Idleness does not exist

As much as the idleness convolute proposes to be about this existent thing "idleness," with its variations in leisure and indolence, Benjamin immediately obviates this existence by illustrating how the work ethic of bourgeois society has excluded idleness. The first overt statement of this exclusion is via the citation in m1,3, where Sainte-Beuve describe how "private life," "conversation," "happiness" have disappeared "now that everyone here has a trade." Then Marx is cited, with the "victory of industry over a heroic indolence." Then Baudelaire is cited with the inversion of the "via contemplativa" into the "via contemptiva." Then in m1a,3 "immediate experience," which in many respects is true knowledge for Benjamin, is both described as the true experience of the idler and then shown as having succumbed to "work experience" such that idleness becomes a "force field lost to humanity" (m1a,4). Thus for a variety of reasons idleness does not exist, or does so only as part of history, as something that can be cited. Similar to contemporary discussions of immaterial labor, industry and work have permeated every facet of human life, from the physical to the emotional.