m3,2, pt. 4 (reading)

What does a citation like m3,2 say about reading? It's true that, as my own writing here indicates, I am in the midst of reading this citation, of parsing out its symbolic levels, parsing out its allegory—and finally the citation is presentational is the same way as allegory. We arrive at that idea of language, where it functions as a gate through which passes or through which we pass into an experience. The Arcades Project is experiential, a living text in exactly this way. Citational data lead to and are this experience, an immediate experience, an experience of study, the concept and foundation of the student. The idea of student may take on many meanings, but in this specific sense we as readers are students, students of reading itself, made by and participating in this attentive and linguistic act that defines us, and we share this specific status with Benjamin himself, student of history and specifically of the history of and created by the arcades.