The Arcades Project - Operi

Marx lays bare the causal connection between economy and culture. For us, what
matters is the thread of expression. It is not the economic origins of culture that
will be presented, but the expression of the economy in its culture. At issue, in
other words, is the attempt to grasp an economic process as perceptible Vi·­
phenomenon, from out of which proceed all manifestations oflife in the arcades
(and, accordingly, in the nineteenth century) . [Nla,6]
This research-which deals fundamentally with the expressive character of the
earliest industrial products, the earliest industrial architecture, the earliest ma­
chines, but also the earliest departnlent stores, advertisenlents, and so on-thus
becomes important for Marxism in two ways. First, it will demonstrate how the
milieu in which Marx's doctrine arose affected that doctrine through its expres­
sive character (which is to say, not only through causal connections) ; but, second,
it will also show in what respects Marxism, too, shares the expressive character of
the material products contemporary with it. [Nla,7]
Method of this project: literary montage. I needn't say anything. Merely show. I
shall purloin no valuables, appropriate no ingenious formulations. But the rags,
the refuse-these I will not inventory but allow, in the only way possible, to come
into their own: by making use of them. [Nla,8]
Bear in mind that commentary on a reality (for it is a question here of commen­
tary, of interpretation in detail) calls for a method completely different from that
required by commentary on a text. In the one case, the scientific mainstay is
theology; in the other case, philology. [N2 ,1]
It may be considered one of the methodological objectives of this work to demon­
strate a historical materialism which has annihilated within itself the idea of
progress. Just here, historical materialism has every reason to distinguish itself
sharply from bourgeois habits of thought. Its founding concept is not progress
but actualization. [N2,2]
Historical "understanding" is to be grasped, in principle, as an afterlife of that
which is understood; and what has been recognized in the analysis of the "after­
life of works;' in the analysis of "fame;' is therefore to be considered the foundation
of history in general. [N2,3]
How tlus work was written: rung by rung, according as chance would offer a
narrow foothold, and always like someone who scales dangerous heights and
never allows himself a moment to look around, for fear of becoming dizzy (but
also because he would save for the end the full force of the panorama opening
out to him). [N2,4]
Overcoming the concept of "progress" and overcoming the concept of "period of
decline" are two sides of one and the same thing. [N2,S]