Walter Benjamin: The Arcades Project

LOOKING & SEEING

Stage 1 Semester 2

Walter Benjamin
The Arcades Project
Alexandra M. Kokoli
[email protected]

Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project

(1927-1940; Das Passagenwerk, 1st publ. 1982)
Chronologically belongs to late Modernism
YET, see 1st publ. date!
In terms of content, anticipates postmodernist ideas
E.g. emphasis on consumption as a site of social identification
In terms of form, even more so
Unfinished: bundles of notes with two made-to-order overviews

Not a work, but a work in progress (Arbeit, not Werk)
The research project as an end in itself
A kind of history writing, yet fragmented, heterogeneous, lacking
concrete conclusions
[] the Arcades Project may be characterized as a website, in a verbal
medium, on 19th-century Paris. Henry Sussman, SUNY Buffalo
Perception(s) as important as fact(s): emphasis on vision and the
spectacle
Walter Benjamin
(b. Berlin, 1892; d. French/Spanish borders, 1940)
Left-wing Jewish intellectual and philosopher;

important figure in CRITICAL THEORY
Earned money as freelance writer, critic and
translator
Most key works published posthumously
Edited and contextualised by famous
contemporaries (e.g. Theodor Adorno and Hannah
Arendt)
The Arcades Project: the theatre of all my struggles
and all my ideas (WB correspondence, 1930)
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical

Reproduction, in Illuminations (London: Pimlico,
1999), pp. 211-244
Modern technology effects changes beyond the technological

Changes on the status of the work of art, which loses the aura of
the unique original.
Political changes too: the loss of aura effects a loss of the actual
historical dimension of the work of art.
Reproducibility loss of context, & ultimately loss of meaning
Aesthetic contemplation becomes dissociated from the properly
lived experience of the autonomous individual.
To aestheticise (new meaning) = to empty out meaning; to make
any informed judgement by the individual impossible and/or
irrelevant.
The role of phantasmagoria: spectacles help switch off
intellectual/critical faculties
"All efforts to render politics aesthetic leads to one thing: war. (p.
234)
Extremely influential the debate continues (Adorno and
Horkheimer, Debord, McLuhan, and more recently, Agamben).
Influences/Starting Points
Charles Baudelaire (1941-1867), French poet
and critic.
Benjamins translations of CBs work became the
starting point for his theoretical writings on translation.
Benjamin greatly influenced by CBs anatomies of the
crown, the city, and his own time.
WBs own approach to history

criticism of linear, causal notions of history.
constellation: a (metaphorically) spatial relation of
events and contexts. Multiple entry points; complex
cross-referencing.
The politics of vision: humanity will be prey to a

mythic anguish so long as phantasmagoria
occupies a place in it. (Expos of 1939,
Introduction)
The Arcades Project STRUCTURE

Several hundred notes and reflections grouped in
sheafs or convolutes:
Quotations of various lengths from a wide range of sources
(from poets and philosophers to tourist guides and
newspapers)
Although unfinished, already meticulously cross-referenced
Categorised in seemingly incommensurable groups: e.g.
Fashion; Boredom, Eternal Return; Marx; The Flneur;
Anthropological Materialism, History of Sects
Two synopses (exposs) written to order (1935

&1939), in which he lays out his main points of
reference and principles for its transdisciplinary
construction, incl. architecture; visual mass media
(phantasmagorias and panoramas); urban existence
(the flneur); interiors; politics.
[First sketches and early drafts]
Why the ARCADES?
Architectural form of the 19th c.; covered

passage through blocks of buildings
lined with shops and other businesses
A whole world in miniature!
Gives rise to window-shopping
Makes shops into tourist sites
Forerunner of the department store
Made possible by new technologies of
iron construction
Made popular thanks to
The appearance of luxury goods stores
The attraction of novelty (magasins de
nouveauts, i.e. fancy goods stores)
Esther Leslie: the external skeleton &

montaged structure of the arcades
mirrors that of WBs work
Les rue-galeries literally!

Those who have seen the gallery of the Louvre
may take it as a model for the street-gallery in
Harmony. E. Silberling, Dictionnaire de
sociologie phalanstrienne (Paris, 1911) [A3a,5]
About looking and being looked at
Goods on display, but also shoppers under
mutual visual scrutiny
FASHION: climate control allows for more delicate,
showy clothing and shoes, disposing of the need for
heavy coats
Phantasmagorias & panoramas

Phantasmagoria =
An optical effect produced by a magic lantern (= ancestor of
the slide projector). Figures are painted in transparent
colours on glass, the rest painted opaque black, and
projected onto a screen. The figures would often be made
to appear as in motion, with quick switching of the slides
and other tricks.
2. 18th/19th c.: popular street spectacle; sometimes a ghostly
spectacle, hybrid between a sance and a picture show.
3. A medley of figures; illusive images.
Associations:
Mass entertainment (part of masscapitalistculture)

Communion with the beyond
Hallucination; dream
Panorama = continuous narrative scene or landscape painted

to conform to a flat or curved background, which surrounds
or is unrolled before the viewer. Precursor to the largescreen moving image
The lure of the commodity

From economies of production to
cultures of consumption
NB: an ideological, not actual shift! (Theres
no avoiding economic relations simply a
question of covering them up)
Commodity Fetishism
Fetishism: typical of primitive civilisations;
the rationally unfounded attribution to an
object qualities that are not supported by
its practical function; magic
Marx: our rational capitalist societies arent
immune!
Separation of use-value (real) and
exchange-value
Luxury goods
The boutiques of the arcades = the
temples of the new religion of commodity
fetishism
The commodity itself is the

speaker here. (WB)
Cf. Judith Williamson, Decoding
Advertisements (London: Marion Boyars,
1978), pp. 12-13:
In the connection of people and objects, the
two become interchangeable []. Objects
are made to speaklike people: say it
with flowers. [] Conversely, [] people
become identified with objects: the Pepsi
People []
Haussmannisation
Baron Georges Eugne HAUSSMANN (18091891): as prefect of the Seine (1853-70) carried
out large-scale renovations of the city
(modernisation of sanitation, public utilities,
construction of the Paris Opera and Les Halles)
Gentrification: pushed the poor out to the
banlieues
Made barricading impossible; his true goal: to
secure the city against civil war (WB, Ex 1939,
E.)
Esther Leslie: Haussmann had obliterated
history when he cut the boulevards through old
Paris.
Note on historical context:

France in the mid-19th c.
1848, reign of Louis-Philippe: 1% suffrage;
public gatherings illegal
February 1848 Revolution: Paris in barricades
The Second Republic (1848-52)
Democratic freedoms but commercial decline
Conservative reaction against red scare
December 1851 coup dissolved the national
assembly; President Louis Napolon Bonaparte
becomes Emperor Napolon III
The flneur [= stroller; wanderer]

After Baudelaire, man of the crowd (cf. his
essay The Painter of Modern Life: social
commentary and exposition of own poetics)
A symptom of modernity: at home in the
anonymity of the city, among strangers
A detached observer (?)
WB: extremely intrigued, but ultimately not
convinced of the subversive potential of the
flneur
The idleness of the flneur is a demonstration
against the division of labour. [M5,8]
The flneur sabotages the traffic. Moreover, he
is no buyer. He is merchandise. [A3a,7]
No conclusions, but far from aimless

History: not simply the past
The work of the historian: to make the past
momentarily reappear in the present in a flash (cf.
Theses on the Philosophy of History, Illuminations)
Thus, the past sheds lights on itself and the present
The ruins of history spike the present (E. Leslie)
The 19th c. phantasmagoria illuminates 20th c.
capitalism and the emergent society of the spectacle
If in the arcades reality becomes like a dream,
and WBs analysis is inspired by dream interpretation
Then the Arcades Project aims to awaken!
WB saw the 19th c. Parisian arcades as

having something to reveal about the
world he lived in.
What, if anything, do the arcades have to do
with us?
What is the meaning of the Arcades Project
now?
e-Arcades by Robin Michals

http://www.e-arcades.com/
Inspired by Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project, eArcades is an excursion of association among quotations
concerning technology. Borrowing Benjamin's
methodology of juxtaposing quotes, e-Arcades grasps at
an understanding of the effect of our technologies on
how we think as well as live.
The industry is running scared from the technology that evens out the
creative field and makes artists harder to pimp. I'm glad to be a contributor
to the bomb.
Chuck D
Public Enemy, speaking of MP3 1999
[cf. his Rapstation.com, a multi-format site with TV & radio original
programming the free downloads]
Important Announcement
Seminars for groups 1 & 2 this
Wednesday, 5 March, will take
place in GA49 (on the left of the
canteen entrance) instead of the
studio.
READING LIST
Core Reading
Excerpts from The Arcades Project published in Other Voices, 1.1 (March
1997):
1. The Arcades http://www.othervoices.org/gpeaker/Arcades.html
2. The Flneur http://www.othervoices.org/gpeaker/Flaneur.html
3. The Commodity http://www.othervoices.org/gpeaker/Commod.html
Further Reading (Library & Internet resources)
Baudelaire, Charles, The Painter of Modern Life, in The Painter of Modern Life
and Other Essays, trans. and ed. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon,
1995), pp. 1-41. Shelfmark 759.06 BAU
Benjamin, Walter, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin
McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1999). Shelfmark 944.361 081 BEN
Buck-Morss, Susan, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the
Arcades Project (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). Shelfmark 720.1 BEN
Caygill, Howard, Walter Benjamin: The colour of experience (London:
Routledge, 1998). Shelfmark 701 BEN
Leslie, Esther, Walter Benjamins Arcades Project
http://www.militantesthetix.co.uk/waltbenj/yarcades.html
The Walter Benjamin Research Syndicate (an on-line research resource for
individuals interested in the writings and critical theory of WB)
http://www.wbenjamin.org/walterbenjamin.html

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LOOKING & SEEING

Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project

In terms of form, even more so

Unfinished: bundles of notes with two made-to-order overviews

Left-wing Jewish intellectual and philosopher;

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical

Modern technology effects changes beyond the technological

WBs own approach to history

The politics of vision: humanity will be prey to a

The Arcades Project STRUCTURE

Two synopses (exposs) written to order (1935

Why the ARCADES?

Architectural form of the 19th c.; covered

Esther Leslie: the external skeleton &

Les rue-galeries literally!

Phantasmagorias & panoramas

Mass entertainment (part of masscapitalistculture)

Panorama = continuous narrative scene or landscape painted

The lure of the commodity

The commodity itself is the

Note on historical context:

The flneur [= stroller; wanderer]

No conclusions, but far from aimless

WB saw the 19th c. Parisian arcades as

e-Arcades by Robin Michals

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