Profane Illumination

Download or read book Profane Illumination written by Margaret Cohen and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1995-03-06 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.