The Fantastic as the Unconcealment of Truth in Debora Vogel’s Work

Abstract

This essay examines the notion of the fantastic in Debora Vogel’s work. I argue that the fantastic for Vogel is simultaneously a novel artistic form and a form of life, as well as a singular use of language; it is both a “trait” of modernity and thinking of modernity. The fantastic is analyzed as a key term in the author’s understanding of modern design of space and objects through discussions of “Dwelling in its Psychic and Social Function” (1932), the critic’s essay on lived space. I demonstrate that Vogel’s reflections and theorizing of the fantastic are not necessarily aimed at the development of pure theory and concepts but rather at the performance of the fantastic in the author’s own theory-praxis through the lens of Vogel’s essay on poetics, “White Words in Poetry” (1930). The essay discusses various types of the fantastic which finds itself between matter-of-factness and phantasm: the fantastic of ingenuity, the fantastic of asymmetry, the fantastic of color, and the fantastic of simplicity. All of these different types set forth the unconcealment of truth.