Abstract

MARTINEZ MATIAS, Paloma. Fashion, Novelty, and Utopia: On Walter Benjamin’s Dialectical Conception of Fashion. Tópicos (México) [online]. 2023, n.66, pp.229-263.  Epub June 19, 2023. ISSN 0188-6649.  https://doi.org/10.21555/top.v660.2417.

The purpose of this essay is to study Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the phenomenon of fashion in the Arcades Project in order to clarify the dialectical nature that he observes in it. To this end, I first examine the important role of fashion, thanks to its valorisation of novelty, in capitalism’s tendency towards the commodification of all things and in the development of the commodity cult. In connection with these aspects, I analyse how this social phenomenon contributes to the emergence of the view of history distinctive of capitalist society, linked to an ideal of progress that masks its social statism. Finally, an interpretation is offered of the political significance that Benjamin attaches to fashion both in terms of its relation to the task of the materialist historian and the utopian side that this phenomenon would include.

Keywords : Passagenarbeit; commodity; fetishism; phantasmagoria; history; politics; revolution.

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