In his very first presentation of Paris, capital of the 19th Century, Benjamin had already placed Fourier at the heart of his reflection by entitling the first part : « Fourier, or the passages ». Such centrality is meaningful. Beyond their direct relationship with the covert passages, the forms of the phalanx show many traces of Fourier’s utopia. In Benjamin’s interpretation, the dream of the former turns out to be the photographic negative of the latter’s. In the first place that of the passage, as belonging to a conception of modernity informed by technical progress and the reproduction of goods. Then that of the phalanx leading to a progressive vision born from the harmonization of a cluster of singular realities. In fact, passages and phalanx, saint simonian and fourierist visions seem to cut across each other in Benjamin’s writings, drawing out a chiasma of contradictory forces.

Maurizio Gribaudi, est directeur d’études à l’EHESS. Historien et démographe, il travaille depuis longtemps sur la formation des groupes sociaux dans les sociétés contemporaines et plus particulièrement dans le Paris du XIXe siècle. Il a récemment publié avec Michèle Riot-Sarcey 1848, la révolution oubliée (La Découverte, 2008) ainsi que plusieurs articles sur les transformations urbaines et sociales parisiennes.