Discussion - Week Two - The Arcades Project - Two Essays, p. 929 - 954

[Jim]

This discussion covers:


Dialectics at a Standstill, by Ralph Tiedemann, p. 929 – 945 and

The Story of Old Benjamin, by Lisa Fittko, p. 946 – 954


The Tiedemann essay explains Benjamin’s ideas of what “dialectics at a standstill” mean and how they are intended to be understood in the context of historical materialism. Included in the essay are references to several of Benjamin’s published works, many of which are included in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. I’ve added a discussion thread for this book in the “Arcades Project Additional Books folder, which you can find here:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...


Lisa Fittko’s memoir is a bittersweet tale of Benjamin’s final day. It is nice to know that despite his death, he did his best to keep his dignity and to protect his manuscript ‘til the end. We can speculate on what the manuscript might have contained, or if it survived somewhere, but I imagine given his lucid resolve to keep it out of the hands of the Nazi’s, he may have destroyed it shortly before taking his life.

[Travis]

I thought the Fittko story was a fairly good insight into Benjamin the man, although a rather tragic one at that. Can't even imagine how defeated and frustrated he must of felt after multiple failed escape attempts. He seemed a rather determined man, if only he could of found a way to confidently preserve his manuscript.

As for "Dialectics at a Standstill", I thought that the analogy for building a house helped to break down the broad range of subject matter which doesn't immediately seem related to each other. The purpose of the Arcades Project certainly becomes a little more clearly defined to the more casual reader before some of the topics were explored more thoroughly.

As I was reading I kind of felt like the Arcades represented a microcosmic explosion of the Marxist/Capitalist/Surrealist takes on history and how Benjamin tries to rationalise it all objectively. He was happy to borrow and adapt ideas from each and seemed spend as much time criticising Marxist ideas on history as agreeing with them.

'In this way the historian should no longer enter the past; rather, he should allow the past to enter his life'....and... 'The theory of knowledge/Now of Recognizability'

The section about the above, combined with the concepts regarding mimesis, history in the eternal landscape really resonated with me and I enjoyed them a lot.

So much to sift through in the reading and so many ideas to explore.