ABSTRACT
This model of writing corresponds to a topographical concept of memory which sees the visible signs as mnemic symbols, as the products of a psychic process (Bearbeitung), and as distorted representations-as a form of writing, then, in which the memory traces are never visible unmediatedly and in their entirety. Such a model of a writing of the language of the unconscious (of the collective) underlies the Passagen project in its second, longer, phase from 1934 onwards, whereas in the
first phase of work on the project (1927-29), Benjamin had proceeded from a spatial-topographical model in which the spheres of dream and waking appear as opposing spaces, as it were duplicated in the topography of the city. The intervening period-that is, the years from around 1927 to 1934-was a time spent in elaborating his specific conception of memory, thus a time spent in theoretical work on the representation, functioning, and language of memory, which may be reconstructed on the basis of the essays, reviews, and sketches he wrote during this period and in which clear signs of a reading of Freud can be discerned.3
