Dance, prostitution and montage in Benjamin’s The Arcades Project

Abstract

In this article, I aim to reconstruct and analyse Walter Benjamin’s references to dance and to prostitution in The Arcades Project [Das Passagen-Werk]. In order to shed some light on this references, I take into account, on the one hand, the problem of the relationship between philosophy and dance and, on the other hand, two of the most revisited interpretations of the figure of the prostitute: that of Buck-Morss, who emphasizes that Benjamin relegates the prostitute to the character of commodity, and that of Weigel, who highlights how Benjamin links the prostitute to the notion of threshold. All things considered, I suggest that montage as a methodological proposal for The Arcades Project allows to identify and to value Benjamin’s references to dance. I also argue that paying attention to his mentions to precision dance and ballroom dance it is possible to underline the perspective that links the work of the prostitute and dancer with the experience of threshold.