“The bourgeois is a solitary individual. His universe is a world of abstract mechanisms, of economic, juridical, and moral relationships. He does not come into contact with concrete reality... When he learns of distant events they have already been distorted, touched up, and reduced to symbols for his benefit. He perceives them as mere shadows... His culture consists entirely of screens and shock-absorbers; it is a dense network of intellectual schemas, an exchange of signs and signals. He dwells amid reflected images.”

—Paul Nizan