Benjamin's Arcades Project

After reading the translator’s foreword, I understand Benjamin’s work to provide a “documentary synopsis” of city life in his time. This exposé is structured in terms of a collage or montage. Each nineteenth-century figure represents a facet of change that occurred during his time period. His documentary of history and change does not focus on “great men and celebrated events” but rather on the daily life of “the collective.” For me, I read this exposé as a commentary on capitalism and consumerism and the way this changed people’s lives.

I’d like to structure my response following Benjamin’s sequence. Honestly, it helped a lot to look up each of these figures and some of the literary and art texts that he mentioned in the chapter. So, below you’ll see a brief caption and image for each of the six sections. I also tried to make sense of the theoretical language used in each section.

Charles Fourier: French philosopher, 19^th c., utopic “phalanstery”

 

-          In this section, Benjamin lays the groundwork for understanding the city using the language (and models?) of the art world.

-          Collective consciousness: society’s beliefs and values (Marx)

-          Wish images: a utopian or idealistic view of society

Louis Jacques-Mandé Daguerre: French artist, 19^th c., founder of photography

-          The rise in photography hints at how the “sphere of commodity exchange” was expanded (Benjamin 6).

*Consider photography as opposed to panoramic paintings, such as Jacques Louis David’s The Death of Socrates. Panoramas “produce deceptively lifelike changes represented in nature,” but at the same time they provide a “new attitude toward life” (Benjamin 5-6).

J.J. Grandville: French artist, 19^th c., fantasy-like nature of work

- Commodity, use value, exchange value (Marx)

I thought this argument was interesting. Commenting on the rise of the entertainment industry, Benjamin says that the individual “surrenders to its manipulations while enjoying his alienation from himself and others” (7). The extent to which that commentary is still applicable today is a little sad.

Louis Phillipe: reign seen as “the private individual managing his affairs” (Benjamin 8)

                      Poe’s “Philosophy of Furniture”

I found this section on the interior or personal space the most confusing. Although I did like the following quote: “The private individual…needs the domestic interior to sustain him in his illusions” (8). I think this speaks volumes to Benjamin’s overall claim that consumerism has penetrated into the most private sectors of our lives.

Haussmann: French public worker, city planner

-Haussmann, in renovating the city, had to destroy and demolish certain sections. Following this idea of destruction, Benjamin says the “development of the forces of production shattered the wish symbols of the previous century, even before the monuments representing them had collapsed” (13). I read this as a critique of how capitalism destroyed any utopian or idealistic way of life. I think his tone turns even more critical as he ends with how “we begin to recognize the monuments of the bourgeoisie as ruins even before they have crumbled.”