(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

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KARL IVAN SOLIBAKKE
had to compete against the forces of entropy that erode collective identity
and invalidate conventions of collective memory. As one of the pioneers
of a visual turn in twentieth-century culture, largely stimulated by the
early proliferation of photography and film, he nevertheless demonstrated
a steadfast devotion to the written word as the primary archive of cultural
historiography, one that could preserve memory from the ravages of time,
the imperfection of recollection, and the inevitability of human mortality.
The remainder of this chapter aims to consider the Passagen-Werk from
synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Sections II and III provide insights
into the basic structure and scope of the fragment, spotlighting the significance
of commodities and focusing on their role in Benjamin’s version of
historical materialism. Part IV is devoted to Benjamin’s philosophy of history
and its practical application in the Passagen-Werk. Pursuant to surveying
the vast fragment on a synchronic level, sections V and VI contrast two
concepts of urbanity, one which predates Benjamin’s by eighty years, while
the other comes into view nearly half a century after his death. Adopting
a diachronic perspective, the contention is that the Passagen-Werk should
be perceived as the historical link between Heinrich Heine’s contemporary
configurations of the Parisian metropolis as it crosses the threshold into
modernity and Paul Virilio’s postmodern rendition of the cyber city after
the dawn of telematic global design. Heine, Benjamin, and Virilio are unanimous
in their appreciation of the cybernetic forces that persistently work to
redesign collective urban codes by subverting and supplanting sensations
of how time and space are interfaced in municipal models. As communication
technologies come to support ever more sophisticated channels of
interaction, literal, visual, virtual, and multi-dimensional data are accessed
and processed by media providers at ever faster rates of transmission. Echoing
Heine and Benjamin, Virilio reveals that the last vestiges of city surfaces
have been launched onto today’s digital highways and that these global
thoroughfares have usurped the arcades and passages once found in Walter
Benjamin’s “capital of the nineteenth century.”
II
During his lifetime Benjamin collated the material designated for the Passagen-Werk,
the quotations culled from a variety of sources and his glosses,
into thirty-six folders, which he designated as “convolutes.” Initially accumulated
between 1927 and 1929/1930 and then after a long hiatus once
again during his years in exile in France, these were catalogued while Benjamin
was doing research at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, located at
that time adjacent to the Passage Vivienne in the heart of the metropolis.
The compilations were color-coded and given labels, such as “Mode”
(“Fashion”), “Eisenkonstruktion” (“Iron Construction”), “Baudelaire,”
“Der Flaneur” (“The Flâneur”), “Die Straßen von Paris” (“The Streets