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In the beginning-- there was the image : Walter Benjamin, JFK and the Phantasmagoria

This thesis begins by situating the work of Walter Benjamin in its historical complexity and examining the conceptual underpinnings of his phantasmagoria. Benjamin's Arcades Project is considered in light of his attempts to resituate primary structuring dichotomies in a fluid and dynamic configuration. These dichotomies include the political and the apolitical, the material and the immaterial, and the past and the present. The phantasmagoria-as-metaphor is then employed as a methodological framework for analyzing the ever-circulating images of John F. Kennedy. / This thesis is primarily concerned with the conceptual tools necessary to argue that an image is more "real" than its real-life counterpart, that is, real enough to carry resonances that extend beyond both its diminutive "artifice", and its original context. The relations between the immaterial image and its material referent are discussed as complementary and shifting, rather than oppositional and static. This thesis explores the possible and the actual convergence of the image and its material counterparts.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.26356
Date January 1994
CreatorsWasson, Haidee
ContributorsBurnett, Ron (advisor)
PublisherMcGill University
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Formatapplication/pdf
CoverageMaster of Arts (Graduate Communications Program.)
RightsAll items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
Relationalephsysno: 001447461, proquestno: MM99948, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest.

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