Phantasmagoria and awakening. An approach to Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project

Abstract

This essay analyses the concept of phantasmagoria within the framework of the materials of Walter Benjamin’s unfinished Arcades Project. The analysis is based on the relationship found in the materials between this term and Marx’s commodity fetishism character in order to show how this character, as well as the notion of ideology that breaks off from it, form the foundation of Benjamin’s use of the concept of phantasmagoria. On this basis, it is argued that Benjamin’s sense of this notion implies an extension of Marx’s concept of ideology that would adhere to a two-fold objective: including within its scope aspects of the self-understanding of modern society not thematised by Marx and adapting it to the results of the evolution of capitalism. Finally, the paper studies the connection that the notion of phantasmagoria has with what Benjamin calls the “awakening” in the context of his reflection on the job of the materialist historian.