Blind alley or a blind spot? Walter Benjamin on caricature

by Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius, Birkbeck, University of [email protected] Walter Benjamin, the most inspiring Marxist philosopher of modernity and of history, linked to the Frankfurt School of critical theory, ‘took seriously the debris of mass culture as the source of philosophical truth’ (Buck-Morss 1991, ix). While his texts on photography, signs, puzzles, toys, and Micky Mouse, have been widely discussed, Benjamin’s explicit remarks on caricature in the article on Edu...