To great writers, Walter Benjamin once wrote, "finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labour 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 13 years - "the theatre," as the author called it, "of all my struggles and all my ideas." Focusing on the arcades of 19th century Paris - glass-roofed rows of shops that were early centres of consumerism - Benjamin presents a montage of quotations from, and reflections on, hundreds of published sources, arranging them in 36 categories with descriptive rubrics such as "fashion," "boredom," "dream city," "photography," "catacombs," "advertising," "prostitution," "baudelaire," "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. This book is Benjamin's effort to represent and to critique the bourgeois experience of 19th 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.
發表於2025-01-22
The Arcades Project 2025 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載
圖書標籤: 本雅明 Benjamin 建築 哲學 城市 現代性 曆史 WalterBenjamin
是urtext中的urtext,ruin中的ruin瞭。可以理解為什麼最後棄作,閱讀這樣零散又sparkling的notes 仿佛看到瞭自己試圖寫紙寫syllabus的時候纏成一團的思路。有很多motifs後來都進瞭Illuminations,這本是隻能當手稿來讀。很frustrating但也很驚艷。
評分隻讀瞭上課要求的兩節 我真的太愛瞭 而且本雅明肯定是第一個sense到spatial turn的吧!這麼一看Lefebvre Jameson Harvey真的都是在玩兒他玩剩下的瞭(如果他能再活久點 上述幾位的著作都不會是什麼驚天動地的理論瞭)
評分1. commodity gives cities possibilities--creating a commodity gift--giving a gift to a stranger--fashion 2. Paris as a “landscape built of sheer life--blurred boundary of "interior" & "exterior"--essential solitude--modernity 3. walk takes on a narrative quality--move from present moment to history--extract creativity from walking
評分someone's letters, litters, or jewlery box, to be uncovered and savored at a quiet corner with coffee and wine
評分: TU-095.65/B468
The Arcades Project 2025 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載