Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project

This is the first comprehensive introduction to Benjamin´s unfinished "Arcades Project" - one of the most significant cultural documents of the Weimar Republic and Nazi era. Walter Benjamin´s unfinished "Arcades Project" has had a remarkable impact on present-day cultural theory, urban studies, cultural studies and literary interpretation. Originally designed as a panoramic study chronicling the rise and decline of the Parisian shopping arcades, Benjamin´s work combines imaginative peregrinations through the changing city-scape of nineteenth-century Paris with passages that read like a blueprint for a new cultural theory of modernity. "Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project" provides the first comprehensive introduction to this extraordinary work accessible to English-language readers. The diverse range of issues explored include the fl and No. 226; neur, the physiognomy of ruins, the dialectical image, and modernity and architecture. The contributors include: Susan Buck-Morss, Stanley Cavell, Brigid Doherty, Stathis Gourgouris, Barbara Johnson, Esther Leslie, Gerhard Richter, Beatrice Hanssen, Detlef Mertins, Elissa Marder, Tyrus Miller, Max Pensky, and Irving Wohlfarth.
Contents: Introduction: Physiognomy of a Fl& No. 226;neur: Walter Benjamin´s Peregrinations in Search of the Dialetical Image, Beatrice Hanssen (University of Georgia); Et Cetera? The Historian as Chiffonier, Irving Wohlfarth (University of Reims); The Fl& No. 226;neur, the Sandwichman and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering, Susan Buck-Morss (Cornell University); Passage Work, Barbara Johnson (Harvard University); Ruin and Rubble in the Arcades, Esther Leslie (Birkbeck, University of London); Geheimmittel Advertising and Dialectical Images in Benjamin´s Arcades Project, Max Pensky (Binghampton, SUNY). A Matter of Distance: Benjamin´s One-Way Street through the Arcades, Gerhard Richter (UC Davis); ´The Colportage Phenomenon of Space´ and the Place of Montage in the Arcades Project, Brigid Doherty (Princeton University); Walter Benjamin´s Dream of ´Happiness´, Elissa Marder (Emory University); The Dream of Reality in the Ruin, Stathis Gourgouris (UCLA); The Enticing and Threatening Face of Prehistory: Walter Benjamin and the Utopia of Glass, Detlef Mertins (University of Pennsylvania); Glass before its time, premature iron: Architecture, Temporality and dream in Benjamin´s Arcades Project, Tyrus Miller (UC Santa Cruz); Remains to be Seen, Stanley Cavell (Harvard University).