Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City

240 Pages·1996·19.471 MB·English

by  Graeme Gilloch, Walter Benjamin

Myth and Metropolis
FOR AUDREY AND PETER
MYTH AND
METROPOLIS
Walter Benjamin and the City
Graeme Gilloch
Polity Press
Copyright © Graeme Gilloch 1996
The right of Graeme Gilloch to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 1996 by Polity Press
in association with Black well Publishers Ltd.
First published in paperback 1997.
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ISBN 0–7456–1125–7
ISBN 0–7456–2010–8 (pbk)
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
List of Abbreviations viii
Introduction 1
1 Urban Images: From Ruins to Revolutions 21
2 Urban Memories: Labyrinth and Childhood 55
3 Dialectical Images: Paris and the Phantasmagoria of
Modernity 93
4 Urban Allegories: Paris, Baudelaire and the Experience of
Modernity 132
Conclusion 168
Notes 185
Bibliography 215
Index 222
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to a number of individuals and institutions who
contributed to this book since its beginnings as a doctoral thesis at
the University of Cambridge. I would especially like to thank John
Thompson for his guidance, support and patience throughout. I
would also like to thank Barry Sandwell who first introduced me
to Benjamin's work. I am grateful to David Frisby, Andrew Bowie,
Jon Fletcher, Anthony Giddens, Hans-Joachim Hahn, Thomas
Regehly (and the Kolloquium für Kritische Theorie in Frankfurt
am Main) and Charles Turner for their thoughtful comments,
suggestions and ideas. All errors, omissions and oversights are of
course mine.
I wish to express my gratitude to those institutions whose
generous financial support made this book possible: the Economic
and Social Research Council, the German Academic Exchange
Service (DAAD), the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the
British Council and especially the Leverhulme Trust.
I am grateful to the Akademie der Kunst in Berlin for access to
their archives and to the T. W. Adorno-Archiv (Frankfurt am
Main) and Suhrkamp Verlag and Harvard University Press for
kindly giving permission to include archival and previously
untranslated material from Benjamin's work. (Harvard University
Press will publish the first volume of a three-volume collection of
selected essays of Walter Benjamin in the Fall of 1996.) I am also
grateful to Telos Press Ltd. for permission to include material first
published with them. I am grateful to Verso/New Left Books for
permission to include material from One-Way Street and Other
Writings, 1985 and Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High
Capitalism, 1983, both by Walter Benjamin. Thanks are also due to
Acknowledgements vii
Gill Motley and the staff at Polity Press and Blackwells for their
patience and help.
I would especially like to thank Bernadette Boyle for all her
encouragement and help. Above all, I wish to thank my parents,
Audrey and Peter, for all their understanding, patience and
support.
Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders but
if any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be
pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.
List of Abbreviations
Where possible, existing English language translations have been
used. Other translations are my own. References to material in the
Passagen-Werk are given by Konvolut number and page (e.g., J67,l,
GS V, p. 438) or page of translation (e.g., N6,5, Smith ed., 1989,
p. 57). The following abbreviations are used in the text:
GS Gesammelte Schriften, vol I–VII, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and
Hermann Schweppenhäuser, with the collaboration of Theodor
Adorno and Gershom Scholem. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp
Verlag, 1974; Taschenbuch Ausgabe, 1991.
AB Theodor W. Adorno – Walter Benjamin Briefwechsel 1928–40, ed.
Henri Lonitz. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1994.
AP Aesthetics and Politics: Debates between Bloch, Lukács, Brecht,
Benjamin, Adorno, tr. and ed. Ronald Taylor, with an afterword
by Frederic Jameson. London: Verso, 1980.
BK Berliner Kindheit um Neunzehnhundert, with an afterword by
Theodor Adorno. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1950.
BR Briefe, ed. Gershom Scholem and Theodor Adorno. 2 vols.
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1978.
CB Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, tr.
Harry Zohn. London: Verso, 1983.
COR The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, ed. and annotated by
Gershom Scholem and Theodor Adorno, tr. Manfred Jacobson
and Evelyn Jacobson, with a foreword by Gershom Scholem.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
CP 'Central Park', tr. Lloyd Spencer, New German Critique, 34
(Winter 1985), pp. 28–58.
GER The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem 1932–
1940, ed. Gershom Scholem, tr. Gary Smith and André Lefèvre,