Profane illuminationとは 意味・読み方・使い方

Profane illumination is a term used by critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin to describe the central component of Surrealist experience, perception, and art in his 1929 essay “Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia.” It describes the process by which, sometimes but not always aided by dreams or hashish, a person perceives the most ordinary, overlooked objects of everyday reality – from obsolete train stations to out of place arcades – as uncanny, supernatural, and irrational. According to Benjamin, Surrealism’s ability to disorient and estrange through profane illumination made it a potentially explosive catalyst for social revolution.