DIALECTICS OF SEEING, THE - WALTER BENJAMIN AND THE ARCADES PROJECT

Walter Benjamin's magnum opus was a book he did not live to write. In 'The Dialectics of Seeing', Susan Buck-Morss offers an inventive reconstruction of the Passagen Werk, or Arcades Project, as it might have taken form. Working with Benjamin's vast files of citations and commentary which contain a myriad of historical details from the dawn of consumer culture, Buck-Morss makes visible the conceptual structure that gives these fragments philosophical coherence. She uses images throughout the book to demonstrate that Benjamin took the debris of mass culture seriously as the source of philosophical truth.