The Arcades Project

"[T]here are in this maze compelling leitmotifs. Benjamin is seeking to pierce 'arcades' between mass psychology, tinged with Freudian elements, a materialist sociology, aesthetics and a highly personal, at moments esoteric, eschatology. The [ARCADES PROJECT is] to be a Traumanalyse of the great sleep into which capitalism has plunged collective consciousness....THE ARCADES PROJECT is not, in any ready sense, 'legible.' It is an 'old curiosity shop'..., an Aladdin's treasure-cave of an attic, a metaphysical-historical rummage room and uncannily furnished doll's house in which to browse, to meditate precisely as do the flaneur, ragpicker and collector in Benjamin's own staging. Time and time again, the single aphorism, the tag en passant opens grand vistas."Walter Benjamin is the author of 'The Arcades Project', published 2002 under ISBN 9780674008021 and ISBN 0674008022.