The Arcades Project - Operi

(Expose of 1935, section I). To begin with, the phantasmagoria seems to have a transfiguring
function: world exhibitions, for example, transform the exchange value of commodi
ties by fading, as in a film, from the abstractness of their valuation. Similarly, the collector
transfigures things by divesting them of their commodity character. And in this same way,
iron construction and glass architecture are transfigured in the arcades becallse "the
century could not match the new technical possibilities with a new social order" (5:1257).
AI:. Benjamin in late 1937 came across Auguste BIanqui's L'Eterniti par les astres-a cosmological
phantasmagoria written by the revolutionary while in prison-he reencountered
his own speculation about the nineteenth century as Hades. The semblance character
(Scheinluifle) of all that is new and that the century liked to show off as modern par
excellence was consummated in its highest concept, that of progress, which Blanqui
denounced as a Ilphantasmagoria of history," as "something so old it predates thinking,
which struts about in the clothes of the New," as the etenlal recun-ence of the same, in
which mankind figures lIas one of the danmed" (5:1256). Belamin learned from Blanqui
that the phantasmagoria embraced "the most bitter criticism;' the harshest indictment of
society" (5:1256-1257). TIle transfiguring aspects of phantasmagoria change to enlightenment,
into the insight "that mankind will remain under the power of mythical fear as long
as phantasmagoria has a place in that fear (5:1256). The century always transcends the
"old social order" in its cultural phantasmagoria. As llwish symbols," the arcades and
interiors, the exhibition halls and panoramas are llresidue of a dream world." They are
part of BIochian dreaming ahead, anticipating the future: IIEvery epoch, in fact, not only
dreams the one to follow, but, in dreaming, precipitates its awakening. It bears it