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35.More information
In his theses on the concept of history, Walter Benjamin created a famous allegory influenced by Klee's Angelus Novus. From the point of view of the Angel of history, progress is seen as an non-ending catastrophe and an ever-growing pile of ruins. In order to grasp its cultural genesis and its political signification, it is necessary to place back this allegory into Benjamin's archeological analysis of French 19th century and to recognize its main literary sources. In light of the prospective ruins motif that is encountered in Mercier's L'An 2440 et Grainville's Le Dernier Homme and of the bergsonian philosophy through which Benjamin reflected on the modern crisis of experience, the ruins of progress mean more than the well-known mixture of marxism and messianism. What is at stake is a critic of the pathological mnemonic effects of futuristic anticipation. In fact, Benjamin's allegory outlines a politics of the present that is the exact opposite of the melancholy induced, according to him, by the progressist thought.
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38.More information
To the French military, still recovering from their defeat in Indochina, the Algerian war was but the final outcome of the "subversive war" carried out by international communism against the colonial empires of the "imperialistic" powers since 1920. The historical analysis does not corroborate this far too unlateral interpretation of the complex and ambiguous relations which existed between the communist and the nationalist movements of Algeria: the algerian FLN in the beginning was no less anticommunist than antinationalist. However, the strategic and diplomatic needs of its struggle against France led it to lean progressively towards the "socialist" States instead of the "imperialistic" West, thereby foregoing its initial neutralism. This has profoundly affected the paths taken by independent Algeria.
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39.More information
The international developments of the last few years have once more brought forth the traditional questions on the foreign policy of the USSR. The strong coming hack of the Soviet military on the political scène has revived the debate on the nature of the Soviet power and on the role played by the Army and its representatives. Since 1975, Soviet policy has been what can be considered as a "policy of response", aimed at protecting the recently acquired "new frontiers" and at preventing the United States from availing themselves of the internal problems existing in the USSR to change the status quo to their advantage. Increasingly, the Soviet government, in his multiple interventions in various regions of the world - and particularly in Afghanistan - is resorting to the militarization of her ancient and new frontiers. This line of action makes the Soviet policy more and more unpredictable and intensifies the risks of confrontation around the globe.