Abstract

Through the application of a psychoanalytic approach to the concept of history an argument for tradition as unconscious memory is established. History by contrast is developed as being dependent upon textual constructions. Aligning Walter Benjamin's concept of Erfahrung and Jetztzeit with Sigmund Freud's theory of Nachtraglichkeit and Jacques Derrida's trace , the author shows how history and language are interrelated in imagination as motivated by an unconscious tra-ditio. Expanding on Hans Georg Gadamer's hermeneutics with psychoanalysis, it is proposed to conceive of tradition as the figural function of language which determines readerly meaning in the form of aesthetic effects. The argument is grounded historically in a reading of Kant's Critique of Judgment, which reveals the necessity of an unconscious transference in imagination so as to facilitate the mind in the judging of experience. Kant's notion of Geist is related to a discussion of the status of wit in the 18th century and interpreted as a faculty that foreshadows an unconscious in language. History as interpretation foregrounds the question of language and its signifying structure. The interrelationship between mind and language is determined by an unconscious tradition that consists in a process of translating the past into a meaning for the present. In a juxtaposition of Jacques Lacan and Gadamer the shortcomings of both psychoanalytic and hermeneutic theory for a theory of history are pointed out. Finally, in Benjamin's reading strategy of allegory a theory of textuality that incorporates both history and psychoanalysis is explored