Student reading (Y1,2, pt. 4)

This is not a close reading, it is a "reading at all." It is a looking at the passage as a dialectical image, seeing how meaning is operating on two distinct "sides," but these sides seamlessly feeding into one another, disappearing into each other, in a way that aligns with but also critically comments on things like Benjamin's theory of language. (Sidenote on lack of clarity in these notes: it is a reflection of the object, a necessity, a desire to let the object that is the Arcades Project not be interfered with and to exist on its own terms; we come to clarity now and then, and those times are all the more important, but these other preparatory readings have just as much claim to existence). In any case, we can say that even this doubleness is a "profane" understanding of that language, a language summarized in Benjamin's otherwise anti-linguistic (if we can say that) conception of the "dramatic," though as we can easily see this studious reading happens to depict precisely what Benjamin is doing with the Arcades Project overall, with history itself, with his definition of what writing is, with his engagement with language and ideas at all. A vague sense of abyss.