WALTER BENJAMIN
Les moutons tous rotis bondiront dans La pLaine,
Et Les brochets au bLeu nageront dans La Seine;
L es epinards viendront au monde fricasses,
Avec des croutons frits tout au tour concasses.
L es arbres produiront des pommes en compotes
Et L'on moissonnera des cerricks et des bottes;
I Ln eigera du vin, iL pLeuvera des pouLets,
Et du cieLLes canards tomberont aux navets.
Laugli~
and Vanderbusch,
Louis et Le Saint-Simonein
(1832)
187
World exhibitions are the sites of pilgrimages to the commodity
fetish. "Europe is on the move to look at merchandise," said Taine in
1855. The world exhibtions are preceded by national industrial exhibi–
tions, the first of which takes place in 1798 on the Champ-de-Mars. It
proceeds from the wish "to entertain the working classes, and becomes
for them a festival of emancipation." The workers stand as cutomers in
the foreground. The framework of the entertainment
indu~try
has not
yet been formed. The popular festival supplies it. Chaptal's speech on
industry opens this exhibition. The Saint-Simonists, who plan the
industrialization of the earth, take up the idea of world exhibitions.
Chevalier, the first authority in the new field, is a pupil of Enfantin
and editor of the Saint-Simonist journal,
Globe.
The Saint-Simonists
predicted the development of the world economy, but not of the class
struggle. Beside their participation in industrial and commercial
enterprises about the middle of the century stands their helplessness in
questions concerning the proletariat. The world exhibitions glorify the
exchange value of commodities. They create a framework in which
commodities' intrinsic value is eclipsed. They open up a phantasma–
goria that. people enter to be amused. The entertainment industry
facilitates this by elevating people to the level of commodities. They
submit to being manipulated while enjoying their alienation from
themselves and others. The enthronement of merchandise, with the
aura of amusement surrounding it, is the secret theme of Grandville's
art. This is reflected in the discord between its utopian and its cynical
elements. Its subtleties in the presentation of inanimate objects corre–
spond to what Marx called the "theological whims" of goods. This is
clearly distilled in the term
specialite-a
commodity description
coming into use about this time in the luxury industry; under Grand–
ville's pencil the whole of nature is transformed into
specialites.
He
presents them in the same spirit in which advertising- a word that is
also coined at this time-begins to present its articles. He ends in
madness.
