The presentation of contemporary capitalism as metropolitan modernity in One-Way Street also marks the turning point in Benjamin’s writings, away from what he retrospectively called “an archaic form of philosophizing naively caught up in nature” (BA, 88) towards the development of “a political view of the past” (SW 2, 210). The theory of experience outlined in his early writings is enlisted for revolutionary ends. In the essay, ‘Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia’ (1929), Surrealist experience provides an example of a “profane illumination”, which in contrast to the sacred and moralistic kind found in religion was guided by a political and a “materialistic, anthropological inspiration” (SW 2, 209). The latent energy residing in the most destitute and outmoded of things is, through the construction of new political constellations, transformed into an intoxicating, revolutionary experience (SW 2, 210). The possibility of such a profane illumination of nineteenth century Paris, to be presented as the origin of modernity, preoccupied the remaining decade of Benjamin’s life, and his research for the monumental and unfinished “Arcades Project” provides the material from which all his remaining work is constructed. 