Benjamin Now: Critical Encounters with The Arcades Project (Boundary)

215 Pages·2003·14.31 MB·English

by  Tom Gunning

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Introduction
PhilipRosen
Whatfollowsiscomposedofpapersfirstpresented6–7April2001at
asymposiumheldbytheForbesCenterforResearchinCultureandMedia
Studies at Brown University.1 This symposium, ‘‘Benjamin Now: Critical
EncounterswithTheArcadesProject,’’wasprovokedbythe1999English-
language translation of Walter Benjamin’s monumental Das Passagen-
Werk,themostlegendaryworkofthemostlegendaryoftwentieth-century
cultural interpreters and theorists. There was also a new and (as of this
writing) ongoing multivolume set of translations appearing as Benjamin’s
Selected Writings from Harvard University Press. While focused on The
Arcades,then,thesymposiumimplicitlyconsideredtheextenttowhichthe
English-languageacademyhasa‘‘new’’Benjaminonitshands.Wethought,
as my co-organizer Kevin McLaughlin puts it in his afterword, that ‘‘now
mightbeanopportunemomentforareconsiderationofthecriticalworkof
WalterBenjamin.’’
1.Iamresponsiblefortheoveralltenorandsubstanceofthisintroduction,butafewof
its paragraphs include specific wording that is heavily inflected by Kevin McLaughlin’s
contributions to symposium-related documents. I am grateful for his collaboration and
generosity.
boundary230:1,2003.Copyright©2003byDukeUniversityPress.

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30 Our‘‘now’’—notBenjamin’s.McLaughlinisimplicitlyreferringtoBen-
/ jamin’sconceptofJetztzeit,the‘‘now-time,’’thepointatwhichobjects,activi-
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y ties, and actions from the past may be cognized in a unique and hereto-
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a foreunrecognizableconstellation,asanimage,afigure.ForBenjamin,this
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present moment that will then pass. It is precious because it is generated
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belostifnotformulatednow.Itisalsopreciousbecausealthoughanimage,
it conveys a knowledge that is in some fundamental sense rigorous. This
is not an obvious or simple concept. But I admit that I reflexively imagine
thattheessentialquestionofthiscollectionofessaysmightbeformulated
insomethingofaBenjaminianmanner:Whatpreviouslyunrecognizedcog-
nitions will flash up from our new encounter with The Arcades Project, as
cognitionsaboutBenjamin’sworkthatmakeavailablesomethingnewofthe
dangersandthedreams,theforgottenandtheremembered,ofhistime,but
alsoandsimultaneouslyofourown?
Benjamin addresses this kind of question to the remarkable abun-
dance of textual fragments he quotes as traces of the Paris of a previ-
ous generation, the Paris he named capital of the nineteenth century.
Thisconjunctionofhistoricaltimeandgeopoliticalspaceisindicative.The
yearsduringwhichBenjaminconceivedandworkedthroughTheArcades
Project were years of some of the most extraordinary political, social,
and intellectual crises of the twentieth century. In formulating his own
answers to his question, he was working not only on the objects of study,
nineteenth-century Paris and, more broadly, the inception of modern cul-
tureandsociety.Hewasalsoworkingthroughtheconceptual,linguistic,and
interpretivemeansbywhichheandhisgenerationmightunderstandculture
andsociety—thatis,thesubjectinanepistemologicalsense.Clearlyboth
ofthesesides,objectandsubject,havetheirhistoriesandtheirpolitics.
Whatisoursituationnow,assubjectsconfrontingTheArcadesProj-
ect as an object? It may appear that we are in a qualitatively different
positionandcontextfromBenjamin’s.Manypoliticalandtheoreticalques-
tionsthatengagedhim—aboutculture,textualityandlanguage,modernity
andsociety,knowledgeandhistory—howevercompelling,canseemsignifi-
cantlydistinctfromourssimplybecausetherehasbeenanongoinghistory
of politics, theory, and criticism since his death. (And certainly, most of us
in the First World academy, where the interest in Benjamin is so intense,
workinverydifferentcircumstancesthandidhe.)YetBenjaminteachesus
to watch not only for irreducible particularity and radical novelty but also

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30 for symptoms and compulsions of repetition and return in that very par-
/ ticularityandnovelty.Forexample,Benjaminandcertaincolleaguesattrib-
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y utedcrisestheylivedtosociopoliticalandsocioculturalsystemswhoseeco-
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a nomics, aesthetics, and social fantasies were structured by war. As I am
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amomentthatisintheprocessofunveilingitsownformsofperpetualcrisis
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8 and war. But this is not to call on Benjamin in the name of an immediacy
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of ‘‘relevance,’’ an immediacy I suspect he would abhor; his time was not
only the same but different. It is better to begin elsewhere. In unique and
originalways,Benjaminengagedfundamentalproblemsbearingonculture,
textuality and language, modernity and society, politics and history. Even
thoughhelivedandworkedinadifferenttime,thereisadriveinhiscorpus
thatseemsrecognizablenow,somethingthatdrawsourpresenttohim.The
first problem is to convert such recognizability into cognition. This means
notallowingthestrangeobjectthatisTheArcadesProjecttobecometoo
familiartooquickly.
Forithasreceivedaremarkablewelcome.Theappearanceofafull
andintegralEnglishtranslationofDasPassagen-Werkin1999waswidely
treatedasamajorintellectualevent,attractingnoticeeveninnonspecialized
venuessuchastheNewYorkTimes,theNation,andtheLondonReviewof
Books.Inthescholarlyworld,TheArcadesProjectisalmostcertainlyinthe
process of becoming canonical. But part of what makes the translation of
thislegendarytextsosignificantisthatcertainofBenjamin’sotherwritings
werealreadycanonical.
Inhisownlifetime,Benjamin’simportancewasacknowledgedmostly
inhighlydistinguishedbutrelativelyrestrictedEuropeanintellectualcircles.
(The plural is important, for it has always been difficult to categorize Ben-
jaminneatlyoralignhimwithasinglemodeorschoolofthought.)Afterhis
notorioussuicide,committedin1940whilefleeingtheGermaninvasionof
France,somekeymembersofthesecircles—includingGershomScholem,
Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, and Georges Bataille—were involved in
preservinghisworkandthenpromotinghislegacy.Afterthewar,theirlabors
eventually resulted in a much wider sphere of appreciation. The take-off
pointwasperhapsthe1961Germanpublicationofaone-volumeselection
from his writings (previously collected in two volumes in 1955) under the
titleIlluminations.IntheEnglish-speakingworld,acrucialmomentwasthe
translationofasomewhatdifferentselectionchosenbyArendtandalsopub-
lishedasIlluminationsin1968.Itmaybeworthnotingthatthedistribution
ofBenjamin’sworkintheEnglishlanguagebeganduringahistoricallypar-

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30 ticularconfigurationofdangersanddreams,comprisedinpartbythecon-
/ junctureofpoliticalupheavalsandrelatedstudentrebellionsnowsoinsuf-
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y ficiently summarized as ‘‘the sixties,’’ and the academic theory boom that
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a wassimultaneouslybeingunleashed.
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inglywidevarietyoffields,includingliterarycriticism(orcomparativelitera-
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8 ture)andtheory,hermeneutics,historyandhistoriography,philosophyand
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language theory, sociocultural theory, mass media and visual arts, mass
culture and urban studies. Illuminations contained major essays in all of
these, including some that drew on material from the as yet unavailable
Arcades Project. Almost immediately several became standard reading in
the burgeoning interdisciplinary theorization of culture and modernity that
cutacrossseveralcriticalstudiesdisciplines,andsomeweresooncitedas
foundationalforconceptualizingthepostmodernavantlalettre.Moretrans-
lations followed in the 1970s, as the set of available Benjamin texts were
deployedinimportantdebatesinseveralfields.ButatleastintheEnglish-
speakingworld,thisstatuswasoriginallyachievedonthebasisofasmall
proportionofhiswritings.
Now, however, Benjamin’s legacy may undergo a major reassess-
ment.TheHarvardeditionismakingavailableamuchwiderarrayofhiswrit-
ings and is also retranslating some already available texts, thus providing
amorecompletepictureofhisdiverseoeuvre.Byallaccounts,itseemsto
beextendinghisimpactevenfurther.EnglishreadersfamiliarwithBenjamin
theMarxianinterpreterofthemassmediaandmodernliteraturehavefound
themselvesconfrontedwithaparticipantintheearlytwentieth-centuryneo-
KantiandebatesaboutlanguageandaleaderoftheGermanstudentmove-
ment as well as a Berlin memoirist and collector of children’s books. But
amidtherenewedupsurgeofinterestinBenjaminsetoffbytheappearance
inEnglishofthisenlargedbodyofwork,nothinghasbeensubjecttogreater
anticipationthanthetranslationofhislastgreatwork,theunfinished,post-
humousArcadesProject.
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ReadingTheArcadesProjectnowisadauntingtask,beginningfrom
a fundamental difficulty with the very form in which Das Passagen-Werk
comestous.Attitudestowardthisdifficultyinflectalldiscussionsofit.Ben-
jamin’s interest in the literary or critical fragment, the aphorism, and like
modes of expression is here combined with an unprecedented mass of
extractedquotations.Organizedasanextensivesetoffoliosor‘‘convolutes’’

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30 ondifferenttopics,muchofTheArcadesProjectconsistsofelaborate,stra-
/ tegic citations from a wide variety of works originating in or commenting
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y onnineteenth-centuryParis.Thesecitationsoriginateinaheterogeneous
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a multiplicity of genres, ranging from poems and novels to police reports,
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losophy,andsocialtheory.Theystemfromorrefertoanuncountablenum-
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8 ber of cultural and social practices and historical figures: Charles Baude-
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laireandMarcelProust,NietzscheaneternalreturnandMarxiandialectics,
Auguste Blanqui and Charles Fourier, the street plan of Paris and street
names, politics and revolutions, urban gardens and department stores,
theinteriorofthebourgeoisdomicileandbourgeoissubjectivity,commodi-
fication and phantasmagoria, Jugendstil and the cartoons of Grandville,
photography and fashion, iron and glass construction in architecture, the
gamblerandthecollector,colonialismandprostitution.2
Yet this conglomeration of extracts presents itself as an account
of the crystallization of nineteenth-century European capitalist modernity,
focused through the lens of the cultural, intellectual, political, and every-
day social life of Paris. Not only do the extracts, which are filed by topic,
succeed one another in ways that often form implicit patterns of cross-
pertinenceandassociation(whichsupplementexplicitcross-referencesto
otherentriesthataresometimesnotedinthetext).Nestedwithinthemass
ofcitationsarenotesandluminouscommentariesbyBenjaminthatestab-
lish this goal. Furthermore, these commentaries include theoretical, gen-
eralizing indications. Whatever their immediate significance within a given
convolute,then,theyalsoevinceBenjamin’sambitionforamethodological
and philosophical breakthrough in modes of historicization as well as the
conceptualizationofmoderncultureandsociety.Ontheonehand,muchof
thecontentoftheconvolutesmayseemtosuggesttheepistemologicalfan-
tasy that nineteenth-century Paris, the object of study, is presenting itself
throughitsownproductsandtraces.Thissometimesleadstoquestionsof
2.Anaccountofthepeculiaritiesofthistextcouldgoon.Forexample,Benjamincompiled
hisentriesnotonlyinGermanbutequallyinFrench,someintranslationandsomenot.
(TheEnglish-languageeditionhasusefullytranslatedallintoEnglish,withtypographical
indicationsastowhichlanguagewasoriginallyused.)Thisisareminderofsomething
obviousbuteasytoforgetaswelookatthecarefullydesignedHarvardedition:Toread
TheArcadesProjectnowisnottoreaditasanyonecouldhavereaditinBenjamin’sown
lifetime.Thefolioscontainedsheavesofhandwrittentranscriptionsandcommentaries.
OnlyafterBenjamin’sdeathandaneditorialdeciphermentcouldanyoneelseclaimtoread
it.Indeed,onlyaftersomeofhisworkbecamestandardreadinginthecriticaldisciplines
wasTheArcadesProjectmadeintoabook.

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/ Ontheotherhand,thisfantasyisshort-circuited,forelementsofthewhole
2 also seem to drive at conceptual and even philosophical goals. Speaking
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Thisconjoiningofpastandpresentisthereforeaproblemattheheart
ofreadingthistext.Butclearlythisissomethingthatgoestotheheartofany
claimtohistoricize.Nineteenth-centuryParisisnomore.Itcanbeencoun-
teredonlyintherepetitivedrivetoconstructandre-constructitinferentially
from the traces the past leaves for the present to interrogate—that which
conventionalhistoriographywouldcallprimarysourcedocuments.TheGer-
manhistoricismBenjaminidentifiesasanopponentaimstohierarchizeand
selectfromthemassofsuch‘‘documents,’’inordertorelegatethemtothe
status of evidence for the past existence of a definitive, synthesizing his-
torical sequence. This is to sublimate their peculiarities and particularities
undertheumbrellatemporalityofthealreadyachievedsequencethatbears
‘‘whathasbeen,’’therebyfixatingandfixingtheflowoftime.Ofcoursethere
issomeselectionandhierarchyinthecitedmaterialthatcomposessomuch
ofTheArcadesProject.Butthesheerbulkofcitationsisitselfaformalblock-
age to any smooth historiographic sublimation. The form of the text fore-
grounds the ‘‘documents,’’ refusing to subsume them under a sublimating
umbrellatemporality.Butinthatcasetheproblembecomesthenatureofthe
alternativesforincorporatingtracesofthepast,andultimatelyforknowing
history.
AconcisesynopsisorreductionofTheArcadesProjectintoasmall
number of generative theses may well seem illegitimate in the face of its
heterogeneousmultiplicity.Andyet,whatwouldthenbethestatusofthose
generalizingconceptsandfiguresthatBenjamininventsanddevelops,and
that are so often invoked as examples of his methodological, critical, and
philosophicaloriginality?Themassofcitationsisintermittentlyinformed—
sometimesclearly,sometimescryptically,sometimescritically—bykeyfor-
mulationsofsomeofBenjamin’sowntheoreticalandhistoriographicideas
andconcepts,suchashistoricalaffinitiesandconstellations,traceandaura,
homogenousemptytimeand‘‘now-time’’[Jetztzeit],monad,theflaneur,the
collector, the dreaming collective, and (possibly above all) the dialectical
image. These ideas and concepts have already attracted much attention,
thoughoftenonthebasisoftheirappearanceincertainofhismoretradition-

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/ materialinhisArcadesfolios,butascontributionstothisvolumewillocca-
2 sionallynote,notwithoutsomelossofnuanceandcomprehensiveness.)
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characterizes the Parisian arcades as the product of a dreaming collec-
tive in the course of shaping and misshaping its memories.3 In that case,
onemightexpectBenjamintocarrythroughthefigureofthedreamingcol-
lective by opposing it to the proper historical consciousness of a wakeful,
reasoning collective. This is not quite what happens. In one of the most
notedfiguresofTheArcadesProject,heinsteademphasizestheprocess
that occurs between sleepful dreaming and wakeful consciousness—the
process of awakening. It is this intermediary state that is associated with
thekindofhistoricalknowledgeheenvisions:‘‘[T]hemomentofawakening
would be identical with the ‘now of recognizability,’ in which things put on
theirtrue—surrealist—face’’(N3a,3).Thus,‘‘Awakeningis...thedialecti-
cal,Copernicanturnofremembrance’’(K1,3).Itistherefore‘‘theCopernican
revolutioninhistoricalperception,’’inwhich‘‘whathasbeen’’isnolongerthe
fixedcenter(K1,2).Furthermore,thestruggletoengageintheintermedi-
arystateofawakeningisnotonlythatofthenineteenthcentury.Benjamin
describesTheArcadesProjectitselfas‘‘anexperimentinthetechniqueof
awakening’’(K1,1).WhatIcallBenjamin’sconcernwithintermediarystates
isthereforefundamentaltohisconceptualizationofhistory.ButTheArcades
Projectispervadedbythem,notonlywithrespecttotemporalityandhistory
butalsowithrespecttospatialityandsociology,asintheambiguitiesand
reversalsofthebourgeoisdivisionbetweeninsideandoutsidediscussedin
someoftheessaysincludedhere.
Tobemoderatelyclever,onemightevensuggestthattheveryobject
with which we are concerned is itself in an intermediary state, a state of
unfinishedness.Thisreturnsustotheproblemofform.Onestraightforward
response is to treat the text simply as an extraordinarily interesting set of
research notes. On the other hand, it may still be premature to treat the
forminwhichwenowreadTheArcadesProjectasacontingentratherthan
necessaryaspectofit.IfBenjaminwasworkingtowardaradicallydifferent
3.Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin
(Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress,1999),K1,1throughK1,5.Hereafter,referencesto
thistextarecitedparentheticallybyconvolutenumber.

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/ wellbeacomponentofthatenterprise.Perhapsthislatterpositionneednot
2 even judge whether he succeeded, but it certainly requires active reading
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HowtounderstandTheArcadesProjectnow?Theessaysincluded
here are rich and varied. Some approach the text from a fairly expansive
angle,givingusanoverallpurchaseonit,whileothersbeginfromparticular
moments,figures,concepts,orconvolutes.Somecomplementoneanother,
somedivergefromoneanother.Explicitlyorimplicitly,theyalladdressBen-
jamin’s sense of historicity, knowledge, and the textual. Taken together,
they make for a complex tissue of ideas, arguments, and positions about
TheArcadesProjectandBenjamin’swork.Thiskindofcollectionmightbe
orderedinanumberofways.Giventhemanypossibilities,wehavechosen
asimpleandneutralstrategy.Webeginwitharticlesthatproposedifferent
kinds of overviews of the project and then move toward those that begin
from more focused attention to specific concepts or passages and then
branchout.
We start with Samuel Weber’s careful reading of Benjamin’s
approachtoParisasastructureofplaces.Weberemphasizesthecategori-
cally disturbing nature of intermediary, transitional states in The Arcades
Project. Crucial to his exposition is Benjamin’s explication of the German
wordSchwelle.Asaspatialdesignation,itismorethanthreshold,border,
or definitive limit of a place. It is a zone of transition, change, movement,
wheretheedgesofaplaceareinflated,suchthatinsideandoutsidespaces
overlapandthedivisionbetweenthembreaksdown.Muchasthefigureof
awakeningdesignatesthetimeofastructuringindeterminacythatblursthe
boundariesbetweensleepingandwakingalongwiththeputativelydistinc-
tive modes of thought and memory associated with them, Schwelle is the
spaceofananalogousmediatoryindeterminacy.Weberdrawsattentionto
thespatializationofsuchintermediatestatesinBenjamin’sParisinorderto
bindspacetolinguisticorsignifyingstructures.Thisenableshimtoargue
thatBenjamin’saccountofPariscomprehendsthecityastext,inthesense
ofJacquesDerrida’sgeneralizedtextuality.Thatis,thecityisultimatelycon-

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/ rereadings, interpretations and reinterpretations that underlie all significa-
2 tion.Schwellethusimplicitlybecomesanalogoustodifférance.Webergives
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kindofreadabilityforamodeofsignification.
IfWebergivesusapowerfulentrytoTheArcadesProjectfocusedon
spatialindeterminacyandgeneralizedtextuality,T.J.Clarkaddressesthe
historicity of its raw materials in relation to the history of the bourgeoisie.
ForClark,Benjamin’searlierworkonTheArcadesProjectledhimtoward
a fuller engagement with Marx in its later stages, an engagement never
completed. Clark therefore divides The Arcades Project into two phases.
The key object of the first half is indeed the Parisian passages and build-
ings.Theseareimplicatedintheintoxicating,phantasmagoricconflationof
spaces—insideandoutside,privateandpublic—thatisakindofcollective
architectural dream experience historically specific in its overriding social
and class confusions and obfuscations. The key object of the second half
ofTheArcadesProject,ontheotherhand,isBaudelaire.Thehugemassof
materialsintheBaudelairefoliomarksaconceptualandtheoreticalturning
pointtowardthecategoryofthecommodityandcommodification,although
the new materials and theory are less finished than those of the first half.
BenjamincomestotheideathatBaudelaire’spoetryanditsallegoricalchar-
acter were invested not just by modernity but by the processes of com-
modity exchange whose universality Marx had identified as a structuring
dominantofmoderncapitalistsociety.Itsformaltendencytowardincorpo-
rationoffragmentsandfragmentationofthesurfaceofsociallife,alongwith
itssubstantiveawarenessofcommodification,identifiesthispoetrywithThe
ArcadesProjectitself.Clarkisskepticalofthedesiretodrawfinishedcon-
cepts and theories from The Arcades Project and doubtful of Benjamin’s
masteryofMarx.Butheneverthelessfindscentraltothelatersectionsof
The Arcades Project a strong sense of the unavoidable force of abstract
labor power, exchange, and commodity fetishism in art, as well as a con-
sciousnessofthesufferingandclassconflictthatundergirdsthebourgeois
pleasures and intoxications that seem to seduce Benjamin in the earlier
partsofthetext.
Itwouldbeamistake,Ithink,totooquicklyinventadebatebetweena
poststructuralistArcadesProjectandapoliticizedorMarxistArcadesProj-

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2 textuality, and interpretation to the social and political theory of capitalist
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pretationandofBenjamin’sinterestinMarxism,hiscontributiontodiscus-
sionoftheseisstagedatthelevelofwhatmightbecalledaestheticform.
Howard Eiland proposes to consider The Arcades Project in rela-
tiontoBenjamin’snoteddiscussionselsewhereofdistractedreceptionand
themodernistaestheticdeviceswithwhichitisassociated.Heshowsthat,
especiallywhenthinkingofBertoltBrecht,Benjaminconceivedofdistrac-
tion as a symptom generated by commodification, which Eiland does not
separatebutalignswiththeintoxicatingalienationofphantasmagoria.Yetin
otherwritings(centrallyin‘‘TheWorkofArtintheAgeofMechanicalRepro-
duction’’),Benjaminconceivedofdistractionasanepistemologicallyradical
experienceofmodernity,anewmodeofperceptionattachedtothedisuni-
fiedsurfaceofthings(asurfacereminiscentofTheArcadesProjectitself).
But in both cases, whether promoting the Brechtian resistance to distrac-
tionandintoxicationormodernistparticipationinthem,Benjaminprivileged
montageasaestheticdevice.Therefore,Eilandarguesthatthedevicesof
montage and superimposition, unthinkable without the modern technical
mediaofphotographyandcinema,arecentralmodelsnotonlyfortheform
taken by The Arcades Project but for the dialectical image. Montage and
superimposition are modes possible in modern technical media for repre-
sentingintermediaryspatialandtemporaljuncturesandconflations;andthe
dialecticalimageispreciselythespatializationofatemporalinterpenetra-
tion,theinterpenetrationofpastandpresent.
PeterFenvesalsoinquiresintothemodeofrepresentationtowhich
The Arcades Project aspires, and he also relates it to another fundamen-
talBenjamintext,butinthiscaseitisTheOriginofGermanTragicDrama.
Forinsteadofmodernistaesthetictechnologyandform,Fenves’sfocusis
on language and the philosophy of style. He turns to the concept of the
monad,whichTheArcadesProjecttiestoitsambitionsforadialecticalhis-
toricity. Fenves notes the long genealogy of the paradoxical ambition for
a nontechnical, nonphilosophical philosophical language, which Benjamin
joins.Fromthisgenealogy,FenvesemphasizesLeibniz,whoconceivesof
words that are inseparable from their origins, and which therefore cannot

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