Benjamin Reading Guide
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
This essay was written in 1935, as fascism was surging ahead in Europe. Nazism, marked by grandiose spectacles, performances, and mass mobilizations was, for Benjamin, an aestheticization of politics, a kind of culmination of the late Romantic "art for art's sake" (l'art pour l'art) movement that he opposed. Benjamin felt that with fascism, the kind of affirmation of bourgeois culture that had been practiced by some social critics was inappropriate. He had become allied with the dramatist Bertolt Brecht, and was convinced of the possibility of revolutionary art. This essay is important for: 1.) the recasting of the relationship between base and superstructure; 2.) the idea that with modern technologies, principally photography and film, the idea of art had been shaken to its core; 3.) the idea of the "aura;" 4.) the theoretical grounding the essay provides for the claim for emancipatory possibilities in popular culture.
For many Marxists, superstructure (cultural practices, political formations like the State or the form of the state, religion, even "consciousness".) is determined by and is a reflection of the substructure (also known as base): economic relations and modes of production. For Benjamin, the superstructure is an expression of the substructure. Only through the superstructure can the character of the present and of future tendencies be grasped. Film, Benjamin's primary example in this essay, is the future art of the proletariat, and, unlike the art of the past, is capable of serving revolutionary aims. "Autonomous art"-- aesthetic production by the individual artist-- is part of the following trajectory: religious or "cult" art is endowed with a magical aura, which was a product of the object's physical uniqueness and its psychic distance from the viewer; this is replaced by "the secular cult of beauty" that arises under early capitalism (the Renaissance); with technologies of mechanical reproduction, there is finally the possibility of a material universality of art (and not coincidentally, with advanced technologies of production there are the social and material prerequisites for socialism). "Pure art" (art for art's sake), however, reacts to this possibility of universality by claiming for art a separate autonomous sphere, untouched by the social. This "pure art" is, however, not only a bourgeois legacy from which no redemption can be wrested, but, more importantly, is too easily translatable into the aestheticized politics of fascism. Adorno's criticism of this essay was that it was insufficiently dialectic, and ignored the absent moments. Adorno felt that Benjamin ignored the negativity in mechanically reproduced art (such art too easily coöpts its viewers and serves the needs of Capital) and the positivity of autonomous art (which in the hands of the right practitioners can rid itself of the aura and other negative attributes and thus become an autonomous space of critique).
Words and phrases from ("The Work of Art..."):
The sentence beginning "To pry an object from its shell" is important. Reflect on it.
Dada-- a leftist art and literary movement from the late 19teens that sought to destroy bourgeois art forms and assumptions about autonomous art.
Futurism (Marinetti was one)-- a kind of early 20th century fascist surrealism-- another break with traditional humanism; it celebrated speed, machinery, and war.
Fiat ars-- pereat mundus-- Let there be art-- let the world perish.
"The Storyteller"
I may not have time to lecture on this reading. I put it in here for your interest, and because I think it will help you think about issues of audience, community, experience, and history raised in the "Work of Art" essay, and on the nature of the "now" or of "experience" that returns as a thematic in the "Theses on the Philosophy of History." Reflect on Benjamin's contention that one mark of our current era is the extent to which "experience" is missing from our lives.
"Theses on the Philosophy of History"
A new kind of time...blasting out of the continuum of history, out of the strictures of the present...revolution.
This is what is at stake in this essay, one of Benjamin's most widely referenced. Benjamin, in many writings, wrote against "progress " (see number 13). His utopias were as often as in some past golden age-see Lukacs, too-as in the future. He wanted Marx's revolution without Marx's historiography. Progress was a bad idea.
Homogeneous, empty time is bourgeois time-- without possibility, time without the breakthrough of the Now.
For more Benjamin, including his writings on his hashish experiments, see:
http://www.wbenjamin.org/walterbenjamin.html
Optional Benjamin paper, for extra credit, or to make up for previous bad work (due with TA's by Friday. 2/27 at the latest):
Write one page maximum:
Compared with our Adorno readings, Benjamin's essays do not engage with the concept of totality. Adorno would argue that in the essays we read, Benjamin is insufficiently dialectical. (negative dialectics). Give a brief defense of the Benjaminian or the Adornian position.
Remember: Wednesday February 25, class is at 7:00 in Oakes 105.
This essay was written in 1935, as fascism was surging ahead in Europe. Nazism, marked by grandiose spectacles, performances, and mass mobilizations was, for Benjamin, an aestheticization of politics, a kind of culmination of the late Romantic "art for art's sake" (l'art pour l'art) movement that he opposed. Benjamin felt that with fascism, the kind of affirmation of bourgeois culture that had been practiced by some social critics was inappropriate. He had become allied with the dramatist Bertolt Brecht, and was convinced of the possibility of revolutionary art. This essay is important for: 1.) the recasting of the relationship between base and superstructure; 2.) the idea that with modern technologies, principally photography and film, the idea of art had been shaken to its core; 3.) the idea of the "aura;" 4.) the theoretical grounding the essay provides for the claim for emancipatory possibilities in popular culture.
For many Marxists, superstructure (cultural practices, political formations like the State or the form of the state, religion, even "consciousness".) is determined by and is a reflection of the substructure (also known as base): economic relations and modes of production. For Benjamin, the superstructure is an expression of the substructure. Only through the superstructure can the character of the present and of future tendencies be grasped. Film, Benjamin's primary example in this essay, is the future art of the proletariat, and, unlike the art of the past, is capable of serving revolutionary aims. "Autonomous art"-- aesthetic production by the individual artist-- is part of the following trajectory: religious or "cult" art is endowed with a magical aura, which was a product of the object's physical uniqueness and its psychic distance from the viewer; this is replaced by "the secular cult of beauty" that arises under early capitalism (the Renaissance); with technologies of mechanical reproduction, there is finally the possibility of a material universality of art (and not coincidentally, with advanced technologies of production there are the social and material prerequisites for socialism). "Pure art" (art for art's sake), however, reacts to this possibility of universality by claiming for art a separate autonomous sphere, untouched by the social. This "pure art" is, however, not only a bourgeois legacy from which no redemption can be wrested, but, more importantly, is too easily translatable into the aestheticized politics of fascism. Adorno's criticism of this essay was that it was insufficiently dialectic, and ignored the absent moments. Adorno felt that Benjamin ignored the negativity in mechanically reproduced art (such art too easily coöpts its viewers and serves the needs of Capital) and the positivity of autonomous art (which in the hands of the right practitioners can rid itself of the aura and other negative attributes and thus become an autonomous space of critique).
Words and phrases from ("The Work of Art..."):
The sentence beginning "To pry an object from its shell" is important. Reflect on it.
Dada-- a leftist art and literary movement from the late 19teens that sought to destroy bourgeois art forms and assumptions about autonomous art.
Futurism (Marinetti was one)-- a kind of early 20th century fascist surrealism-- another break with traditional humanism; it celebrated speed, machinery, and war.
Fiat ars-- pereat mundus-- Let there be art-- let the world perish.
"The Storyteller"
I may not have time to lecture on this reading. I put it in here for your interest, and because I think it will help you think about issues of audience, community, experience, and history raised in the "Work of Art" essay, and on the nature of the "now" or of "experience" that returns as a thematic in the "Theses on the Philosophy of History." Reflect on Benjamin's contention that one mark of our current era is the extent to which "experience" is missing from our lives.
"Theses on the Philosophy of History"
A new kind of time...blasting out of the continuum of history, out of the strictures of the present...revolution.
This is what is at stake in this essay, one of Benjamin's most widely referenced. Benjamin, in many writings, wrote against "progress " (see number 13). His utopias were as often as in some past golden age-see Lukacs, too-as in the future. He wanted Marx's revolution without Marx's historiography. Progress was a bad idea.
Homogeneous, empty time is bourgeois time-- without possibility, time without the breakthrough of the Now.
For more Benjamin, including his writings on his hashish experiments, see:
http://www.wbenjamin.org/walterbenjamin.html
Optional Benjamin paper, for extra credit, or to make up for previous bad work (due with TA's by Friday. 2/27 at the latest):
Write one page maximum:
Compared with our Adorno readings, Benjamin's essays do not engage with the concept of totality. Adorno would argue that in the essays we read, Benjamin is insufficiently dialectical. (negative dialectics). Give a brief defense of the Benjaminian or the Adornian position.
Remember: Wednesday February 25, class is at 7:00 in Oakes 105.