In his monumental history of caricature publishedin1903,Fuchs bringsto-
gether two key terms,pathos and allegory,toidentifyaparticularshortcomingof
socialist visual culture, namely the marked preferencefor pathetic allegories that
featuremythological figures over satirical caricatures that deal with urgent con-
temporary problems (Wirklichkeitssatiren). While never clearlydefined, pathos
for him represents the continuinginfluences of utopian socialism and (messian-
ic) Christianity and their shared promises of deliverance from suffering.Speak-
ing to the emotional qualities of allegory and satire,Fuchs uses highlyevocative
adjectives such“disdained, ridiculed,ignored, attacked, [and]singled out”to
describethe derogatory treatment of the socialist movement in mainstream po-
litical caricature andto explain the workers’ general preference for allegory and
their deepsuspicion of satire within this unequaldynamic of bourgeois con-
tempt and socialist defiance.“The worker,heexplains,“has little appreciation
for humor.Helacks the latter because the struggle forced upon him isvery
hard, and his life in most cases istooserious, if not perhapstootragic. This
kind ofmentality is not conducive to the development of caricature.”¹²
As part of these patterns of readingand rereading,socialist allegory maybe
understood best through its alternatelyanticipatory and compensatory func-
tions, especiallyinrelation to fantasies of rebellion. Asapersonification ofab-
stract ideas, allegory in the most basic sense establishesadirect connection be-
tween representationand interpretation.Itmodels constellations of knowledge
and power basedonimplicit assumptions about the full readability of the
world. In making visiblethe invisible, allegory blurs the lines between image
and text and uses specific readingstrategies to establish its highlycodified sys-
tem of signs and significations.Asthe distinctions between images andtextsdis-
appear,everything becomesreadable–and part of an imagined sense of mastery
over present and future.Inthe process, the constitutive tension between mean-
ingsconcealed and revealed offers an interpretative template for the heroic strug-
gles of the proletarian Prometheus. Of course, the correct readingofthe mytho-
logical body, both boundand unbound, depends on the transformation of
emotionsintoaradicalizing force, here through the depiction of physical pain
and its aestheticization in pathos.Upon closer inspection, socialist allegory al-
ways seems to relyonsuch divided emotionalregimes: of suffering and bliss, de-
jection and elation, and, in explicitlypolitical terms,oftyrannyand liberty.Lo-
cated either inamythological past orautopian future, its personificationsrarely
make contactwith socialreality and the world of contemporary politics. This ap-
EduardFuchs,DieKarikatur der europäischen Völker vomJahre 1848 bis zur Gegenwart(Ber-
lin:Hofmann, 1903),470and 483.
108 Chapter 5