Walter Benjamin once wrote that The Arcades Project was “the theater of all my struggles and all my ideas.” Never completed and well over a decade in the making, The Arcades Project takes on the presentation and history of an entire era and place: the Parisian Arcades of the early 19th century. Via quotations, observations, commentaries, philosophical fragments, and “literary montage,” Benjamin attempts a better understanding of the conditions that fashioned not only that era, but also his own.
This extraordinary text focuses on some of the most key questions a philosopher can ask: How should we understand the world around us? How should we interpret this world? How should we understand its time? What are social phenomena, history, philosophy, and criticism? What are they for? We will examine selections from The Arcades Project alongside other related writings by Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, Theodor Adorno, and later commentators in an attempt to understand Benjamin’s philosophy of historical materialism, as well as the shocks and phantasmagoria of our own time.
There *is* no physical Brooklyn Institute. We hold our classes all over (thus far) Brooklyn and Manhattan, in alternative spaces ranging from the back rooms of bars to bookstores to spaces in cultural centers, including the Center for Jewish History, the Goethe-Institut, and the Barnard Center for Research on Women. We can (and do) turn any space into a classroom. You will be notified of the exact location when you register for a class.
Instructors will contact students approximately one week prior to the first class with reading assignments and details about the course location.
