Abstract

Benjamin and the City of Light
Merrifield, Andy | January 31, 2000 issue

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The article focuses on the book "The Arcades Project," by Walter Benjamin and translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Benjamin was perhaps the greatest twentieth-century urban Marxist and hence one of the most troubled Marxist thinkers. One big chunk of the books is devoted to socialist Karl Marx himself, in which quotation after quotation from his book "Das Kapital" is piled one on top of the other. And yet, when all is said and done, the book remains a literary failure, a frustrating text, overwhelming and befuddling, one that wears the reader down, leaving him wallowing in a gigantic maze of quotations and ideas, gossip and rumination.

See Also:

ARCADES Project, The (Book); BENJAMIN, Walter, 1892-1940; EILAND, Howard; MCLAUGHLIN, Kevin; MARXIST criticism; DAS Kapital (Book); MARX, Karl, 1818-1883
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