BRIEF READING OF SPACE-TIME IN PASSAGEWAYS OF WALTER BENJAMIN: CONTRIBUTIONS TO GEOGRAPHICAL UNDERSTANDING OF CAPITALISM - DOI 10.5216/bgg.v36i2.42800

Abstract

The passageways were settling in the streets of Paris since mid-nineteenth century, parallel to the expansion of production and circulation of commodity in the French capital. The universal exhibition of industrial production and the use of iron and glass in the architecture and buildings, are from the same time and has as backdrop the same process of intensification of the capitalist materiality in Europe. Walter Benjamin develops a dense research about the structure of the space-time underlying the process that establishes the passagesway and concomitantly the haussmannization of the streets of Paris, process that has direct relation to the establishment of the centrality of commodity in French society, as well as with the enlargement of alienation. The reflection presented seeks to raise the possibility of recovering the reading of space-time that Walter Benjamin accomplishes in the Passageways as a way to assist in the geographical comprehension of capitalism.
Keywords: capital, commodity, phantasmagoria, alienation, Paris.