Benjamin's redemption

Benjamin's redemption here characteristically takes the form of memory and mimesis. A past is to be recognized and recovered; redemption refers to this recovery, or rather dis-covery for the first time, of the sense of distance and depth of time, which properly belongs to experience in the true sense of the word. In short, experience for Benjamin is something by nature in need of retrospective discovery, while each "moment of experience" is always on the verge of becoming lost in its own depthless immediacy. (518)

[Masuzawa, Tomoko. "Tracing the Figure of Redemption Walter Benjamin's Physiognomy of Modernity", in MLN, Vol. 100, No. 3, German Issue (Apr., 1985), pp. 514-536.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2905529 accessed Sep 29th, 2009.]