The Arcades Project - Operi

sion to fertilize and give birth to oneself in an anal birth fantasy, surpassing and
replacing one's own father and mother in an endlessly escalating process. "Thus,
in the last analysis, the passion for gambling satisfies the claim of the bisexual
ideal, which the narcissist discovers in himself; at stake is the formation of a
compromise between masculine and feminine, active and passive, sadistic and
masochistic; and in the end it is the unresolved decision between genital and anal
libido that confronts the gambler in the well-known symbolic colors of red and
black. The passion for gambling thus serves an autoerotic satisfaction, wherein
betting is foreplay, winning is orgasm, and losing is ejaculation, defecation, and
castration. '" Edmund Bergler. "Zur Psychologie des Hasardspielers," bnago, 22,
no. 4 (1936), pp. 409-410; with reference to Ernst Simmel, " Zur Psychoanalyse
des Spielers," Internationale Zeitsch";ftfur Psychoanalyse, 6 (1920), p. 397.
[Olla,l]
With the discovery of Tahiti, declares Fourier, with the example of an order in
which "'large-scale industry" is compatible with erotic freedom, "conjugal slavery"
has become unendurahle. l7 [Olla,2]
Apropos of Freud's conjecture that sexuality is a dwindling function "of" the
human heing, Brecht remarked on how the bourgeoisie in decline differs from
the feudal class at the time of its downfall: it feels itself to be in all things the
quintessence of humankind in general, and hence can equate its own decline with
the death of humanity. (Illis equation, moreover, can play a part in the unmistak­
able crisis of sexuality within the bourgeoisie.) The feudal class, by virtue of
privileges, felt itself to be a class apart, which corresponded to the reality. That
enabled it, in its waning, to manifest some elegance and insouciance. [01la,3)
Love for the prostitute is the apotheosis of empathy with the commodity.
[011a,4]
Magistrate of Paris! March with the system,
Pursue the good work of Mangin and Belleyme:
Design, as chateaux for the filthy Phrynes,
Pestilent, lonely, and dark quurtier·s.
Barthelemy, Paris: Revue satirique it M. G. Delessert (Paris,
1828), p. 22. [012,1]
A description of the lower class of prostitute that had settled in the vicinity of the
city gate, the barriere. It comes from Du Camp, and would make an excellent
caption for many of Guys's watercolors: "If one pushes open the barrier and tl,e
door tlmt closes the entrance, one finds oneself in a bar furnished with marble or
wooden tables and lighted by gas; tlnough the clouds of smoke given off by the
pipes, one distinguishes garbage men, diggers, carters-drinkers, for the most
part-seated before a flask of absinthe and talking to creat'llreS who are as gro­
tesque as they are pitiable. All of these creatures are dressed, in almost the sanle