Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of the Fairy Tale

Abstract

This article investigates, in the first instance, the role that reflections on the fairy tale have had in the Marxist tradition, as can be seen in a whole series of authors that includes Marx, Lukács, Bloch and Benjamin, but also Kracauer. For Benjamin and Kracauer, in particular, interest in the fairy tale is related to a provocative reflection on the dialectics of myth and history, and of myth and Enlightenment, which exerted a fundamental influence on Horkheimer and Adorno, although it differs from the theory of these philosophers in important respects. At the same time, it displays an analysis on topics such as memory, childhood and utopia that represents an original way of combining Marx’s theory with Freudian psychoanalysis.

Translation from the Spanish by Cecilia E. Lasa.