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Elements of China in Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project



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ZENG Jun

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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2018.05.001

College of Liberal Arts, Shanghai University

Over 30 items in Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project were about China, through which we could roughly know Benjamin’s understandings and interpretations towards China. In his explanation of the illustration Le triomphe du kaleidoscope, ou Le Tombeau du Jeu chinois, (the triumph of Kaleidoscope or the Demise of Chinese Games), Walter Benjamin captures characteristics of Cubist art in European Modernism rather than the conflict between Chinese and Western culture. These items about China have mentioned numerous Chinese utensils and presented a sense of curiosity and glory of things “from China”. Moreover, Walter Benjamin paid special attention to traditional Chinese shadow play and urban garbage disposition in China and quotations of Karl Marx’s works as well. 

Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, elements of China