A form of projection invented in France in the late eighteenth century. A precursor to cinema, phantasmagoria is able to make images move, thereby creating a more effective illusion. In its earliest form, the representations it projected were presented as ghosts, juxtaposing old-fashioned superstitions with new technology. This paradoxical conjunction of the old and the new caught the attention of German cultural theorist Benjamin, Walter, who used the term âphantasmagoriaâ to describe the shopping arcades that emerged in Paris in the mid-nineteenth century. Now the term is used in critical theory as a general term for an interest in or fascination with what later postmodern theorists like Eco, Umberto would call hyperreality. Further Reading: M. Warner Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century (2006).