Benjamin’s Unconscious Colonialism

  • Dušan I. Bjelić
Chapter
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Abstract

Colonialism was not a topic per se in Benjamin’s critique of modernity, but his hashish language about phantasmagoria discloses his unconscious engagement with colonialism. If Freud’s cocaine language engaged Freud unconsciously with a primary colonialism, Benjamin’s hashish language engages unconsciously with a secondary colonialism. Benjamin’s Mexican dreams along with his hashish hallucinations and physiognomic analysis of the urban environment would unpack the traces of Orientalism and colonialism as infrastructural aspects of the colonial metropolis.

Keywords

Drug Trade Dialectical Intervention Associative Thinking Colonial Subject Tragic Hero 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Dušan I. Bjelić
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of CriminologyUniversity of Southern MainePortlandUSA

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