“The Last Dinosaur from Europe”. The Concept of Fossil from the Perspective of a Natural History of Capitalism in Walter Benjamin

Abstract

In this article I will try to read the concepts of fossil and nineteenth-century prehistory, as it appears in the project of the passages of Paris by Walter Benjamin from its link with contemporary studies on e-waste. This will lead me to investigate the background of these concepts in The Origin of the German Trauerspiel and, from there, articulate a brief discussion with the notion of second nature of Gyorgy Lukács. I will also seek to continue delving into the Arcades Project, linking the notions of fossils and prehistory with the problems of childhood and wish image. Finally, I would like to conclude these investigations by confronting Benjamin's ideas with two nineteenth-century geological speculations (Antonio Stoppani’s ideas about a supposed Anthropozoic era of the earth and a curious lithograph by Henry de la Beche in which an ichthyosaur professor discovers fossilized human remains) with which it has suggestive resonances.