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[...] Brecht hoped that there would be an abrasion between the grandeur of the opera house and the harsh message. Instead, it became another culinary treat in the operatic repertory, aberrantly decoded by its audiences and then happily consumed like whiskey. [...]

But the philosopher never shared the dramatist’s agitprop hopes.

[...] so many of the world’s leading metropolises have turned sclerotic – socially stratified cages to keep the riff-raff out and the rest of us polishing our must-have Nespresso machines. In Paris, the poor are banished beyond the périphérique so that when they revolt, they destroy their own banli…

[...] Most likely, the term dialectical image obscures the simpler truth Benjamin was trying to convey. Under capitalism, he thought, we fetishise consumer goods – imagining that they can fulfil our hopes for happiness and realise our dreams. By considering old fetishes for now obsolete products or…