Benjamin read the nineteenth century’s commodity-driven novelties as stunted by reified cultural concepts.

Evidence

Benjamin had the idea of combining views of the nineteenth century such as this with the quality of magical eeriness in that century’s products which was brought out by the surrealists and by authors such as Julien Green. From this combination, he drew out an image of the protohistory of the nineteenth century which indicated that the new creations and ways of life, above all those determined by the production of commodities, had not been crowned by the creation of a new form of society and given free development, but had only achieved a development that had been narrowed and misled by reified cultural concepts and was accompanied by phantasmagorias. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 839

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the Passagen-Werk concept of ‘protohistory’ and its claim that commodity production was misled by reified cultural concepts into phantasmagoria.
• DEEPTHINKING: Core Benjamin thesis: modernization under commodity production produced not a new society but its phantasmagoric illusion — the central claim of the arcades project.
• XREF: connects to: Benjamin wanted to rescue the nineteenth century from reified tradition via spontaneous memory.; Benjamin’s seemingly eccentric concepts about technology and mass media pinpointed the era’s central problems. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 895; Benjamin’s project aimed to rescue the nineteenth century from reification through spontaneous memory — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 810 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Benjamin’s project aimed to rescue the nineteenth century from reification through spontaneous memory #responds-to (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 810
• Benjamin’s seemingly eccentric concepts about technology and mass media pinpointed the era’s central problems. #qualifies (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 895