“Dissolution of ‘mythology’ into the space of history”: notes about surrealism,

Abstract

The present article presents the conceptions of dream, dream-image and awakening just as they are found in the notes that Walter Benjamin writes between 1927-1929/30 in his researches on the Parisian Arcades of the 19th century. The intention here is to demonstrate this thinker’s dual relation with surrealism, a relation that is of vindication and of criticism. It is also of indicating how this dual relation has as starting point a materialistic reflection on history, in terms of the conception of the past and of its reception by the present. Keywords: Dream. Dream-image. Awakening. History. Present.