Benjamin’s historical analyses of machinery are actually allegorical emblems for psychological states.

Evidence

The machine, the list of inventions, is precisely such an image; and it will be clear to the reader that we consider such a passage, in appearance a historical analysis, as in reality an exercise in allegorical meditation, in the locating of some fitting emblem in which to anchor the peculiar and nervous modern state of mind which was Benjamin’s subject matter. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 162

Categorization

• XREF: This is the method of allegorical reading that ties Jameson to Benjamin and then to Jameson’s own practice later in Marxism and Form and beyond — connects to the late Jameson’s ‘allegorize everything’ stance and to Benjamin’s Passagenwerk method. — connects to: Benjamin’s oeuvre is fundamentally a collection of allegorical objects; Benjamin approached materialist history through studies of allegorical art — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 360; Benjamin’s machines lead to a theory of aura, not of causality — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 163
• DEFINE: Defines what Jameson means by allegorical meditation: not hidden symbolism but the anchoring of a modern nervous psychic state in a concrete material emblem.

Broader Connections

• Benjamin approached materialist history through studies of allegorical art #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 360
• Benjamin’s machines lead to a theory of aura, not of causality #qualifies (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 163