Parallelisms and tensions between Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin: conceptions of time and redemption for the sake of revolution in the dilemma between utopia and messianism

The purpose of this article is to explore some of the parallels and tensions between, on the one hand, Ernst Bloch's concepts of utopia in his 1918 work Geist der Utopie and nonsynchronism [Ungleichzeitigkeit] -or "non-simultaneity", following Spanish translator Miguel Salmeron- in the 1935 book The Heritage of our Times and, on the other hand, the political messianism articulated both in Walter Benjamin's Theological-Political Fragment (1920-21) and much later in the "Konvolut N" of the Passagen-Werk as well as his On the Concept of History (1940).