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Margaret Cohen
Profane Illumination
Walter Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist Revolution
$26.95, £19.95 paperback
978-0-520-20150-7
Available Now
271 pages,
July 1993, Available worldwide
Categories: German Studies; Philosophy; Literary Theory & Criticism
July 1993, Available worldwide
Categories: German Studies; Philosophy; Literary Theory & Criticism
"Fascinating. . . . Cohen demonstrates genuine insight."—George Steiner, Times Literary Supplement
"This challenging, often profound book investigates the 'visual rhetoric of understanding' manifest in surrealism's and Marxism's 'emancipatory vocabularies' and dream imagery. Drawing upon Walter Benjamin's and André Breton's theoretical, critical, and literary writings, Cohen posits a genre of 'Gothic Marxism,' which owes much to Freud's psychoanalytic oeuvre. This genre links dialectical thinking, dreaming, and historical awakening with political, cultural, and artistic bricolage. . . . The book contains evocative illustrations."—S. Golub, Choice
"This challenging, often profound book investigates the 'visual rhetoric of understanding' manifest in surrealism's and Marxism's 'emancipatory vocabularies' and dream imagery. Drawing upon Walter Benjamin's and André Breton's theoretical, critical, and literary writings, Cohen posits a genre of 'Gothic Marxism,' which owes much to Freud's psychoanalytic oeuvre. This genre links dialectical thinking, dreaming, and historical awakening with political, cultural, and artistic bricolage. . . . The book contains evocative illustrations."—S. Golub, Choice
Margaret Cohen's encounter with Walter Benjamin, one of the twentieth century's most influential cultural and literary critics, has produced a radically new reading of surrealist thought and practice. Cohen analyzes the links between Breton's surrealist fusion of psychoanalysis and Marxism and Benjamin's post-Enlightenment challenge to Marxist theory. She argues that Breton's surrealist Marxism played a formative role in shaping postwar French intellectual life and is of continued relevance to the contemporary intellectual scene.