Universal histories are not inevitably reactionary. But a universal history without a structural [konstruktiv] principle is reactionary. The structural principle of universal history allows it to be represented in partial histories. It is, in other words, a monadological principle. It exists within salvation history. — Walter Benjamin, Paralipomena to ‘On the Concept of History’ in Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings: Volume 4, 1938-1940, eds. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2003), 404.