Abstract

MARTINEZ MATIAS, Paloma. Space, Time, and Phantasmagoria: Walter Benjamin’s Alienated Modernity. Tópicos (México) [online]. 2023, n.67, pp.251-282.  Epub Nov 13, 2023. ISSN 0188-6649.  https://doi.org/10.21555/top.v670.2176.

This paper is based on an interpretation of the concept of phantasmagoria in Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project according to which its meaning implies an extension of Marx’s understanding of ideology that makes it encompass modern society’s field of ideas, the materiality of its cultural productions, and its forms of experience in their reciprocal interaction. On this basis, and taking into account the dreamlike component that Benjamin attributes to the phantasmagorical, the paper analyses what he calls the phantasmagorias of space, linked to the figure of the flâneur, and the phantasmagorias of time, that Benjamin associates with the character of the gambler. Given the correspondence that he also establishes between these two kinds of phantasmagoria, a hermeneutical hypothesis is proposed to explain their correlation, in addition to the significance that this acquires in the Arcades Project.

Keywords : Passagenarbeit; commodity; fetishism; capitalism; Marx; history; tedium; hell.

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