as de tempo-agora e de tempo linguístico.