Sleepwalking in the Zeitraum of History

In The Arcades Project, Benjamin explores the different aspects of nineteenth-century culture, in search of a historical reality to which people can awake in a revelatory act of political consciousness. However, the uncanny effects of his archival approach impinge on this revelatory and sublime proc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inGothic studies Vol. 7; no. 1; pp. 65 - 78
Main Author Quéma, Anne
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Manchester, UK Manchester University Press 01.05.2005
Subjects
Associative processes
Benjamin, Walter (1892-1940)
Commodities
Consciousness
Consumerism
Culture
Etymology
German literature
Historians
Historiography
Literary criticism
Literary Studies
Rhetorical figures
Society
Subjectivity
Text analysis
Writing
gothic
history
Benjamin
uncanny
melancholia
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN1362-7937
2050-456X
2050-456X
DOI10.7227/GS.7.1.7

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Summary:In The Arcades Project, Benjamin explores the different aspects of nineteenth-century culture, in search of a historical reality to which people can awake in a revelatory act of political consciousness. However, the uncanny effects of his archival approach impinge on this revelatory and sublime process. Rather than revealing the political, economic, and technological latent content of the past, representations of the material object confront consciousness with the unfamiliar and abject forms of the repressed collective unconscious. The Gothic tropes of Benjamin‘s text are the traces of the melancholy haunting his concept of a demystifying revelation of historical and material truth.
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ISSN:1362-7937
2050-456X
2050-456X
DOI:10.7227/GS.7.1.7