Resumen de Notas sobre la Fantasmagoría
The Phantasmagoria is a type of audiovisual spectacle that became very popular during the nineteenth century. It originated in terror-ridden Paris, immediately following the revolution. Yet the Phantasmagoria was also a metaphor employed by several nineteenth century thinkers to characterize the times in which they were living. Marx, and later Benjamin and Adorno, would use the term to refer to the ontologically misguided perception of reality within a faith-bereft, technologically dominated capitalism. The term thus came to refer to what was symptomatic of modernity. Given its fruitfulness as a cultural trope, the expression can serve as a vehicle for new interpretations of nineteenth century visual culture. The article refers to the writings of Robertson (inventor of the term) and the examples he gives of the Phantasmagoria, to give a historical account of the term’s metaphorical as well as practical sense, i.e., as a “seeing machine.” Special emphasis is given to the parallelism between this “technique for seeing” and new areas of the visual imaginary which function in a similar way, i.e., abstract through metonymical properties of the trope.
