Operative thematics

We have operative thematics extending over groups of passages. We could call the files or convolutes major headings of what's in play. Essences? An ostensible history is being told about the arcades, so when we have a passage, for example, starting with "Cour de Commerce," this makes good sense. We expect the passage to contain a descriptor of this arcade. But we read for correspondence, symbols, allegories, and see Benjamin's commentary on the idea of "commerce," the animal, innocence (parenthetical), the machine of killing, the machine directed by the government (are all machines that way?), the cour, the courtyard, the heart, the comedy, the drama of all of this, in an old house in Paris, as part of an arcade, again defining commerce. The symbolic nature of language takes us through these themes as we read the informational content of the passage and know that it says something quite specific and true about what happened in this arcade, and we accept this and learn from it. Yes, the first experiments with the guillotine were conducted here, we think, but the theme of slaughter is carried over from A1a,3 and Véro-Dodat, and is more than just another theme? 

So in some sense Benjamin develops this extremely high standard for every word that is chosen, even as he didn't choose it, so that the reader is searching high and low for any possible connection to anything else in the universe. But the idea that each passage is a quotation in some ways defeats that notion, since the original authors could never have known that they were writing the history we're being told, that these connections would be presented through what they were writing. That is, unless Benjamin is drawing on the same linguistic essences as these other authors were, the same connections and symbolism and so on. The next quote invokes business once again, but this time of lithographic printing, so we're invited to compare the "business" (the commerce) of the guillotine with the printing press, with the butcher. And we can see here too how the printers, in their decking themselves out in lights in celebration of increased business, are comparable to the beauty in A1a,5, "the finery from which she hoped to make a fortune." The emancipation mirrors the condemnation of those subjected to the guillotine, and we see how the funds freed up by the government decision are used not only to decorate the arcade but also to shape its very construction and architecture, which arise as "beautifications" that protect shoppers from the elements.

Impasse Maubert again defines a passage. We can see a female poisoner, someone who might deserve the guillotine (like there's a profession or calling of "poisoner", a commerce in murder), very much like the beauty in A1a,5, who had assistants as well. (Also going back to the actress "Rachel" in A1a,4.) This passage refers to suicide. The apartment is multiple, the deaths are multiple, numbers. The method of commerce turns around.

A1,a9, written by Benjamin, specifically picks up these themes, which again are unstated. So the "reckless" aspect comes from the poisoners, as well as government action in removing the stamp duty, all falling under commerce, or financial speculation, associated with butchery, a host of other things as we take this kind of meaning in, which we can see but that's often not specific enough to articulate. I mean, if he had lived what would Benjamin have done to draw these themes out, to use this material, assuming he was going to write a more discursive text? Even in this micro-passage, there's an apparent discontinuity between the two sentences, which leaves us to connect the speculation and all it implies with the "dramatic signage" found in the arcades, signage that here qualifies as "art in the service of the businessman." Signage that is language being used informationally, but that in the Arcades Project is repurposed.