In the “Exposes of 1935,” Benjamin writes,

The realization of dream elements, in the course of waking up, is the paradigm of dialectical thinking. Thus, dialectical thinking is the organ of historical awakening. Every epoch, in fact, not only dreams the one to follow but, in dreaming, precipitates its awakening. It bears its end within itself and unfolds it—as Hegel already noticed—by cunning (5)

Here, I believe is where we see the crux of Benjamin’s project, encompassing his rules and aspirations alike: to create an organ of historical awakening by bearing its existence and its end within itself.

This process begins in the text that precedes the “Convolutes” with Benjamin’s conversation of the commodified objects of industrial capitalism. Particularly in the vying for separation of the industrial and the artistic, Benjamin notes the commodification of things in their transition from value-in-use to value-in-existence. He then uses this idea to reflect the capitalist commodification of people by juxtaposing the differentiation between the work sphere and the home sphere—a realm where one is useful, to the utopia of home, where one can collect the commodified art and all “things are free from the drudgery of being useful” (6). Benjamin writes that through the collection, “the irreal center makes its place in the home…the interior is the asylum of art [and] the collector is the true resident of the interior” (6). The ideas surrounding the privatization of the home, which come from the capitalist allowance of private ownership, are here displayed as commodified in itself; the home becomes an object of spectacle and uselessness that encompasses the collection and its collector. Benjamin carries the commodification of humans, by both themselves and others, to the idea of the archive writing, “‘The History of Civilization’…makes an inventory, point by point, of humanity’s life forms and creations” (14). So, not only has art and humanity been commodified by industrial capitalism, but the cycle continues with humanity’s urge to commodify their existence in and through the archive.

Benjamin then applies this idea of the commodification that has permeated humanity and society as a whole through the ideas of capitalism to the literary. Writing from the onset of globalization, Benjamin demonstrates the fragmented form of the Capitalist world in the organization and piecing of his text, while rejecting the commodification that it prescribes via the content of the text. Furthermore, he utilizes archiving—a practice that he has already equated with capitalist commodification—in inventorying texts that reject and/or challenge the social situation within which the practice of archiving thrives. Herein, he creates the organ, or the dialectic with which he hopes to promote historical awakening. By displaying the “convolutes” both in the form of—and using a method encompassed by—industrialized Capitalist society, Benjamin produces a dialectic that initiates a reflection on society by its members.

Considering the collection from the view of the dialectic in play, it seems as though the boundaries of the text collection—whether outright or discrete—are that it must continue the dialectic by providing content that in some way forces the reader to reflect back upon capitalist society. Furthermore, it must do so in orchestration using archiving–a commodifying act–alongside a form that resonates with Capitalist globalization. Within this dialectical presentation that encompasses the present state of Benjamin’s society and views alternate to that of the bourgeoisie middle class, is found the potentiality to awaken history to its alterability.