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The Arcades Project
"To great writers," Walter Benjamin once wrote, "finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labor their entire lives." Conceived in Paris in 1927 and still in progress when Benjamin fled the Occupation in 1940, The Arcades Project (in German, Das Passagen-Werk) is a monumental ruin, meticulously constructed over the course of thirteen years--"the theater," as Benjamin called it, "of all my struggles and all my ideas."
Focusing on the arcades of nineteenth-century Paris-glass-roofed rows of shops that were early centers of consumerism--Benjamin presents a montage of quotations from, and reflections on, hundreds of published sources, arranging them in thirty-six categories with descriptive rubrics such as "Fashion," "Boredom," "Dream City," "Photography," "Catacombs," "Advertising," "Prostitution," "Baudelaire," and "Theory of Progress." His central preoccupation is what he calls the commodification of things--a process in which he locates the decisive shift to the modern age.
The Arcades Project is Benjamin's effort to represent and to critique the bourgeois experience of nineteenth-century history, and, in so doing, to liberate the suppressed "true history" that underlay the ideological mask. In the bustling, cluttered arcades, street and interior merge and historical time is broken up into kaleidoscopic distractions and displays of ephemera. Here, at a distance from what is normally meant by "progress," Benjamin finds the lost time(s) embedded in the spaces of things.
Focusing on the arcades of nineteenth-century Paris-glass-roofed rows of shops that were early centers of consumerism--Benjamin presents a montage of quotations from, and reflections on, hundreds of published sources, arranging them in thirty-six categories with descriptive rubrics such as "Fashion," "Boredom," "Dream City," "Photography," "Catacombs," "Advertising," "Prostitution," "Baudelaire," and "Theory of Progress." His central preoccupation is what he calls the commodification of things--a process in which he locates the decisive shift to the modern age.
The Arcades Project is Benjamin's effort to represent and to critique the bourgeois experience of nineteenth-century history, and, in so doing, to liberate the suppressed "true history" that underlay the ideological mask. In the bustling, cluttered arcades, street and interior merge and historical time is broken up into kaleidoscopic distractions and displays of ephemera. Here, at a distance from what is normally meant by "progress," Benjamin finds the lost time(s) embedded in the spaces of things.
1088 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
368 people are currently reading
9915 people want to read
About the author
Walter Benjamin
844 books2,056 followersWalter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, Jewish mysticism, and neo-Kantianism, Benjamin made influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders, though the friendship between Arendt and Benjamin outlasted her marriage to Anders. Both Arendt and Anders were students of Martin Heidegger, whom Benjamin considered a nemesis.
Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) and "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a literary critic included essays on Charles Baudelaire, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Nikolai Leskov, Marcel Proust, Robert Walser, Trauerspiel and translation theory. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher", while his younger colleagues Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno contend that he was "not a philosopher". Scholem remarked "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction". Benjamin himself considered his research to be theological, though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority.
In 1940, at the age of 48, Benjamin died by suicide at Portbou on the French Spanish border while attempting to escape the advance of the Third Reich. Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown.
Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) and "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a literary critic included essays on Charles Baudelaire, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Nikolai Leskov, Marcel Proust, Robert Walser, Trauerspiel and translation theory. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher", while his younger colleagues Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno contend that he was "not a philosopher". Scholem remarked "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction". Benjamin himself considered his research to be theological, though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority.
In 1940, at the age of 48, Benjamin died by suicide at Portbou on the French Spanish border while attempting to escape the advance of the Third Reich. Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown.
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September 1, 2019
I haven’t quite finished this. It is very long and I don’t know that it is the sort of book that you ever really finish. It is a book that is sort of written back-to-front. I mean, normally, books have a whole lot of joined up text and then, to support what is said in that text, there might be pages and pages of end-notes and references. This book does that in reverse - endless ‘notes’ and very little written text by the author. You need to know a couple of things before you start this, I think. The first is that Marxists up until and during the Second World War thought of montage as a highly effective way to come to understand and critique the world. I mean montage like in art - you know, where you get images from newspapers and so on and perhaps draw something in and around the images you have stuck to your art work. The point, I think, is to present a critique of society by the juxtaposition of these images - many of them commonplace. I really like this idea - since I think the world is made commonplace by the repetition of images in various stereotyped contexts - we tend not to view this as propaganda, we think of it as advertising, but it seems pretty much the same thing to me.
The premise of this book is that the development of the use of iron and glass in the 1820s as building materials (or there about) allowed for what was effectively a new type of architecture - and one that was unquestionably capitalist. That is, it allowed for the creation in Paris of arcades - basically, nineteenth century shopping malls. These were designed to be entire worlds in themselves. And the point of them was to create a world in which the commodities that capitalism must sell to sustain itself could be best displayed and therefore sold - but also within their creation of a new normal. So, this book, in a sense, is an exploration of this new, capitalist architecture. And he doesn’t hold back. He discusses in detail just about every imaginable detail of these new worlds. Well, except he sort of doesn’t at the same time. You see, for such a long book, little of it is actually written by Benjamin.
A very dear friend of mine had been an English teacher for a long time and she once told me that she suspected that many of the research papers and academic books she had read over the years have so many references that she basically doubted that anyone had ever read them all. Rather, they had worked out what they wanted to say and then perhaps grabbed some references from other books and other papers that mostly talked about the same stuff as they were wanting to talk about. This book is definitely not one of those. For the most part it is a montage of quotes and references and asides grouped according to topics that then go to make up a picture of the arcades. Except, for a lot of this book I didn’t feel I was learning really as much about the arcades as I was about Paris. This book is certainly a love song to Paris and a very large chunk of this is also an extended discussion of the life and work of Baudelaire. There must be 100 pages in the Baudelaire chapter alone and that is hardly the only time he is mentioned or discussed. There’s also a long discussion on flaneurs - basically, people (mostly men, since women doing this are treated as prostitutes) who sit and watch life go by.
I don’t know the poetry of Baudelaire, I don’t speak French, and I’ve never been to Paris. As such, a lot of this went completely over my head. I can see it is a remarkable piece of work, that it is likely to present endless insights that I’m not able to identify. I also really love the idea of presenting a work in this way - even if this might not have ultimately been what he had intended for his master work. Read one or other of the other reviews to this too, they will tell you the remarkable story of how this work came to be and why it was never completed and how it was saved from the Nazis. The point is to allow the reader to make connections and to come to an understanding that is not purely didactic, that isn’t purely what the author ‘told you’ - if that makes any sense. That said, the book often left me confused and a bit lost.
I need to mention one part of this that has really stayed with me. It is a story that Anatole France about been read a story at school when he was ten about a genie that gave a boy a ball of thread - the ball was the thread of his life - and the genie said that how he untangled the thread would decide how quickly his life progress. He could make it go faster or slower (or even stop entirely) depending on how fast he pulled on the thread. In the end, his entire life from this point lasts about 4 months before he dies of old age. As someone currently sitting on a plane in a cramped seat and with another 15 hours or so before I get to where I’m going, I have to say I’m pretty grateful I have never met that genie.
The premise of this book is that the development of the use of iron and glass in the 1820s as building materials (or there about) allowed for what was effectively a new type of architecture - and one that was unquestionably capitalist. That is, it allowed for the creation in Paris of arcades - basically, nineteenth century shopping malls. These were designed to be entire worlds in themselves. And the point of them was to create a world in which the commodities that capitalism must sell to sustain itself could be best displayed and therefore sold - but also within their creation of a new normal. So, this book, in a sense, is an exploration of this new, capitalist architecture. And he doesn’t hold back. He discusses in detail just about every imaginable detail of these new worlds. Well, except he sort of doesn’t at the same time. You see, for such a long book, little of it is actually written by Benjamin.
A very dear friend of mine had been an English teacher for a long time and she once told me that she suspected that many of the research papers and academic books she had read over the years have so many references that she basically doubted that anyone had ever read them all. Rather, they had worked out what they wanted to say and then perhaps grabbed some references from other books and other papers that mostly talked about the same stuff as they were wanting to talk about. This book is definitely not one of those. For the most part it is a montage of quotes and references and asides grouped according to topics that then go to make up a picture of the arcades. Except, for a lot of this book I didn’t feel I was learning really as much about the arcades as I was about Paris. This book is certainly a love song to Paris and a very large chunk of this is also an extended discussion of the life and work of Baudelaire. There must be 100 pages in the Baudelaire chapter alone and that is hardly the only time he is mentioned or discussed. There’s also a long discussion on flaneurs - basically, people (mostly men, since women doing this are treated as prostitutes) who sit and watch life go by.
I don’t know the poetry of Baudelaire, I don’t speak French, and I’ve never been to Paris. As such, a lot of this went completely over my head. I can see it is a remarkable piece of work, that it is likely to present endless insights that I’m not able to identify. I also really love the idea of presenting a work in this way - even if this might not have ultimately been what he had intended for his master work. Read one or other of the other reviews to this too, they will tell you the remarkable story of how this work came to be and why it was never completed and how it was saved from the Nazis. The point is to allow the reader to make connections and to come to an understanding that is not purely didactic, that isn’t purely what the author ‘told you’ - if that makes any sense. That said, the book often left me confused and a bit lost.
I need to mention one part of this that has really stayed with me. It is a story that Anatole France about been read a story at school when he was ten about a genie that gave a boy a ball of thread - the ball was the thread of his life - and the genie said that how he untangled the thread would decide how quickly his life progress. He could make it go faster or slower (or even stop entirely) depending on how fast he pulled on the thread. In the end, his entire life from this point lasts about 4 months before he dies of old age. As someone currently sitting on a plane in a cramped seat and with another 15 hours or so before I get to where I’m going, I have to say I’m pretty grateful I have never met that genie.
Want to read
March 1, 2008Two members of my family are currently obsessed with this book, so I think I'd better at least flip through it before I try to have dinner with both of them again.
Great story behind it, according to my dad: George Bataille had to stash this one in the medieval section of the Bibliothèque Nationale where he worked, when Benjamin fled the Nazis. Then, many many years later, way after that whole Nazi thing had blown over, a bunch of people were sitting around one day scratching their heads wondering what had ever happened to that crazy thing Benjamin had been working on back when the shit hit the fan, and Bataille said, "I have it!" And then the Germans spent about twenty years editing the hell out of it, as they are wont to do, and it wasn't translated into English until like the eighties or something, but now is readily available at every respectable bookseller in America.... Anyway, it looks difficult and it's way too long for me to take on right now, but I'm definitely planning to take a look at this thing before I have to share another meal with these lunatics.
Great story behind it, according to my dad: George Bataille had to stash this one in the medieval section of the Bibliothèque Nationale where he worked, when Benjamin fled the Nazis. Then, many many years later, way after that whole Nazi thing had blown over, a bunch of people were sitting around one day scratching their heads wondering what had ever happened to that crazy thing Benjamin had been working on back when the shit hit the fan, and Bataille said, "I have it!" And then the Germans spent about twenty years editing the hell out of it, as they are wont to do, and it wasn't translated into English until like the eighties or something, but now is readily available at every respectable bookseller in America.... Anyway, it looks difficult and it's way too long for me to take on right now, but I'm definitely planning to take a look at this thing before I have to share another meal with these lunatics.
January 13, 2024
The authentic concept of universal history is a messianic concept. Universal history, as it is understood today, is an affair of obscurantists.
Erudition is allowed freedom of movement. It blossoms unchecked until it halts, a nearly thousand page digression on history is arrested, silenced by treacherous currents uncharted by landlocked eyes.
It ostensibly is a cultural critique of arcades as a transition from shops to department stores. The were also iron and glass and offered an unprecedented interiority. Their celebration coincided with the advent of world exhibitions. All this is represented by mass means: advertising, gas lighting and the development of railroads. Balzac is the shining prince of this taxonomy. Fourier and Saint-Simon clog up the three quarter mark, which may reflect the influence of Adorno and Horkheimer. The disquisition on Hugo and Gautier is astonishing as are the treatment of the interrelation between fashion and boredom.
In 1839 it was considered elegant to take a tortoise out walking. This gives us an idea of the tempo of flânerie in the arcades.
The Arcades is the richest sort of book. Infinite, like Burton’s Anatomy or the stars themselves. Such was read over a week in New Belgrade when holidays and weather kept the situation indoors. There was a certain discipline in spending a slice of the day at the dining room table, book opened, allowing thoughts on Proust, barricades and a notion of literature as production to gestate and expand. That is time well spent.
Erudition is allowed freedom of movement. It blossoms unchecked until it halts, a nearly thousand page digression on history is arrested, silenced by treacherous currents uncharted by landlocked eyes.
It ostensibly is a cultural critique of arcades as a transition from shops to department stores. The were also iron and glass and offered an unprecedented interiority. Their celebration coincided with the advent of world exhibitions. All this is represented by mass means: advertising, gas lighting and the development of railroads. Balzac is the shining prince of this taxonomy. Fourier and Saint-Simon clog up the three quarter mark, which may reflect the influence of Adorno and Horkheimer. The disquisition on Hugo and Gautier is astonishing as are the treatment of the interrelation between fashion and boredom.
In 1839 it was considered elegant to take a tortoise out walking. This gives us an idea of the tempo of flânerie in the arcades.
The Arcades is the richest sort of book. Infinite, like Burton’s Anatomy or the stars themselves. Such was read over a week in New Belgrade when holidays and weather kept the situation indoors. There was a certain discipline in spending a slice of the day at the dining room table, book opened, allowing thoughts on Proust, barricades and a notion of literature as production to gestate and expand. That is time well spent.
June 19, 2020
pasajlar tamamlanmamış, tamamlanamamış bir kitap. walter benjamin üzerinde on üç yıl çalışsa da tamamlanmaya yaklaşmamış hatta. hem içeriği hem biçimi için çalışması sürerken, eseri, hayatının eseri, yol alırken hayatı son bulmuş.
tamamlanamayan, çok eksik olan bu eser "pasajlar" değil haliyle. elde sadece pasajlar projesinin malzemeleri var: tamamlanmış birkaç deneme, projeye dahil olmayacağı kesin olarak bilinmesine rağmen projeyi açıklayacak birkaç deneme, gerisi taslaklar, notlar, alıntılar. bu kitap haklı olarak "pasajlar projesi", "pasajlar çalışması" diye yayımlanmış belli başlı dillerde. daha da haklı olarak malzemenin olabildiğince geniş kısmını içine almış. bu kitap almanca aslında 1.380 sayfa, ingilizcede yaklaşık 1.100, italyancada 1.200...türkçede ise 296 sayfa. sevgili yayınevimiz "pasajlar" adında tereddüt etmediği gibi 1000 sayfa içeriği yok ettiğini belirtme gereği bile duymamamış.
pasajların türkçe basısında yok edilen 1.000 sayfasının bir kısmı notlardan, taslaklardan ibaret, büyük çoğunluğu ise walter benjamin'inin biriktirdiği alıntılar. yayınevimiz lütfedip taslaklardan birkaç sayfayı örnek mahiyetinde kitabın sonuna eklemiş, alıntılara ise hiç lüzum görmemiş. yayınevinin alıntıları kitaba dahil etmemesinin anlaşılabilir sebepleri olabilir diye düşünüyor insan ama pasajların tamamlandığında bir alıntılar kitabı olacağını biliyoruz. benjamin on üç yıl boyunca bine yakın kaynaktan alıntı toplamış bu proje için, dile kolay, bunu biliyoruz. yayınevimiz böyle bir içeriği yok saymış. kitabın başında almanca baskıyı yayına hazırlayan tiedemann'ın giriş yazısı var. alıntıları, taslakları, notları birlikte okuduğumuzda pasajlar projesini biraz olsun anlayabileceğimizi ya da hissedebileceğimizi biliyoruz o yazıdan. hissedemiyoruz, bin sayfa yok ortada, ama olsa hissedebileceğimizi biliyoruz.
bu 296 sayfalık kitap pasajlar değil, pasajlar projesi de değil sonuç olarak. içindeki yazıların yarısı metis'in 1993 tarihli son bakışta aşk seçkisinde var zaten. giriş yazısıyla beraber "19. yüzyılın başkenti paris" ve "paris pasajları" yazılarına ulaşabilenler için bu türkçe baskının hiçbir değeri yok. burada yayınevi eleştirisi yapmak anlamsız, farkındayım ama walter benjamin adı altında, pasajlar başlığında saygıyla verilecek sonsuz sayısız "yıldızın" zerresinin bu baskıyla ilgili olmadığını belirtme ihtiyacı hissettim.
tamamlanamayan, çok eksik olan bu eser "pasajlar" değil haliyle. elde sadece pasajlar projesinin malzemeleri var: tamamlanmış birkaç deneme, projeye dahil olmayacağı kesin olarak bilinmesine rağmen projeyi açıklayacak birkaç deneme, gerisi taslaklar, notlar, alıntılar. bu kitap haklı olarak "pasajlar projesi", "pasajlar çalışması" diye yayımlanmış belli başlı dillerde. daha da haklı olarak malzemenin olabildiğince geniş kısmını içine almış. bu kitap almanca aslında 1.380 sayfa, ingilizcede yaklaşık 1.100, italyancada 1.200...türkçede ise 296 sayfa. sevgili yayınevimiz "pasajlar" adında tereddüt etmediği gibi 1000 sayfa içeriği yok ettiğini belirtme gereği bile duymamamış.
pasajların türkçe basısında yok edilen 1.000 sayfasının bir kısmı notlardan, taslaklardan ibaret, büyük çoğunluğu ise walter benjamin'inin biriktirdiği alıntılar. yayınevimiz lütfedip taslaklardan birkaç sayfayı örnek mahiyetinde kitabın sonuna eklemiş, alıntılara ise hiç lüzum görmemiş. yayınevinin alıntıları kitaba dahil etmemesinin anlaşılabilir sebepleri olabilir diye düşünüyor insan ama pasajların tamamlandığında bir alıntılar kitabı olacağını biliyoruz. benjamin on üç yıl boyunca bine yakın kaynaktan alıntı toplamış bu proje için, dile kolay, bunu biliyoruz. yayınevimiz böyle bir içeriği yok saymış. kitabın başında almanca baskıyı yayına hazırlayan tiedemann'ın giriş yazısı var. alıntıları, taslakları, notları birlikte okuduğumuzda pasajlar projesini biraz olsun anlayabileceğimizi ya da hissedebileceğimizi biliyoruz o yazıdan. hissedemiyoruz, bin sayfa yok ortada, ama olsa hissedebileceğimizi biliyoruz.
bu 296 sayfalık kitap pasajlar değil, pasajlar projesi de değil sonuç olarak. içindeki yazıların yarısı metis'in 1993 tarihli son bakışta aşk seçkisinde var zaten. giriş yazısıyla beraber "19. yüzyılın başkenti paris" ve "paris pasajları" yazılarına ulaşabilenler için bu türkçe baskının hiçbir değeri yok. burada yayınevi eleştirisi yapmak anlamsız, farkındayım ama walter benjamin adı altında, pasajlar başlığında saygıyla verilecek sonsuz sayısız "yıldızın" zerresinin bu baskıyla ilgili olmadığını belirtme ihtiyacı hissettim.
October 11, 2022
The Arcades Project is a difficult work to review, so please bear with this inept student of history and philosophy as I struggle to compose my thoughts about this extensive literary montage.
Walter Benjamin never completed The Arcades Project (Passagen Werk in German), which he worked on from 1927 until his untimely death in 1940. He was 48 years old. The book remained in the form of meticulously gathered quotes and philosophical meanderings written on hundreds of note-cards. Prominent Benjamin scholar Rolf Tiedemann posits that The Arcades Project grew beyond Benjamin’s initial scope and was far from completion when he committed suicide in Spain via morphine overdose. As with all posthumous publications, I wonder how the author would feel knowing that his unfinished thoughts are on display for the world.
While unfinished, the scope of the project remains daunting and impressive. In the Passagen Werk, Benjamin seeks to capture the historical and cultural essence of Paris during the years 1830 – 1870, using the arcades as a frequent touchstone throughout. Prominent convolutes include the Arcades themselves (A), Iron Construction (F), Baudelaire (J), The Flaneur (M), and the Theory of Progress (N). Of course, any attempt to summarize The Arcades Project will fall flat, as this giant of historiography defies the literary schemata so often employed by the reading public.
Nonetheless, there are recurrences in the book that help create a foundation—to use Tiedemann’s metaphor as delineated in “Dialectics at a Standstill”—essential to understanding Benjamin’s magnum opus. Here are a few of the themes that stand out:
1. The idea of progress as espoused by culture at large is inane and nonexistent. See convolute N13,1:
2. There is a dialectic between present and past that is always occurring. Nothing is truly new, and elements of the past dominate the present.
3. This dialectic between present and past ought to be apprehended (the Now of Recognizability) and remembered. The consequence is an awakening from dream by the unconscious. See K1,3:
4. The collector annihilates the use value of whatever he collects (with a possible exception made for bibliophiles). Reference H1a,2:
5. Each age precipitates its end by dreaming of the age to come. By dreaming of the subsequent era, the current era awakes to find itself transformed.
Each of these themes is explored exhaustively within The Arcades Project and integrated with the arcades themselves. Of course, the arcades are far more than the amalgamation of iron and glass; rather, they embody an integral piece of cultural history that merges into the Now. While the electric lamp and wider streets that came to dominate Paris catalyzed the decay of the arcades, their influence remains in the present of Benjamin and the present of today.
Walter Benjamin never completed The Arcades Project (Passagen Werk in German), which he worked on from 1927 until his untimely death in 1940. He was 48 years old. The book remained in the form of meticulously gathered quotes and philosophical meanderings written on hundreds of note-cards. Prominent Benjamin scholar Rolf Tiedemann posits that The Arcades Project grew beyond Benjamin’s initial scope and was far from completion when he committed suicide in Spain via morphine overdose. As with all posthumous publications, I wonder how the author would feel knowing that his unfinished thoughts are on display for the world.
While unfinished, the scope of the project remains daunting and impressive. In the Passagen Werk, Benjamin seeks to capture the historical and cultural essence of Paris during the years 1830 – 1870, using the arcades as a frequent touchstone throughout. Prominent convolutes include the Arcades themselves (A), Iron Construction (F), Baudelaire (J), The Flaneur (M), and the Theory of Progress (N). Of course, any attempt to summarize The Arcades Project will fall flat, as this giant of historiography defies the literary schemata so often employed by the reading public.
Nonetheless, there are recurrences in the book that help create a foundation—to use Tiedemann’s metaphor as delineated in “Dialectics at a Standstill”—essential to understanding Benjamin’s magnum opus. Here are a few of the themes that stand out:
1. The idea of progress as espoused by culture at large is inane and nonexistent. See convolute N13,1:
The concept of progress had to run counter to the critical theory of history from the moment it ceased to be applied as a criterion to specific historical developments and instead was required to measure the span between a legendary inception and a legendary end of history. In other words: as soon as it becomes the signature of historical process as a whole, the concept of progress bespeaks an uncritical hypostatization rather than a critical interrogation. This latter may be recognized, in the concrete exposition of history, from the fact that it outlines regression at least as sharply as it brings any progress into view (478).
2. There is a dialectic between present and past that is always occurring. Nothing is truly new, and elements of the past dominate the present.
3. This dialectic between present and past ought to be apprehended (the Now of Recognizability) and remembered. The consequence is an awakening from dream by the unconscious. See K1,3:
The new, dialectical method of doing history presents itself as the art of experiencing the present as waking world, a world to which that dream we name the past refers in truth. To pass through and carry out what has been in remembering the dream!—Therefore: remembering and awaking are most intimately related. Awakening is namely the dialectical [ . . . ] turn of remembrance (389).
4. The collector annihilates the use value of whatever he collects (with a possible exception made for bibliophiles). Reference H1a,2:
What is decisive in collecting is that the object is detached from all its original functions in order to enter into the closest conceivable relation to things of the same kind. This relation is the diametric opposite of any utility, and falls into the peculiar category of completeness. What is this “completeness”? It is a grand attempt to overcome the wholly irrational character of the object’s mere presence at hand through its integration into a new, expressly devised historical system: the collection (pp. 204 – 205).
5. Each age precipitates its end by dreaming of the age to come. By dreaming of the subsequent era, the current era awakes to find itself transformed.
Each of these themes is explored exhaustively within The Arcades Project and integrated with the arcades themselves. Of course, the arcades are far more than the amalgamation of iron and glass; rather, they embody an integral piece of cultural history that merges into the Now. While the electric lamp and wider streets that came to dominate Paris catalyzed the decay of the arcades, their influence remains in the present of Benjamin and the present of today.
partial-credit
December 15, 2014I f**kin’ hate shopping malls.
I suppose, were I to have stuck it out, and had Benjamin stay’d on a little longer and gotten this thing wrap’d up, he may have assisted me somewhat in articulating exactly why I f**kin’ hate shopping malls so much. I can scarcely utilize them for their urinal=capacity ; just duck-in duck-out. But amid 200=odd pages of stuff about Baudelaire I just quit. Just walk’d off.
I don’t really do the nineteenth century. I don’t really do Paris. I don’t really even spend much time in France. Nor do I really give too many hoots about sociology unless it is worked into a universal, non=trivial kind of thing which I’m sure Benjamin would eventually have done. And I’m pretty sure that maybe something might have started to pop were I to get past this f**kin’ two hundred pages about Baudelaire, but I really just kind of doubt it.
Meanwhile, The Arcades Project offers the aspiring novelist, and by novelist one must mean the innovative experimental sui generis type who finds formal clues in non-fictive genre, a whole new world of formal possibilities for that Next Great Novel.
I suppose, were I to have stuck it out, and had Benjamin stay’d on a little longer and gotten this thing wrap’d up, he may have assisted me somewhat in articulating exactly why I f**kin’ hate shopping malls so much. I can scarcely utilize them for their urinal=capacity ; just duck-in duck-out. But amid 200=odd pages of stuff about Baudelaire I just quit. Just walk’d off.
I don’t really do the nineteenth century. I don’t really do Paris. I don’t really even spend much time in France. Nor do I really give too many hoots about sociology unless it is worked into a universal, non=trivial kind of thing which I’m sure Benjamin would eventually have done. And I’m pretty sure that maybe something might have started to pop were I to get past this f**kin’ two hundred pages about Baudelaire, but I really just kind of doubt it.
Meanwhile, The Arcades Project offers the aspiring novelist, and by novelist one must mean the innovative experimental sui generis type who finds formal clues in non-fictive genre, a whole new world of formal possibilities for that Next Great Novel.
June 1, 2024
در میان ترجمههای بنیامین این چند سال، اگر جزییات نسخهپردازیِ کتاب را در نظر نگیریم، این کتاب بهتر از بقیه بود. یعنی مترجم اولاً دغدغه داشته که بفهمد بنیامین چی خواسته بنویسد، چند ترجمهی انگلیسی را با هم بسنجد، جملات را بفهمد، آنچیزی را ترجمه کند که فهمیده، هر پانویسی هم لازم دانسته اضافه کرده. مقدمهی کتاب هم مدعایی ندارد، کوششیست برای طرح زمینهای در شکل کار و زمینهی این متنها که میخوانید. خلاصه که کتاب محترم و درستیست.
June 15, 2020
Frankfurt Okulu’nun en naif düşünürü, kültür tarihçisi Walter Benjamin’in kısacık olan yaşamı boyunca yazdığı ve tamamlanmamış olarak kalan pasajlar, döneminin kültür niteliği taşıyan her bir ayrıntısına değiniyor. Mimariden,edebiyata, sokak yaşamından, yeni kültürel icatların sosyal hayatı biçimlendirişine kadar akla gelebilecek her bir nüveyi kapsıyor. En önemsiz gibi görünen ayrıntıları bile belli bir bağlama yerleştirebilme, ayrıntılardan yola çıkarak belli bir dönemin genel görünümüne varabilme gibi özellikleri sayesinde 19yy Paris’ini harkûlade betimliyor. Ayrıntılarda gizli olan,mal ekonomisinin Paris pasajlarını bir fetiş haline getirdiğini, teknik ilerlemenin görünenin ardında doğrusal bir ilerlemenin aksine yeni bir sömürü mekanizmasının mihenk taşı durumuna gelmesini ince ince işliyor. Sinema, Fotoğraf ve dönemin tüm çoğaltılabilen sanat yapıtlarının savaşın hizmetine koşulduğunu da mimliyor. Kitabın en yarım kalan bölümü de Charles baudelaire ve şiiri üzerine olan bölümler.. Fakat bu bölümlerde bile Şairin kişiliği ve politik duruşu üzerine bir şeyler okuyor olduğunuzu düşünürken, şairin bir şiirindeki imgeden yola çıkıp Poe’nun yarım yüzyıl önce yazdığı bir hikayedeki dedektif kahramanın nasıl Paris’in 19. yy kentlisini müjdelediğini okurken buluyorsunuz kendinizi.. Benjamin yaşasaydı geride neler bırakacaktı kim bilir...
December 26, 2019
Öncelikle bu büyük yazın insanı, edebiyat eleştirmeni, filozof, deneme yazarı Walter Benjamin’in bu kitabını okumak isteyenlere önerilerilerimi sıralamak istiyorum.
1. Deneme türü sevmiyorsanız, özellikle roman ve öykü türünde okumaları yapıyorsanız bu kitabı listenizden çıkarın.
2. Kitaba başladıysanız kitabı hazırlayan Rolf Tiedemann’ın “Giriş” bölümünü hiç okumayın, hem ürkütücü, hem de kitabın içeriğine hiç katkısı olmayan ayıp kaçacak ama bir sürü bilgi çöplüğü sizi okumanın başında kitaptan soğutur.
3. Buna karşın mükemmel çevirisinin yanında Ahmet Cemal’in kitabın sonuna koyduğu “Açıklamalar”ı kitabı bitirdikten sonra okuyun, çok yararlı oluyor.
4. Kolayca okunan nefis bir usluba sahip olmasına rağmen “Pasajlar”da bölüm sonlarına numaralandırılarak konulan notlar okumayı zorlaştırmakta, ancak mutlaka bu notları o anda okuyun.
5. W. Benjamin alıntı yapmayı çok seviyor, bu ise bir çok kişi, bir çok isim (ki bunlar arasında edebiyat dünyasından tanıdık çok isim var) demek oluyor. Kitabı okurken yorulmak için bir neden daha size.
Şimdi kitap hakkındaki yorumuma geleyim: Alman Walter Benjamin bu yaşıma kadar okumayarak çok şey kaybetmiş olduğumu düşündüren bir yazar, düşünür, kültür insanı. Gerçi “Tek Yön” (aforizmalar ve özlü sözleri) ile “1900’lerin Başında Berlin’de Çocukluğum” (otobiyografi sayılabilir) adlı kitaplarını okudum ancak bunlar W. Benjamin’i tam olarak tanımaya yetmedi doğal olarak. Başyapıtı kabul edilen bu kitap farklı konularda (Baudelaire ile ilgili iki metin de dahil) 6 denemeden oluşuyor. Yazdıkları da kendi gibi flanörce (flaneur). Daldan dala atlıyor, geziyor, sekiyor, oturuyor, konular arasında flanör gibi dolaşıyor.
“Tarihsel materyalizm"i tanımlaması, aynalar yardımı ile içeride gizlenen bir cücenin kutudan iplerle bir kuklaya satranç hamleleri yaptırmasına benzeterek çarpıcı bir şekilde başladığı ilk bölümde diyalektik yöntemi kendine göre yorumlamış. Marksist düşüncenin bu kadar duygusal ve yumuşak, adeta bu öğretinin mekanik geleneğine karşı yazıldığını düşündürten okuduğum en en özgün metin budur diyebilirim.
XIX yüzyıl kültür tarihini Paris ve Baudelaire üzerinden ince detaylarla mükemmel anlatmış. Sanat kuramı hakkında, başta sinema olmak üzere yeni ve halen geçerli birçok tez ileri sürmüş, sanat ürünlerinin çoğaltılması veya fabrikasyon üretiminin yapılmasının bu sanat eserlerinin herkesin görebilmesini böylece sanatta eşitlikçi bir anlayış oluşmasını sağladığını vurgulamış.
Günümüzdeki AVM’lerin prototipi olan pasajları gelişmekte olan kapitalizm ile bağdaştırmış. Paris’in pasajlarını tarihi ve kültürel özellikleriyle anlatmış. Kısaca çok şey yazmış, zaten bu kitap anlatılmaz okunur.
Ve W. Benjamin’den çok etkilendiğim bir söz ile yorumumu sonlandırıyorum :
"her faşizm başarısızlığa uğramış bir devrimin kanıtıdır"
Walter Benjamin okumaya devam...
1. Deneme türü sevmiyorsanız, özellikle roman ve öykü türünde okumaları yapıyorsanız bu kitabı listenizden çıkarın.
2. Kitaba başladıysanız kitabı hazırlayan Rolf Tiedemann’ın “Giriş” bölümünü hiç okumayın, hem ürkütücü, hem de kitabın içeriğine hiç katkısı olmayan ayıp kaçacak ama bir sürü bilgi çöplüğü sizi okumanın başında kitaptan soğutur.
3. Buna karşın mükemmel çevirisinin yanında Ahmet Cemal’in kitabın sonuna koyduğu “Açıklamalar”ı kitabı bitirdikten sonra okuyun, çok yararlı oluyor.
4. Kolayca okunan nefis bir usluba sahip olmasına rağmen “Pasajlar”da bölüm sonlarına numaralandırılarak konulan notlar okumayı zorlaştırmakta, ancak mutlaka bu notları o anda okuyun.
5. W. Benjamin alıntı yapmayı çok seviyor, bu ise bir çok kişi, bir çok isim (ki bunlar arasında edebiyat dünyasından tanıdık çok isim var) demek oluyor. Kitabı okurken yorulmak için bir neden daha size.
Şimdi kitap hakkındaki yorumuma geleyim: Alman Walter Benjamin bu yaşıma kadar okumayarak çok şey kaybetmiş olduğumu düşündüren bir yazar, düşünür, kültür insanı. Gerçi “Tek Yön” (aforizmalar ve özlü sözleri) ile “1900’lerin Başında Berlin’de Çocukluğum” (otobiyografi sayılabilir) adlı kitaplarını okudum ancak bunlar W. Benjamin’i tam olarak tanımaya yetmedi doğal olarak. Başyapıtı kabul edilen bu kitap farklı konularda (Baudelaire ile ilgili iki metin de dahil) 6 denemeden oluşuyor. Yazdıkları da kendi gibi flanörce (flaneur). Daldan dala atlıyor, geziyor, sekiyor, oturuyor, konular arasında flanör gibi dolaşıyor.
“Tarihsel materyalizm"i tanımlaması, aynalar yardımı ile içeride gizlenen bir cücenin kutudan iplerle bir kuklaya satranç hamleleri yaptırmasına benzeterek çarpıcı bir şekilde başladığı ilk bölümde diyalektik yöntemi kendine göre yorumlamış. Marksist düşüncenin bu kadar duygusal ve yumuşak, adeta bu öğretinin mekanik geleneğine karşı yazıldığını düşündürten okuduğum en en özgün metin budur diyebilirim.
XIX yüzyıl kültür tarihini Paris ve Baudelaire üzerinden ince detaylarla mükemmel anlatmış. Sanat kuramı hakkında, başta sinema olmak üzere yeni ve halen geçerli birçok tez ileri sürmüş, sanat ürünlerinin çoğaltılması veya fabrikasyon üretiminin yapılmasının bu sanat eserlerinin herkesin görebilmesini böylece sanatta eşitlikçi bir anlayış oluşmasını sağladığını vurgulamış.
Günümüzdeki AVM’lerin prototipi olan pasajları gelişmekte olan kapitalizm ile bağdaştırmış. Paris’in pasajlarını tarihi ve kültürel özellikleriyle anlatmış. Kısaca çok şey yazmış, zaten bu kitap anlatılmaz okunur.
Ve W. Benjamin’den çok etkilendiğim bir söz ile yorumumu sonlandırıyorum :
"her faşizm başarısızlığa uğramış bir devrimin kanıtıdır"
Walter Benjamin okumaya devam...
May 15, 2007
The Arcades Project is sprawling, unclassifiable....oneiric.
Posing as an historical analysis of the Parisian arcades--the outdoor equivalent of (and precursors to) shopping malls--this book is also (among other things) a cultural history of the 19th century, an intellectual biography of Baudelaire, an essay on the philosophy of history, a meditation on industrialization, a portrait of the city of Paris, one of the best works of criticism on literary modernism, a reflection on the textual styles of the Kabbalah, and also an original contribution to both psychoanalysis and Marxism.
It is also, as Benjamin himself notes, an "awakening" from the dream of the 19th century.
This book is almost impossible to read straight through, but carefully directed perusal bears great rewards. Convolutes N and K are particularly good.
Posing as an historical analysis of the Parisian arcades--the outdoor equivalent of (and precursors to) shopping malls--this book is also (among other things) a cultural history of the 19th century, an intellectual biography of Baudelaire, an essay on the philosophy of history, a meditation on industrialization, a portrait of the city of Paris, one of the best works of criticism on literary modernism, a reflection on the textual styles of the Kabbalah, and also an original contribution to both psychoanalysis and Marxism.
It is also, as Benjamin himself notes, an "awakening" from the dream of the 19th century.
This book is almost impossible to read straight through, but carefully directed perusal bears great rewards. Convolutes N and K are particularly good.
Want to read
September 24, 2008I've been reading this book forever...
Read
October 27, 2015Where to start with this behemoth?
First, let it be said that Benjamin was one of the 20th Century's most original minds, and I've been a big fan for years. My thesis advisor in college always tried to push this book off on me, but now that I've read it, I don't know how she could have expected me to use it academically. These little fragments, a great many of them quotes, are almost like a mosaic that hasn't quite come together, the grand, final, unfinished project of Benjamin's life. I doubt many people would want to pick up something like this, but I do.
First, let it be said that Benjamin was one of the 20th Century's most original minds, and I've been a big fan for years. My thesis advisor in college always tried to push this book off on me, but now that I've read it, I don't know how she could have expected me to use it academically. These little fragments, a great many of them quotes, are almost like a mosaic that hasn't quite come together, the grand, final, unfinished project of Benjamin's life. I doubt many people would want to pick up something like this, but I do.
August 27, 2016
I feel like I just speed read the Necronomicon.
December 22, 2019
You could not say this work of scholarship is deeper than it is wide, nor could you say it is wider than it is deep. It is DEEP and WIDE. It is definitely the most ambitious thing I've ever encountered. Incomplete because Benjamin did not live long enough to finish it. In fact, the story of what happened to the manuscript at the end of his life is included in the volume, and it moved me to tears. The late 30's and early 40's were desperate times.
This book covers everything from Proust and Baudelaire to the economics and politics of 19th century France. It aims to explain every day life in the 19th Century, both the personal and the political. Benjamin was a collector, and here is his greatest collection, quotations and passages from the time period of his study and later scholars that sheds brilliant light on his subject.
One of my Top 5 books ever.
This book covers everything from Proust and Baudelaire to the economics and politics of 19th century France. It aims to explain every day life in the 19th Century, both the personal and the political. Benjamin was a collector, and here is his greatest collection, quotations and passages from the time period of his study and later scholars that sheds brilliant light on his subject.
One of my Top 5 books ever.
November 5, 2009
This is the kind of book you are always currently reading, because this is the kind of book that is almost impossible to read entirely, and once you've read it you need to start reading again. Fragmented and brilliant, sometimes confusing but always worthwhile, this book will come back to you again and again. It's supposedly a history of bourgeois Paris in the 1800s, but really it's a history of people, of culture and consumerism, of replication and lights, of wandering the city and modernity and why we are now what we are now because of how they were back then.
November 1, 2017
"Kitleler, kendilerini oyalayacak bir şeyler ararlar, oysa sanat, izleyicisinden kendini toplayıp yoğunlaştırmasını ister."
July 22, 2015
I don't know if I'll read a book sadder than this.
July 14, 2025
In an almost hyper-textual fashion, The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin is a set of dialogical discourses which at times seem to be at cross-purposes. But the overall effect is to establish a credible interweaving of narratives for the establishment of Paris as the prime site in the cultural and historical center of the modern world. Benjamin does this through a number of ways, including the use of what Marx would call 'the theological niceties of the commodity'. The city features workers as commodities in the process of production, and the example he uses shows them as signs of their own exploitation, while the collector delights in evoking a world wherein things are freed from the drudgery of being useful. This is what Benjamin highlighted when he remarked on the collecting mania, which he himself suffered from, as per his book collection, which he says is a notable feature of the modern world. In answer to his own question, Benjamin says, what is this but an affection for the empathy that the people who, as the 'consumers' - the new sociological category that modern society turns people into - augment into a new psychological feature in preparation for developing an empathy with exchange value, which the entry into modern economic conditions will make necessary.
The real goal of the modern development of the city as a modern landmark of power, in the case of Haussmann's changes to Paris, was to re-make the city so that the erection of barricades that, as a method of control, would be an impossibility. So, if, by widening the streets so that erection of barricades would be impossible, then new streets would be created which will connect the barracks in straight lines with worker's districts.
1. Large-scale infrastructure projects take place in both cities, separated a hundred or so years apart.
Paris (19th century): Baron Haussmann's renovation of Paris involved extensive demolition and reconstruction, creating the wide boulevards, parks, and sewer systems.
New York City (2025): The city is undertaking numerous projects, including:
Hudson Yards: A mixed-use development built over rail infrastructure, featuring skyscrapers, retail spaces, and public plazas.
270 Park Avenue: A skyscraper run entirely on hydroelectric energy.
Potential future projects: Discussions are ongoing about combating rising sea levels with ambitious land reclamation projects like "New Manhattan," which would provide new housing and expand the city's borders.
2. Focus on public spaces
Paris (19th century): Haussmann's renovations included creating new parks and public squares, improving the city's aesthetics and providing recreation spaces.
New York City (2025): The city is working on transforming its urban landscape to prioritize pedestrians and public spaces, with initiatives like:
High Line: An example of converting an elevated railway into a popular public park.
Converting car space to public space: Discussions are underway to reclaim street space currently dominated by cars for wider sidewalks, bike lanes, and green areas.
3. Addressing social and environmental challenges
Paris (19th century): Haussmann's reforms aimed to improve sanitation and living conditions for the working class, addressing issues like overcrowding and poor infrastructure. are underway to reclaim street space currently dominated by cars for wider sidewalks, bike lanes, and green areas.
3. Addressing social and environmental challenges
Paris (19th century): Haussmann's reforms aimed to improve sanitation and living conditions for the working class, addressing issues like overcrowding and poor infrastructure.
New York City (2025): The city faces challenges, including: an affordability crisis: Housing costs are a major concern for both white and non-white residents. Public safety: Concerns about crime rates and police accountability persist, particularly in marginalized communities. Environmental concerns: Efforts are underway to reduce carbon emissions and address the impacts of climate change, according to NYC.gov.
In conclusion, while the specific context of modernization differs, New York City in 2025 demonstrates a similar focus on large-scale urban planning, public space enhancement, and tackling pressing social and environmental issues, much like Paris did during its 19th-century transformation.
Thus, the winning of the Democratic primary by Zohran Mamdani, who seeks to freeze rent increases so as to make New York City a young person's city once again, right-wing investors like Jim Cramer seeks to excoriate Mamdani's vision for NYC into a nightmare of the city as a militarized zone of enclosure, with high taxes on the millionaire and billionaire class, posing him as a return of socialist class-warriors like Louis August Blanqui. But is that really the case?
Louis Auguste Blanqui and Zohran Mamdani represent distinct approaches to achieving their political goals, despite both being associated with socialist ideals.
Blanqui's revolutionary approach
Blanqui, a 19th-century French revolutionary, believed in seizing power through a highly organized, secretive conspiracy led by a small, dedicated group of revolutionaries. This strategy is often described as "putschism" or a coup d'état. He advocated for a temporary dictatorship to disarm the bourgeoisie, redistribute wealth, and educate the people before establishing a communist society. Blanqui was a man of action who prioritized the revolution itself over detailing the future socialist society. He believed in the necessity of armed struggle and that the time for revolution was always ripe.
Mamdani's democratic socialist perspective is quite different, it seems to me. Mamdani identifies as a democratic socialist, a philosophy that aims for social change through democratic processes and institutions. He advocates for policies like freezing rent, free public transportation, city-owned grocery stores, universal childcare, and higher taxes on the wealthy, according to The Washington Post. His approach focuses on expanding public services and reducing inequality within a mixed-market economy, rather than completely overturning fundamental capitalist structures or eliminating private property. Mamdani emphasizes engaging a broad electorate and using tools like social media to reach voters, especially younger and progressive demographics. He seeks to achieve his goals through electoral victories and policy implementation, as opposed to armed uprising.
There are some key differences between a Blanqui and a Mamdani. In particular, their means of achieving change are considerably different: Blanqui favored armed seizure of power through an elite conspiracy, while Mamdani seeks change through democratic elections and legislative action. Blanqui did not believe in popular movements, while Mamdani's success has been attributed to mobilizing a large base of supporters. Blanqui was primarily focused on the act of revolution, while Mamdani is focused on implementing specific policies to address affordability and inequality within a democratic framework. In essence, while both Blanqui and Mamdani share a desire for a more egalitarian society, their approaches to achieving that goal diverge significantly, with Blanqui advocating for revolutionary seizure of power and Mamdani for democratic socialist reforms within the existing system.
It seems to me that the question of the moment, and this is what accounts for the differences between these two revolutionary politicians, what are the great technological revolutions for, if not to make the aspirations of the proletariat, in collaboration with the bourgeoisie, a social possibility? Benjamin asks, like the Democratic party of New York is asking, what is the task of the proletarian revolution, if not a better structure for its population? The answer the voters called for is one that asks, if free life in the city is not structured by personal production, but pure consumption is always a qualitative element of the class struggle, how can New York City become a better and fully engaged city?
The world is dominated by the phantasmagoria of modernity, that in the end reveals that all novelty is under the threat of damnation, says Benjamin. As I see it, it stands as an existing reality for the New York of current times, as well as in Benjamin's Paris, modernity is an illusion of the permanent of the eternal return of the communitarian aspects of city-life revolving around the archetypes of the magazines (the French word for 'stores') numbering the authorities looking forward to regular city society, society is under the threat of damnation, the weak point of the changing environment. Whether we live in the New York of 2025 or Paris 1925, these are cities of consumers who adhere to a mythology handed down in the form of luxury goods, where the young women who, dressed to the height of fashion, you've taken to shop in the city center become as if they emerged as a living portrait by John Singer Sargent. Project for a thesis: the influence of commercial affairs on Rimbaud's poetry should be investigated to determine how the city becomes a partner to the systematic derangement of the senses.
While a direct comparison is difficult due to different historical contexts, New York City in 2025 shares some similarities in its modernization efforts with 19th-century Paris, particularly in areas like urban planning and development, according to NYC EDC, and several popular YoutTube videos.
A remaining question: What are the two components of power-relations of city life but traffic and trade? Humanity recognizes itself in the mass-man as simply the consumer, with the strategies befitting a desire for high turnovers and high profits, as well as the high rate of margin that is better for stories on Fifth Avenue.
Soon to emerge from the newly industrialized Paris was the straight commission-based salesman, who as an employee was no longer someone to be looked after and nurtured into life, maintained and looked after as a parent would a child, but as a mere business expenses which, as a harvester of the residuum of capital, but like other forms of business expenses, comes of resemble the only motive for business, who only brokers engagement that is subservient to the profit-motive, which seals the private disengagement between private lifestyle with the public passion of spectacular ownership.
And so goes on to the invention of new velocities in the spirit of Play, the invention of movement, two carousels were developed to exemplify the great adventure that was to be life in the big city where the great adventure was to be provided by new methods of transportation, which deposit you the beginning of your journey when and no matter how ardently you want to reach the final destination, this process where life itself is resembles the process of commodification, is what the new city-world, where your life can be taken in an instant, simply be stepping momentarily off the sidewalk, is a new political world where life is wrecked and ravaged by cancerous growths.
In the city of Benjamin's Paris, women become the most staunchly vocal adherents of fashion because of the weakness of their social position, while the men's attire speaks to the disadvantage and relative cultural poverty of the imagination of the city-bred lifestyle of the vulgar illiteracy of the businessman and his world, if he pays attention to fashion at all, it is as an area that speaks to his sublimation of his desire for the reincarnation of his sex power and as an escape from impotency. Not seldom does the world of sex intrude upon the inorganic nature of the environment, where hair, normally indicative of that enclosure of the sex-parts, but instead as an affirmation with the swelling breasts and the pornographic shock of flesh exposed and revealing the fashion of the universe as only another medium for matter felt deeply.
NYC is an artificially intelligent city structured along the lines of Blanqui's politics, the tactics of silence in an unfamiliar house, collides with Blanqui and Mamdani (final statement) Blanqui is always the external statement of unconscious events, while Mamdani could potentially stifle new development with his suggests that replacing market-driven innovation with a more centralized, potentially "machine-guided bureaucracy. While he has also been a key advocate for green policies and efforts to keep energy bills low, and these priorities could potentially align with responsible and sustainable AI development, ultimately, Zohran Mamdani's actual role in shaping New York City's AI future will depend on how he navigates the city's existing initiatives, balances competing priorities, and engages with the technology sector and its stakeholders.
While it's not becoming a literal "artificial intelligence city" in the sense of replacing humans with robots, New York City is actively working to become a global leader in the application of AI. The city is implementing strategies to foster AI innovation, promote its use across various sectors, and address potential challenges like job displacement and ethical concerns. In terms of strategic Initiatives, New York City has released a comprehensive AI strategy and action plan, focusing on areas like AI adoption, workforce development, and ethical considerations. In terms of economic growth, the city aims to leverage AI to drive economic growth, create jobs, and enhance competitiveness across industries like finance, healthcare, and professional services. In terms of its status as an AI nexus, a $3 million project called NYC AI Nexus is being developed to connect startups and businesses with AI solutions, fostering innovation and collaboration. The city has partnered with organizations like OpenAI to support various AI initiatives and programs. The city recognizes potential risks associated with AI, such as job displacement, and is working to mitigate these through workforce training and ethical guidelines. New York City is actively engaging with residents and stakeholders to ensure AI is used responsibly and for the benefit of all New Yorkers. A public-private consortium called Empire AI is being established to advance AI research for the public good, fostering collaboration among universities and other partners.
As Walter Benjamin said, boredom is the trace of the history of the subject painting of life to be transformed and sublimated into art, the waiting period and holding pattern representing the military countdown until mission go is confirmed. Boredom in the city is the experience that is derived from the inevitable let down that accompanies the failure of the city's promise to deliver all of its secrets one can obtain from street life, but the final unstated secret is that there are some things people are fundamentally unfit to realize if he is to survive as a social being. As we learned from reading Friedrich Nietzsche, it is a mistake to attribute any goal or end-direction to existence and postmodernism is the mass-force realization of this fact, making it the equivalent statement that society has no goal or final destination world striving for. Boredom in the Paris of over a hundred years ago is not like the boredom found in New York of 2025. Put more succinctly, in essence, New York City is strategically positioning itself to be a hub for applied AI, emphasizing its potential to drive economic growth and innovation while also addressing the associated challenges and ensuring equitable access to the benefits of AI. Three stars.
The real goal of the modern development of the city as a modern landmark of power, in the case of Haussmann's changes to Paris, was to re-make the city so that the erection of barricades that, as a method of control, would be an impossibility. So, if, by widening the streets so that erection of barricades would be impossible, then new streets would be created which will connect the barracks in straight lines with worker's districts.
1. Large-scale infrastructure projects take place in both cities, separated a hundred or so years apart.
Paris (19th century): Baron Haussmann's renovation of Paris involved extensive demolition and reconstruction, creating the wide boulevards, parks, and sewer systems.
New York City (2025): The city is undertaking numerous projects, including:
Hudson Yards: A mixed-use development built over rail infrastructure, featuring skyscrapers, retail spaces, and public plazas.
270 Park Avenue: A skyscraper run entirely on hydroelectric energy.
Potential future projects: Discussions are ongoing about combating rising sea levels with ambitious land reclamation projects like "New Manhattan," which would provide new housing and expand the city's borders.
2. Focus on public spaces
Paris (19th century): Haussmann's renovations included creating new parks and public squares, improving the city's aesthetics and providing recreation spaces.
New York City (2025): The city is working on transforming its urban landscape to prioritize pedestrians and public spaces, with initiatives like:
High Line: An example of converting an elevated railway into a popular public park.
Converting car space to public space: Discussions are underway to reclaim street space currently dominated by cars for wider sidewalks, bike lanes, and green areas.
3. Addressing social and environmental challenges
Paris (19th century): Haussmann's reforms aimed to improve sanitation and living conditions for the working class, addressing issues like overcrowding and poor infrastructure. are underway to reclaim street space currently dominated by cars for wider sidewalks, bike lanes, and green areas.
3. Addressing social and environmental challenges
Paris (19th century): Haussmann's reforms aimed to improve sanitation and living conditions for the working class, addressing issues like overcrowding and poor infrastructure.
New York City (2025): The city faces challenges, including: an affordability crisis: Housing costs are a major concern for both white and non-white residents. Public safety: Concerns about crime rates and police accountability persist, particularly in marginalized communities. Environmental concerns: Efforts are underway to reduce carbon emissions and address the impacts of climate change, according to NYC.gov.
In conclusion, while the specific context of modernization differs, New York City in 2025 demonstrates a similar focus on large-scale urban planning, public space enhancement, and tackling pressing social and environmental issues, much like Paris did during its 19th-century transformation.
Thus, the winning of the Democratic primary by Zohran Mamdani, who seeks to freeze rent increases so as to make New York City a young person's city once again, right-wing investors like Jim Cramer seeks to excoriate Mamdani's vision for NYC into a nightmare of the city as a militarized zone of enclosure, with high taxes on the millionaire and billionaire class, posing him as a return of socialist class-warriors like Louis August Blanqui. But is that really the case?
Louis Auguste Blanqui and Zohran Mamdani represent distinct approaches to achieving their political goals, despite both being associated with socialist ideals.
Blanqui's revolutionary approach
Blanqui, a 19th-century French revolutionary, believed in seizing power through a highly organized, secretive conspiracy led by a small, dedicated group of revolutionaries. This strategy is often described as "putschism" or a coup d'état. He advocated for a temporary dictatorship to disarm the bourgeoisie, redistribute wealth, and educate the people before establishing a communist society. Blanqui was a man of action who prioritized the revolution itself over detailing the future socialist society. He believed in the necessity of armed struggle and that the time for revolution was always ripe.
Mamdani's democratic socialist perspective is quite different, it seems to me. Mamdani identifies as a democratic socialist, a philosophy that aims for social change through democratic processes and institutions. He advocates for policies like freezing rent, free public transportation, city-owned grocery stores, universal childcare, and higher taxes on the wealthy, according to The Washington Post. His approach focuses on expanding public services and reducing inequality within a mixed-market economy, rather than completely overturning fundamental capitalist structures or eliminating private property. Mamdani emphasizes engaging a broad electorate and using tools like social media to reach voters, especially younger and progressive demographics. He seeks to achieve his goals through electoral victories and policy implementation, as opposed to armed uprising.
There are some key differences between a Blanqui and a Mamdani. In particular, their means of achieving change are considerably different: Blanqui favored armed seizure of power through an elite conspiracy, while Mamdani seeks change through democratic elections and legislative action. Blanqui did not believe in popular movements, while Mamdani's success has been attributed to mobilizing a large base of supporters. Blanqui was primarily focused on the act of revolution, while Mamdani is focused on implementing specific policies to address affordability and inequality within a democratic framework. In essence, while both Blanqui and Mamdani share a desire for a more egalitarian society, their approaches to achieving that goal diverge significantly, with Blanqui advocating for revolutionary seizure of power and Mamdani for democratic socialist reforms within the existing system.
It seems to me that the question of the moment, and this is what accounts for the differences between these two revolutionary politicians, what are the great technological revolutions for, if not to make the aspirations of the proletariat, in collaboration with the bourgeoisie, a social possibility? Benjamin asks, like the Democratic party of New York is asking, what is the task of the proletarian revolution, if not a better structure for its population? The answer the voters called for is one that asks, if free life in the city is not structured by personal production, but pure consumption is always a qualitative element of the class struggle, how can New York City become a better and fully engaged city?
The world is dominated by the phantasmagoria of modernity, that in the end reveals that all novelty is under the threat of damnation, says Benjamin. As I see it, it stands as an existing reality for the New York of current times, as well as in Benjamin's Paris, modernity is an illusion of the permanent of the eternal return of the communitarian aspects of city-life revolving around the archetypes of the magazines (the French word for 'stores') numbering the authorities looking forward to regular city society, society is under the threat of damnation, the weak point of the changing environment. Whether we live in the New York of 2025 or Paris 1925, these are cities of consumers who adhere to a mythology handed down in the form of luxury goods, where the young women who, dressed to the height of fashion, you've taken to shop in the city center become as if they emerged as a living portrait by John Singer Sargent. Project for a thesis: the influence of commercial affairs on Rimbaud's poetry should be investigated to determine how the city becomes a partner to the systematic derangement of the senses.
While a direct comparison is difficult due to different historical contexts, New York City in 2025 shares some similarities in its modernization efforts with 19th-century Paris, particularly in areas like urban planning and development, according to NYC EDC, and several popular YoutTube videos.
A remaining question: What are the two components of power-relations of city life but traffic and trade? Humanity recognizes itself in the mass-man as simply the consumer, with the strategies befitting a desire for high turnovers and high profits, as well as the high rate of margin that is better for stories on Fifth Avenue.
Soon to emerge from the newly industrialized Paris was the straight commission-based salesman, who as an employee was no longer someone to be looked after and nurtured into life, maintained and looked after as a parent would a child, but as a mere business expenses which, as a harvester of the residuum of capital, but like other forms of business expenses, comes of resemble the only motive for business, who only brokers engagement that is subservient to the profit-motive, which seals the private disengagement between private lifestyle with the public passion of spectacular ownership.
And so goes on to the invention of new velocities in the spirit of Play, the invention of movement, two carousels were developed to exemplify the great adventure that was to be life in the big city where the great adventure was to be provided by new methods of transportation, which deposit you the beginning of your journey when and no matter how ardently you want to reach the final destination, this process where life itself is resembles the process of commodification, is what the new city-world, where your life can be taken in an instant, simply be stepping momentarily off the sidewalk, is a new political world where life is wrecked and ravaged by cancerous growths.
In the city of Benjamin's Paris, women become the most staunchly vocal adherents of fashion because of the weakness of their social position, while the men's attire speaks to the disadvantage and relative cultural poverty of the imagination of the city-bred lifestyle of the vulgar illiteracy of the businessman and his world, if he pays attention to fashion at all, it is as an area that speaks to his sublimation of his desire for the reincarnation of his sex power and as an escape from impotency. Not seldom does the world of sex intrude upon the inorganic nature of the environment, where hair, normally indicative of that enclosure of the sex-parts, but instead as an affirmation with the swelling breasts and the pornographic shock of flesh exposed and revealing the fashion of the universe as only another medium for matter felt deeply.
NYC is an artificially intelligent city structured along the lines of Blanqui's politics, the tactics of silence in an unfamiliar house, collides with Blanqui and Mamdani (final statement) Blanqui is always the external statement of unconscious events, while Mamdani could potentially stifle new development with his suggests that replacing market-driven innovation with a more centralized, potentially "machine-guided bureaucracy. While he has also been a key advocate for green policies and efforts to keep energy bills low, and these priorities could potentially align with responsible and sustainable AI development, ultimately, Zohran Mamdani's actual role in shaping New York City's AI future will depend on how he navigates the city's existing initiatives, balances competing priorities, and engages with the technology sector and its stakeholders.
While it's not becoming a literal "artificial intelligence city" in the sense of replacing humans with robots, New York City is actively working to become a global leader in the application of AI. The city is implementing strategies to foster AI innovation, promote its use across various sectors, and address potential challenges like job displacement and ethical concerns. In terms of strategic Initiatives, New York City has released a comprehensive AI strategy and action plan, focusing on areas like AI adoption, workforce development, and ethical considerations. In terms of economic growth, the city aims to leverage AI to drive economic growth, create jobs, and enhance competitiveness across industries like finance, healthcare, and professional services. In terms of its status as an AI nexus, a $3 million project called NYC AI Nexus is being developed to connect startups and businesses with AI solutions, fostering innovation and collaboration. The city has partnered with organizations like OpenAI to support various AI initiatives and programs. The city recognizes potential risks associated with AI, such as job displacement, and is working to mitigate these through workforce training and ethical guidelines. New York City is actively engaging with residents and stakeholders to ensure AI is used responsibly and for the benefit of all New Yorkers. A public-private consortium called Empire AI is being established to advance AI research for the public good, fostering collaboration among universities and other partners.
As Walter Benjamin said, boredom is the trace of the history of the subject painting of life to be transformed and sublimated into art, the waiting period and holding pattern representing the military countdown until mission go is confirmed. Boredom in the city is the experience that is derived from the inevitable let down that accompanies the failure of the city's promise to deliver all of its secrets one can obtain from street life, but the final unstated secret is that there are some things people are fundamentally unfit to realize if he is to survive as a social being. As we learned from reading Friedrich Nietzsche, it is a mistake to attribute any goal or end-direction to existence and postmodernism is the mass-force realization of this fact, making it the equivalent statement that society has no goal or final destination world striving for. Boredom in the Paris of over a hundred years ago is not like the boredom found in New York of 2025. Put more succinctly, in essence, New York City is strategically positioning itself to be a hub for applied AI, emphasizing its potential to drive economic growth and innovation while also addressing the associated challenges and ensuring equitable access to the benefits of AI. Three stars.
September 19, 2019
I go through this book now and then with no purpose in mind. The raw materials of a book, Benjamin planned to write, are on offer as the raw materials for others to think on. And that's all I do with it. I read, I sit, I think of Arcades. Anyone who lives in Melbourne could walk into Howey Place in the city and look up at the covered arcade and think what it meant to have that glass and steel roof above your head when shopping.
June 27, 2024
ترجمهی محمد حیاتی را خواندم که بوی کتابسازی میداد.
کتاب از یک مقالهی مترجم، دو مقالهی بنیامین از چکیدهی پروژهی پاساژها و سه تومار تشکیل شده. دو مقالهی بنیامین تقریبن یکی اند. همان جملهها و همان تیترها. نمی دانم مترجم چرا وقت و پول خواننده را هدر داده.
" رد پاهای نیمهپنهان و گوناگون زندگی روزمرهی " امر جمعی"، موضوع مطالعهی ماتریالیستی تاریخی پروژهی پاساژها را تشکیل میدهند و روشهای بررسی بنیامین هم در این جا به همان اندازه بدعتآمیز و نامتعارفاند و از این رو بیشتر به روشهای کلکسیونر آثار قدیمی قرن نوزدهم، و همینطور کهنهجمعکن قرن نوزدهم شبیه اند تا روشهای مورخ علمی."
موقع خواندن تومارهای مربوط خیابانها و آینههای پاریس مثل این است که با بنیامین در پاریس قدم میزنی و بنیامین اشارهای به خیابانی یا جایی میکند زیر لب چیزی زمزمه میکند یا نقل قولی میگوید و تو باید دنبالهی فکرش را پی بگیری.
کتاب از یک مقالهی مترجم، دو مقالهی بنیامین از چکیدهی پروژهی پاساژها و سه تومار تشکیل شده. دو مقالهی بنیامین تقریبن یکی اند. همان جملهها و همان تیترها. نمی دانم مترجم چرا وقت و پول خواننده را هدر داده.
" رد پاهای نیمهپنهان و گوناگون زندگی روزمرهی " امر جمعی"، موضوع مطالعهی ماتریالیستی تاریخی پروژهی پاساژها را تشکیل میدهند و روشهای بررسی بنیامین هم در این جا به همان اندازه بدعتآمیز و نامتعارفاند و از این رو بیشتر به روشهای کلکسیونر آثار قدیمی قرن نوزدهم، و همینطور کهنهجمعکن قرن نوزدهم شبیه اند تا روشهای مورخ علمی."
موقع خواندن تومارهای مربوط خیابانها و آینههای پاریس مثل این است که با بنیامین در پاریس قدم میزنی و بنیامین اشارهای به خیابانی یا جایی میکند زیر لب چیزی زمزمه میکند یا نقل قولی میگوید و تو باید دنبالهی فکرش را پی بگیری.
September 10, 2023
There is a lot yet to say and a lot that has already been said about this work, and the fact that I was able to check it out of a local library specifically because another patron requested it be added to the collection and the resident librarian arbitrator of such requests approved it still blows my mind. However, long story short, this is a flawed project not just because Benjamin was forced out of the world in one of humanity's storied engines of hatred and despair, but because the facets of the 19th century that would have completed his work were either physically unavailable or egotistically passed over (looking at Marxist thought vs Benjamin's messianic assumptions, but that's habitus for you), whether by Benjamin himself or the larger society that fomented the economic means for gestating such a project. Still, finishing this work feels like having come out of a intensive summer session where three quarters of a subject were packed into one season and knowing one has been improved by it, both subjectively and objectively. And what better way to showcase for this particular work than through the bevy of quotes I collated during my journey?
The later conception of man's exploitation of nature reflects the actual exploitation of man by the owners of the means of production. If the integration of the technological into social life failed, the fault lies in this explanation.One of my own, less vaunted thoughts: yesterday's flâneur as today's influencer.
The private individual, who in the office has to deal with realities, needs the domestic interior to sustain him in his illusions. This necessity is all the more pressing since he has no intention of grafting onto his business interests a clear perception of his social function.
[I]t is not surprising that a chronicler adds apocalyptic prophecies to this connection and foretells a time when people will have been blinded by the effects of too much electric light and maddened by the tempo of newsreporting. (Jacques Fabien, Paris en songe (Paris, 1863))
There is a handwritten draft in which Caesar instead of Zarathustra is the bearer of Nietzsche's tidings. This is of no little moment. it underscores the fact that Nietzsche had an inkling of his doctrine's complicity with imperialism. (Karl Löwith, Nietzsches Philosophie der ewigen Wiederkunft des Gleichen (Berlin, 1935), p. 73.)
As life becomes more subject to administrative norms, people must learn to wait more. Games of chance possess the great charm of freeing people from having to wait.
["...]The result [of Haussmann] is everywhere the same: the most scandalous alleys...disappear to the accompaniment of lavish self-glorification by the bourgeoisie..., but—they reappear at once somewhere else, often in the immediate neighborhood"—With this goes the prize question: Why was the moratlity rate in Lodnon so much higher in the new working-class districts (around 1890?) than in the slums?—Because people went hungry so that they could afford the high rents. And [Joséphin Péladan]'s observation: the nineteenth century forced everyone to secure lodgings for himself, even at the cost of food and clothing. (H. Budzislawski quoting Engls' "Zur Wohnungsfrage" of 1872 in: "Croesus Builds", Die neue Weltbühne, 34, no. 5 (February 3, 1938), pp. 129-130.)
(It would be interesting to study the bibliophile as the only type of collector who has not completely withdrawn [their] treasures from their functional context.)
"Let us perhaps guard against taking these poets too quickly for Christians. The liturgical language, the angels, the Satans...are merely a mise en scène for the artist who judges that the picturesque is well worth a mass." (Maurice Barrès, La Folies de Charles Baudelaire (Paris), pp. 44-45)
Baudelaire confesses to having had, "in childhood, the good fortune—or the misfortune—of reading only books for adults." (Charles Baudelaire, L'Art romantique (Paris), p. 298. ("Drames et romans honnêtes")
He would have nothing to do with women if he were not hoping that, through them, he could offend God and make the angels weep. (Anatole France, La Vie littéraire, vol. 3, (Paris, 1891), p.22.)
Baudelaire unites the poverty of the ragpicker with the scorn of the cadger and the despair of the parasite.
Every childhood achieves something great and irreplaceable for humanity. By the interest it takes in technological phenomena, by the curiosity it displays before any sort of invention or machinery, every childhood binds the accomplishments of technology to the old worlds of symbol.Another is Benjamin's inconsistency in pointing out antisemitism in the quotes he gathers. Given what we all know what would come after, for us to be likewise as inconsistent would be the death of us. See Fourier's conflation of cabalist/Kabbalah with egoism, or better yet:
There has never been an epoch that did not feel itself to be "modern" in the sense of eccentric, and did not believe itself to be standing directly before an abyss. The desperately clear consciousness of being in the middle of a crisis is something chronic in humanity.
(In the eighteenth century, workers who agitated were called cabaleurs.)At some point, I may grow disillusioned with visualizing my engagement with history as solving the murder mystery of the world. But not yet.
Between the value of the new commodities produced by the use of the labor-power in the workshop, and the prices paid for this labor to its sellers, this is, according to Marx, no economic or other rationally determinable relation whatever. [...] They result from a battle between social classes." (Karl Korsch, Karl Marx, v. 2, pp. 71-72.)Words to think on. One hopes, with enough contextualization and communication, words to live on. When it comes to reading, one cannot hope for much more than that.
The experience of our generation: that capitalism will not die a natural death.
"Number alone is allowed, honored, protected, and recompensed. Since number does not think, since it is an...instrument...that never asks...whether it is made to serve the oppression of humankind or its deliverance,...the military leader of this era wanted no other emissary." (Alphonse de Lamartine, Les Destinées de la poésie (1834), as quoted by Jean Skerlitch, L'opinion publique en France d'après la poésie [politique et sociale de 1830 à 1848] (Lausanne, 1901), p.65.)
"A shrewd observer remarked, one day, that fascist Italy was being run like a large newspaper and, moreover, by a great journalist: one idea per day, with sidelights and sensations, and with an adroit and insistent orientation of the reader toward certain inordinately enlarged aspects of social life—a systematic deformation of the understanding of the reader for certain practical ends. The long and short of it is that fascist regimes are publicity regimes." (Jean de Lignières, "Le Centenaire de La Presse," Vendredi, June 1936.
"In the first days of the Revolution, the question of the poor assumed...a very distinct and urgent character. Bailly, who initially had been elected mayor of Paris for the express purpose of alleviating the misery of the...workers, packed them into masses and cooped them up—some 18,000 people—like wild animals, on the hill of Montmartre. Those who stormed the Bastille had workers with cannons emplaced there, lighted match in hand...Had the war not drawn the unemployed and destitute laborers from town and countryside...into the army, and shuttled them off to the borders...a popular uprising would have spread across the whole of France." (Paul Lafargue, "Die christliche Liebestätigkeit" [Die neue Zeit, 23, no. 1 (Stuttgart), p. 147.)
In feudal society, the leisure of the poet is a recognized privilege. It is only in bourgeois society that the poet becomes an idler.
Just as the industrial labor process separates off from handicraft, so the form of communication corresponding to this labor process—information—separates off from the form of communication corresponding to the artisanal process of labor, which is storytelling. This connection must be kept in mind if one is to form an idea of the explosive force contained within information. This force is liberated in sensation. With sensation, whatever still resembles wisdom, oral tradition, or the epic side of truth is razed to the ground.
Maurice Renard, in his book Le Péril Bleu[(1910)], has told how inhabitants of a distant planet come to study the flora and fauna indigenous to the lower depths of the atmosphere—in other words, to the surface of the earth. These interplanetary travelers see in human beings the equivalent of tiny deep-sea fish—that is to say, beings who live at the bottom of a sea. We no more feel the pressure of the atmosphere that fish feel that of the water; this is no way alters the fact that both sets of creatures reside on an ocean floor.
[Work], in which the [worker] represents merchant and merchandise in one, acquires a particular significance.
December 31, 2007
Arcades in Europe are the first shopping malls. And this is what Walter Benjamin projected his big writing project on. Saying that, this book is totally insane. It's the Rainbow Gravity of cultural theory. It's difficult in parts, but with Benjamin as the driver, you have no choice than to go for the ride.
But also I strongly suggest one checks out Benjamin's other books or essays before going into the Arcades Project. After reading his other wonderful and brilliant essays/books - then you should proceed to this magnificent think tank of a book.
But also I strongly suggest one checks out Benjamin's other books or essays before going into the Arcades Project. After reading his other wonderful and brilliant essays/books - then you should proceed to this magnificent think tank of a book.
January 12, 2019
This is, truly, the greatest unfinished work in history
When a man daydream and contemplate on his surrounding, hearing remedies of the past, ghosts of heroic tales, and the footprints of millions of souls in the streets of the divine city of Paris. And that man happens to be Walter Benjamin? You know that your in for a treat.
I know that il reread this book again and again in the coming years, because like it's title, it's an unfinished project, maybe I can find a personal closure with Walter, and we let fate and Paris to be the judge of times to come..
Drink Tea
When a man daydream and contemplate on his surrounding, hearing remedies of the past, ghosts of heroic tales, and the footprints of millions of souls in the streets of the divine city of Paris. And that man happens to be Walter Benjamin? You know that your in for a treat.
I know that il reread this book again and again in the coming years, because like it's title, it's an unfinished project, maybe I can find a personal closure with Walter, and we let fate and Paris to be the judge of times to come..
Drink Tea
May 25, 2020
read this for research so i don’t feel like writing a lot here. couple quick points:
1) Benjamin predicted capitalism won’t die a natural death, but he did not predict capitalism being resuscitated multiple times by unnatural means (2009 financial crisis, this COVID recovery)
2) Department stores finished what Napoleon started
3) boy can you ever tell what sections Adorno wanted Benjamin to add (like the chapter simply titled “Marx”
4) worth reading the whole thing if not only to get to the final anecdote, “The Story of Old Benjamin”.
monumental book tbh
1) Benjamin predicted capitalism won’t die a natural death, but he did not predict capitalism being resuscitated multiple times by unnatural means (2009 financial crisis, this COVID recovery)
2) Department stores finished what Napoleon started
3) boy can you ever tell what sections Adorno wanted Benjamin to add (like the chapter simply titled “Marx”
4) worth reading the whole thing if not only to get to the final anecdote, “The Story of Old Benjamin”.
monumental book tbh
August 28, 2022
I get the sense that had Middlemarch's Mr. Casaubon been a better and more confident person, he would have at best left us with the Arcades Project.
May 9, 2020
Walter Benjamin ile ilk karşılaşmamız, onun anılarında idi, bu ise ikinci kitabı. Adorno okurken -kendisi açıklamalar yapmayı çok sevmediği için her zaman ve her söylediğine- bazıları düşüncesinin kaynaklarını aramıştım. Şimdi diyebilirim ki, bir ölçüde buldum bunları, özellikle sinema konusundaki tavırlarının benzerliğine bakınca. Bu arada benim açımdan kitabın en ilginç bölümü de bu oldu; Tekniğin Olanaklarıyla Yeniden Üretilebildiği Çağda Sanat Yapıtı. Bana hiç yoktan getirdiği kuşku, birkaç gündür film izlemekten de alıkoyuyor beni.
Sınıflara, ekonomiye, üretim sürecine fazlaca odaklanmış bir Marksist okuma yerine, elbette böylesine psikanalizle birlikte çalışan, kültüre ve bireye odaklanan, edebiyattan ve mimariden konuşan bir incelemeyi tercih ederim; bu nedenle müthiş keyif aldım okurken.
Metis seçkisi, Son Bakışta Aşk'ı ve Cogito'nun Walter Benjamin sayısını da almıştım, kendisi üzerine okumaları sürdürmek için fakat Son Bakışta Aşk ile Pasajlar'ın kimi metinleri aynı, içeriğe bakmadan, benim gibi, alabilecek arkadaşları uyarmış olayım.
Sınıflara, ekonomiye, üretim sürecine fazlaca odaklanmış bir Marksist okuma yerine, elbette böylesine psikanalizle birlikte çalışan, kültüre ve bireye odaklanan, edebiyattan ve mimariden konuşan bir incelemeyi tercih ederim; bu nedenle müthiş keyif aldım okurken.
Metis seçkisi, Son Bakışta Aşk'ı ve Cogito'nun Walter Benjamin sayısını da almıştım, kendisi üzerine okumaları sürdürmek için fakat Son Bakışta Aşk ile Pasajlar'ın kimi metinleri aynı, içeriğe bakmadan, benim gibi, alabilecek arkadaşları uyarmış olayım.
June 23, 2021
Some interesting pieces on nineteenth-century figures and cultural moments really a series of articles on what was of interest to Benjamin. He ranged over a broad area of topics.
July 28, 2025
Acabé esto hace un mes y se me olvidó ponerlo aquí. El lazo rojo para mi año de lecturas benjaminianas.
August 29, 2025
Took me 21 years but it was worth it.
March 6, 2022
A spiralling, enthralling dip into the minds of many an interesting and intriguing author, artist and creator.
Where to begin. There's so much vague talk of what Benjamin's Arcades Project entails and its importance in the 'canon' that it feel hard to do it justice. Is it history, fiction, literature, philosophy? When you finally sit down to read it, and sit you must, (it took a while to read simply because it's not really something you can drag out of the house. being too thick to fit in anything but a large backpack), you realize that above all it's about humanity. About how we think and act or rather how we thought and acted at the turn of the century in Paris, and by this book's logic, the world.
As a whole, it is the history of France in fragments through the lens of the evolution and eventual dissolution of the gaslit arcade. It is about flaneurs, about authors, about production, revolution and change. It is funny, odd, revealing and memorable.
It is a truly great work of art and an eye-opening experience. The words flow from the lips of its many authors. Most mysterious of all is how little I'd heard about it in regards to Benjamin as an editor rather than an author. There are quotations from newspapers, from oral histories, from fictions, poetry and criticisms. There's a spiral of references in a variety of languages.
There's the mystery of the black suitcase that may have contained the completed text.
Above all, there's simply the joy of reading something new. Something fresh, something unexpected.
Worth a read, even if it comes in spurts. Quotations to follow at some point and time.
Where to begin. There's so much vague talk of what Benjamin's Arcades Project entails and its importance in the 'canon' that it feel hard to do it justice. Is it history, fiction, literature, philosophy? When you finally sit down to read it, and sit you must, (it took a while to read simply because it's not really something you can drag out of the house. being too thick to fit in anything but a large backpack), you realize that above all it's about humanity. About how we think and act or rather how we thought and acted at the turn of the century in Paris, and by this book's logic, the world.
As a whole, it is the history of France in fragments through the lens of the evolution and eventual dissolution of the gaslit arcade. It is about flaneurs, about authors, about production, revolution and change. It is funny, odd, revealing and memorable.
It is a truly great work of art and an eye-opening experience. The words flow from the lips of its many authors. Most mysterious of all is how little I'd heard about it in regards to Benjamin as an editor rather than an author. There are quotations from newspapers, from oral histories, from fictions, poetry and criticisms. There's a spiral of references in a variety of languages.
There's the mystery of the black suitcase that may have contained the completed text.
Above all, there's simply the joy of reading something new. Something fresh, something unexpected.
Worth a read, even if it comes in spurts. Quotations to follow at some point and time.
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