The word phantasmagoria evokes the supernatural and the uncanny. Initially it was the name given to novel stagings of the magic lantern, which stimulated the senses with their 'living' images. As a chapter from the prehistory of cinema, phantasmagoria still raises questions today about the connection between perception and technology, imagination and knowledge. The book explores these questions in conversation with Walter Benjamin's late work. They appear: Baudelaire, Wagner, Nietzsche, Marx, Blanqui, Luxemburg. 

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