Chaque époque rêve la suivante
‘Balzac was the first to speak of the ruin of the bourgeoisie. But it was surrealism which first allowed its gaze to roam freely over it.
The development of the forces of production had turned the wish-symbols of the previous century into rubble, even before the monuments which represented them had crumbled.
This development during the 19th century liberated the forms of creation from art, just as in the 16th century the sciences freed themselves from philosophy. A start was made by architecture as engineering.
There followed the reproduction of Nature as photography. The creation of fantasies was preparing to become practical as commercial art.
In the feuilleton, creative writing bowed to the exigencies of layout. All these products were on the point of entering the market as commodities. But they still lingered on the threshold. From this epoch spring the arcades and the interiors, the exhibition-halls and the dioramas. They are residues of a dream-world.
The utilization of dream-elements in waking is the textbook example of dialectical thought. Hence dialectical thought is the organ of historical awakening.
Every epoch not only dreams the next, but while dreaming impels it towards wakefulness.
It bears its end within itself, and reveals it – as Hegel already recognized – by a ruse. With the upheaval of the market economy, we begin to recognize the monuments of the bourgeoisie as ruins even before they have crumbled.’
Walter Benjamin
The Arcades Project
Paris – Capital of the Nineteenth Century
Read the entire chapter at: http://www.casbarcelona.org/BenjaminParis.pdf
