Benjamin’s Passagen-Werk merged historical materialism with theological concepts of nature, dream, and myth

Evidence

Six chapters were planned in Benjamin’s prospectus for the Passagen-Werk: Fourier or the Arcades'; Daguerre or the Dioramas’; Grandville or the World Exhibitions'; Louis-Philippe or the Interior’; Baudelaire or the Streets of Paris'; Haussmann or the Barricades’. The arcades, panoramas, world exhibitions and interiors were opposed, as decayed architectural residues of the dream-world of the collective, to the streets and barricades, as scenes of awakening into the open space of history and to a dream consciousness capable of producing dialectical images. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 858 (#expands, via linked claim)

What you write about the end of your essay period, and above all about starting work on the Passagen, is really the best news I have heard from you for many years. You know I see this work as truly the one piece of prima philosophia which has been given to us, and my one wish is that you will be as strong and as capable of carrying it out, after a long and painful break, as the scale of the task requires. And if I might offer your work something of what I hope for it as it starts on its way, without your taking this as immodesty, then it would be this: that it should ruthlessly bring to fruit all of the theological content and literalness in the most extreme theses which have been invested in it. (To be precise, it should have a ruthless disregard for the objections of that Brechtian atheism which, as an inverse theology, we may one day have to save, but which it is not our task to appropriate!) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 780 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Benjamin’s Passagen-Werk was structured as an awakening from the collective dream-world into history — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 858; Adorno supervised Benjamin’s attempt to fuse theology with historical materialism; Benjamin secularized theology into the Marxist commodity fetish concept — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 215 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Benjamin’s Passagen-Werk was structured as an awakening from the collective dream-world into history #expands (0.90) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 858
• Adorno demanded the Passagen preserve its theological content against Brechtian atheism. #corroborates (0.88) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 780
• Adorno supervised Benjamin’s attempt to fuse theology with historical materialism #corroborates (0.85)
• Benjamin’s thought contained irreconcilable theological and materialist commitments. #complicates (0.85)
• Benjamin secularized theology into the Marxist commodity fetish concept #expands (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 215
• Historical materialism needs hidden theology to win its game #corroborates (0.78) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 601
• Aragon’s 1926 work inspired Benjamin’s Passagen project as a modern mythology #expands (0.78) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 822
• Theology-Marxism mediation hindered rather than helped Benjamin’s originality #complicates (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 890
• Aragon’s Le Paysan de Paris profoundly moved Benjamin and shaped the Passagen work #expands (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 822