Benjamin read the Paris Métro as a capitalist underworld devouring clerical workers daily.

Evidence

But there is another system of galleries stretching through Paris, underground: the Métro, where in the evening the lights begin to glow in red, the lights that mark the way into the hell of names. CombatElyséeGeorges VEtienne MarcelSolférinoInvalidesVaugirard have thrown off the shameful chains of Rue', of Place’, and here, in a darkness pierced by lightning, rent by whistle-shrieks, these names have become the misshapen gods of the sewers, the fées of the catacombs. This labyrinth harbours not one, but a dozen blind, charging bulls, into whose jaws not one Theban virgin a year, but thousands of anaemic office-girls and tired shop-assistants must throw themselves every morning. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 832

Categorization

• XREF: The Minotaur-allegory of workers consumed by capitalist infrastructure ties to broader Frankfurt School critique of rationalization crushing subjectivity. — connects to: Benjamin read the Paris Métro as a modern underworld of mythic names; Adorno read Benjamin’s arcades project as a radicalization of Marx’s commodity fetish — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 794

Broader Connections

• Adorno read Benjamin’s arcades project as a radicalization of Marx’s commodity fetish #expands (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 794