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."Benjamin, Walter is the author of 'Arcades Project' with ISBN 9780674043268 and ISBN 067404326X.