When writing a particular life (Genet's, Flaubert's, even his own), Sartre sifted his data for what he called, borrowing a term from Merleau-Ponty, the "differential": that which placed his subject out of step with the prevailing spirit or presumptions of his time and, as a consequence, permitted him to undertake a life-project that reflected the peculiar stamp of his individual consciousness. For Sartre, every life is filled with opportunities to step away from the drowse of "bad faith" that encumbers every life and embark upon a career of existential authenticity.
Benjamin, theorizing a Marxist historiography, focused not on specific individuals but rather on the sweep of history itself. And yet he, too, was in search of the "differential" that impregnated historical moments with "chips of Messianic time" (Addendum A): those historical junctures which presented historical actors with opportunities for revolutionary action. In Thesis XV, Benjamin wrote:
"The awareness that they are about to make the continuum of history explode is characteristic of the revolutionary classes at the moment of their action."
Likewise, the recognition of such moments in the course of sifting one's historical data presents the critical historian with the opportunity to salvage them from the ash-heap of the victor's narration of the past and, thereby, transform her scholarship into a mode of revolutionary praxis.
I am, at present, uncertain whether or not Sartre was familiar with Benjamin's Theses. I would be surprised if he were not; but this is a matter for further research.
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