Walter Benjamin's Phantasmagoria

Awakening Dead Time: Adorno on Husserl, Benjamin, and the Temporality of Music

“…These devices were used in what amounted to magic shows. In a room full of paying spectators, the operator of the lantern would produce a series of ghostly images, including-as a climax-images of the recently deceased (Cohen, 1989). Marx's own language suggests a way in which this device might be read as an allegory for commodity fetishism, which we have seen him describe as 'a phantasmagorical form of a relation between things ...' Just as commodity fetishism mystifies the concrete, historical and social origin of commodities, so too does the phantasmagoria mystify^ the origin of its luminous images, which can seem to be the result of magic, rather than the result of a technical apparatus.…”

Memories of capitalism: cities, phantasmagoria and arcades

“…The original phantasmagoria was a form of popular spectacle that emphasized the principle of deception or concealment, particularly associated with the presentation of the figure of the ghost (on the history of the phantasmagoria see Quigley, 1948; Altick, 1978; Barnouw, 1981; Cohen, 1989; 1995; Crary, 1990; Castle, 1995; Heard, 1996; During, 2002). The earliest phantasmagorias were shown in Europe, notably Paris, in the latter part of the eighteenth century.…”

“…The Palais Royal was also the site of the first Arcades (see Geist, 1985). The technique was taken up, popularized and named as a Phantasmagoria by Paul Philidor in 1789 who held a show under that name in Berlin in that year (see Heard, 1996; During, 2002: 102) However, the person who is more commonly given the credit for naming and inventing the phantasmagoria in 1798 was the Belgian entertainer Etienne‐Gaspard Robertson, who apparently stole the idea from Philidor (see Heard, 1996) and whose shows caused a sensation in Paris in the aftermath of the Revolution (see Quigley, 1948: 77–8; Castle, 1995: 144ff; Cohen, 1989; During, 2002: 102ff).…”

“…As much popular theatre as magic lantern show (see Cohen, 1989) — assistants would sometimes move around the audience dressed as skeletons — Robertson’s shows were dominated by the presentation of images of the recently dead figures from recent French history such as Rousseau and Voltaire, and by leading figures from the Revolution such as Marat. Their ghostly images were projected onto a screen in the middle of the room — as ghosts returning to haunt the spectators in the aftermath of the Terror.…”

“…What the word’s etymology signifies is of interest too. Three interpretations of the term have been offered (see Cohen, 1989: 95):…”