What is the Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin about?
Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project investigates modernity, technology, and our relationship to commodities, through the singular lens of Paris’s grand shopping arcades. The Arcades Project is not a finished text. What survives of Benjamin’s work on the book is bundled into headings and drafts: a mixture of quotes, aphorisms, and longer sections.
What is the Arcades Project?
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 thirteen years—“the theater,” as Benjamin called it, “of all my struggles and all my ideas.”
Are arcades a thing of the past?
Arcades seem to be a thing of the past. Wondering if a full scale arcade would do well? SUBMIT YOUR OWN MESSAGE TO SUDBURY! Who are we?
The Arcades Project