Title

Benjamin's System of Coordinates (Second Baudelaire Essay)

Description

Granted, in Benjamin’s published works, we have only one example of an "idea” worked out explicitly as a system of coordinates, and it is a peripheral, insignificant one at that. It is found in the notes to the second Baudelaire essay, describing, not the armature of the essay in its entirety, but the conceptual positioning of a single motif, “idleness,” as one field within the general idea of physical activity.[From Benjamin's notes: "The schemata of coordinates have, in the optimal case, 11 concepts: 4 for the termini of the axes, four for the fields, two for the axes, one for the point of intersection."]

Designer

Buck-Morss, Susan

Date

1989

Source

The Dialectics of Seeing

Bibliographic Citation

Buck-Morss, Susan. 1989. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project. The MIT Press. Display E. Pages 213-214.

is composed of

English Cross/axis

has attribute

English Solid Line

use feature

English Brace

depict things of type

English Typological or Classification

Coverage

body

coordinates