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.
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Bjelić, D.I. (2016). Benjamin’s Unconscious Colonialism. In: Intoxication, Modernity, and Colonialism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58856-2_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58856-2_7
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