The Revolutionary Power of Repetition: A Psychoanalytical Intervention of Benjamin's Phantasmagoria

This thesis contends that the concept of “repetition” is the kernel of modernity. In order to elaborate how modern industrial and commercial activities bring about the bodily sensation of repetition and shock, Walter Benjamin compares this modern experience, Erlebnis, to phantasmagoria, a public entertainment which had been popular since the eighteen century. Benjamin’s phantasmagoria provides a focal point for “repetition.” Repetition in the era of modernity denotes the inevitable bodily sensation of shock resulted from the mechanical stimuli and mass-reproduced commodity. Different from some modern critics who try to fight against the grotesque sameness and fantasy in the era of capitalism and industrialism, Benjamin believes that the modern repetition has reached a point of no return. If people, especially the bourgeoisie, are blind to Erlebnis, they would be trapped into a more vicious circle of repetition, such as hysterical and obsessional neurosis. Therefore, Benjamin makes phantasmagoria as a structure of life as well as a strategy to challenge the bourgeois ideology. Benjamin argues that phantasmagorical repetition interrupts the linear temporal consciousness. Instead, the non-linear temporal consciousness in phantasmagoria helps people remember the lost history of “what had been” through the “now-time” shocking experience. Benjamin proposes that the temporal dialectical constellation of remembrance is similar to Copernican Revolution. The revolution of phantasmagorical repetition provides possibility of improving the social injustice and mundane bourgeois lives in the modern period. Benjamin intends to illustrate how his concept of phantasmagoria could be realized by flâneurs or allegorists from different strategies including “the first and second technology,” “children’s play,” “Denkbilder,” and “empathy.” This thesis argues that Benjamin’s phantasmagorical theory undergoes a theoretical turn from the phantasmagorical urban experience to the phantasmagorical linguistic representation. This change can be understood from both Freudian theory of beyond the pleasure principle and Lacanian psychoanalysis about transference. From the psychoanalytical viewpoint, what Benjamin’s phantasmagorical revolution aims to look for can be understood as das Ding, the mOther. Although the death drive prompts people to repeat some demonic behaviors, it is through the repetition that people recognize their own desire. So long as people face their own desire, they get a chance to reconcile modern urban experiences with their lives. Through Benjamin’s phantasmagoria and psychoanalysis, we can understand better how the seemingly destructive messianic revolution could be a creative innovation and a redemptive hope in the era of modernity