Joachim Harst

Reading Kleist’s Verlobung in St. Domingo« and Benjamin’s »Zur Kritik der Gewalt«, this paper proceeds from the novel’s problematic of immanence and violence to Benjamin’s question, whether violence has a linguistic structure – and whether ›pure‹ or ›divine violence‹ can rupture immanence. In this sense, Benjamin’s ›violence‹ leads back to Kleist’s and to an analysis of both as transcending effects of language.