Adorno’s reservations blocked publication of Benjamin’s Passagenarbeit section

Evidence

One part of Benjamin’s work, an important section of the Passagenarbeit, was turned down completely, primarily, it would seem, because of Adorno’s reservations. In 1936 Benjamin had been very impressed with the little-known cosmological speculations of Auguste Blanqui, the nineteenth-century French revolutionary, which appeared in a book by Blanqui called L’Eternite par les astres. Blanqui’s mechanical view of nature seemed to Benjamin to be related to his social order, which was dominated by a kind of eternal return. What Benjamin attempted to do in his essay, which was entitled “The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire,” was to develop the hidden relationship between Blanqui and the poet who was the central figure of Benjamin’s entire work, Baudelaire. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 616

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School’s internal editorial politics and Benjamin’s intellectual trajectory elsewhere in the book. — connects to: The Institut censored Benjamin’s text by softening its radical political language. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 613; The Institute’s censorship of Benjamin reflected self-protection, not doctrinal rigidity — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 614; Adorno’s core concepts originate from Benjamin but his political economy developed against him — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 294 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno’s core concepts originate from Benjamin but his political economy developed against him #expands (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 294