WALTER BENJAMIN Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin PREPARED ON THE BASIS OF THE GERMAN VOLUME EDITED BY ROLF ‘TIEDEMANN THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, AND LONDON, ENGLANDCopyright © 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard Gollege All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Second printing, 1999 ‘This work isa translation of Walter Benjamin, Das Passagen-Werk, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, copyright © 1982 by Subrkamp Verlag; volume 5 of Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schrifen, prepared with the co- operation of Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem, edited by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann ‘Schweppenhiuser, copyright © 1972, 1974, 1977, 1982, 1985, 1989 by Subrkamp Verlag. “Dialectics at a Standstill” by Rolf Tiedemasin, was first published in English by MIT Press, copyright © 1988 by the ‘Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Publication of this book has been supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humani- ties, an independent federal agency. Publication of this book has also been aided by a grant from Inter Nationes, Bonn. (Cover photo: Walter Benjamin, ca. 1982. Photographer unknown. Courtesy of the Theodor W, Adorno Archiv, Frankfurt am Main. Frontispiece: Passage Jouflroy, 1845-1847, Photographer unknown. Courtesy Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Photo copyright © Photothéque des Musées de la Ville de Paris. : ‘Vignettes: pages i, 1, 825, 891, 1074, Institut Francais d’Architecture; page 27, Hans Meyer-Veden; page 869, Robert Doisneau. Library of Congress Catalogingin-Publication Data Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940, [Passagen Werk. English] The arcades project / Walter Benjamin; translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin; prepared on the basis of the German volume edited by Rolf Tiedemann. Include index ISBN 0674-04326-X (alk. paper) L Tiedemann, Rolf, J. Tie PT2603.E455 P33513 1999 944 361081—de21 9.27615 ‘Designed by Gwen Nefsky Frankfeldt— Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century Exposé Introduction History is like Janus; it has two faces. Whether it looks at the past or at the present, it sees the same things. —Maxime Du Camp, Paris, vol. 6, p. 315 ‘The subject of this book is an illusion expressed by Schopenhauer in the follow- ing formula: to seize the essence of history, it suffices to compare Herodotus and the morning newspaper.’ What is expressed here is a feeling of vertigo charac- “teristic of the nineteenth century's conception of history. It corresponds to a viewpoint according to which the course of the world is an endless series of facts congealed in the form of things. The characteristic residue of this conception is. what has been called the “History of Civilization,” which makes an inventory, point by point, of humanity’s life forms and creations. ‘The riches thus amassed in the aerarium of civilization henceforth appear as though identified for all time. ‘This conception of history minimizes the fact that such riches owe not only their existence but also their transmission to a constant effort of society—an effort, moreover, by which these riches are strangely altered. Our investigation proposes,’ {0 show how, as.a consequence of this reifying representation of divilization, the new forms of behavior and the new economically and technologically based creations that we owe to the nineteenth century enter the universe of a phantas- magoria. These creations undergo this “illumination” not only in a theoretical manner, by an ideological transposition, but also in the immediacy of their per- ceptible presence. They are manifest as phantasmagorias. Thus appear the ar- cades—first entry in the field of iron construction; thus appear the world exhibitions, whose link to the entertainment industry is significant. Also included in this order of phenomena is the experience of the flineur, who abandons himself to the phantasmagorias of the marketplace. Corresponding to these phantasmagorias of the market, where people appear only as types, are the phantasmagorias of the interior, which are constituted by man's imperious need to leave the imprint of his private individual existence on the rooms he inhabits. As for the phantasmagoria of civilization itself, it found its champion in Hauss-