Benjamin’s machine catalogue psychologically embodies Baudelaire’s modern subject rather than analyzing machinery.

Evidence

And Benjamin goes on to complete this catalogue with a description of the worker and his psychological subjection to the operation of the machine in the factory. Yet it seems to me that beyond the value of this passage as an analysis of the psychological effect of machinery, it has for Benjamin a secondary intention, it satisfies a psychological requirement which is perhaps in some ways even deeper and more important than the official intellectual one; and that is to serve as a concrete embodiment for the state of mind of Baudelaire. … These phenomena are intensely familiar to Benjamin, but somehow he seems to feel them as insufficiently “rendered”: he cannot possess them spiritually, he cannot express them adequately, until he finds some sharper and more concrete physical image in which to embody them. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 162

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does this ‘psychological requirement’ driving Benjamin behind the ‘official intellectual’ surface differ from Adorno’s critique of Benjamin’s materialism? Is the whole Benjamin-Adorno aporia about whether the concrete image does intellectual work or just psychic work?
• XREF: connects to: Benjamin’s machines lead to a theory of aura, not of causality — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 163; Benjamin read Baudelaire’s grimace as the physiognomy of modern shock-absorbing perception — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 859

Broader Connections

• Benjamin read Baudelaire’s grimace as the physiognomy of modern shock-absorbing perception #corroborates (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 859
• Benjamin’s machines lead to a theory of aura, not of causality #qualifies (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 163