Margaret Cohen"s encounter with Walter Benjamin, one of the twentieth century"s most influential cultural and literary critics, has produced a radically new reading of surrealist thought and practice. Cohen analyzes the links between Breton"s surrealist fusion of psychoanalysis and Marxism and Benjamin"s post-Enlightenment challenge to Marxist theory. She argues that Breton"s surrealist Marxism played a formative role in shaping postwar French intellectual life and is of continued relevance to the contemporary intellectual scene.