This paper explores the conceptual elements with which Walter Benjamin reflected on communication after his shift towards historical materialism in the mid-1920s. On this basis is a category system developed for communication in connection with these elements, with particular emphasis on the concept of destructive communication. The hypothesis of the paper is that the concept of destructive communication unified Benjamin’s intervention at that historical moment and constituted the reverse of the positive concept of barbarism.
Historical Materialism; Communication Theory; Modernity; Russian Constructivism