Capitalist demystification represses myth rather than abolishing it, preserving its power in decayed form

Evidence

This was a critique of capitalism with an allegorical twist. He made it clear that the demystification which had occurred under capitalist conditions did not reduce the dark horror surrounding everything human, but merely repressed it and deferred it. Myths were losing their open power to fetter mankind, but, wandering into the substructure of everyday life in decayed forms, they were still inexorably moulding people’s behaviour and environment. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 222

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Benjamin’s distinctive move: enlightenment doesn’t eliminate myth, it drives it into the substructure of everyday life where it persists as decayed behavioral and environmental patterning.
• XREF: Directly extends the Dialectic of Enlightenment thesis that myth is already enlightenment and enlightenment reverts to myth — this is the applied, Parisian-object form of that argument.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that demystification represses rather than liquidates myth is a paradigm-shifting frame: it makes modernity a site of hidden mythic compulsion rather than disenchantment.