extract
First published Tue Jan 18, 2011
That Benjamin approached the symptomatic significance of the
‘crisis of the arts’ for the ‘crisis of
experience’ through the concept of Technik attests to
the fundamentally Marxist character of his conception of historical
development. It is the development of the forces of production that is
the motor of history. However, Benjamin was no more orthodox a Marxist
about technology than he was with regard to the concept of progress,
the Marxist version of which the German Social Democratic Party (SPD)
grounded upon it (see Section 8, below). Not only did he recognize the
potential for a “bloodbath” in a technology subjected to
“the lust for profit” (SW 1, 487)—amply
demonstrated in the horrors of the First World War—but he came
to distinguish between a ‘first’ and a
‘second’, potentially liberatory technology, the latter
making possible “a highly productive use of the human being's
self-alienation” (SW 3, 107; 113). It appears, in places, as the
basis for a kind of ‘technological cosmopolitics’ or
politics of a ‘new collective technoid body’ (Caygill
2005, 225; Leslie 2000, 153, in Osborne 2005, II: 391).
The mastery of nature, so the imperialists teach, is the purpose of
all technology [Technik]. But …technology is not the
mastery of nature but of the relation between nature and
humanity. …In technology a physis is being organized
through which mankind's contact with the cosmos takes a new and
different form from that which it had in nations
[Völkern] and families. (SW 1, 487, translation
amended)
The collective is a body, too. And the physis that is
being organized for it in technology can, through all its political
and factual reality, only be produced in that image sphere to which
profane illumination initiates us. Only when in technology body and
image so interpenetrate that all revolutionary tension becomes bodily
collective innervation, and all the bodily innervations of the
collective become revolutionary discharge, has reality transcended
itself to the extent demanded by the Communist Manifesto. (SW
2, 217–8)
These passages, from the concluding sections of One-Way Street
and the ‘Surrealism’ essay, respectively, convey something
of the ecstatic character of Benjamin's political thought at the
outset of the 1930s, in which technology appears on a political
knife-edge between its possibilities as “a fetish of doom”
and “a key to happiness” (SW 2, 321). Art—an art of
the masses—appears within this scenario as the educative
mechanism through which the body of the collective can begin to
appropriate its own technological potential.
The first technology really sought to master nature, whereas the
second aims rather at an interplay between nature and humanity. The
primary social function of art today is to rehearse that
interplay. This applies especially to film. The function of film
is to train human beings in the apperception and reactions needed to
deal with a vast apparatus whose role in their lives is expanding
almost daily. Dealing with this apparatus also teaches them that
technology will release them from their enslavement to the powers of
the apparatus only when humanity's whole constitution has adapted
itself to the new productive forces which the second technology has
set free. (SW 3, 107–8)
In his footnote to this passage from the second (1935) version of
‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical
Reproducibility’, Benjamin refers us to the
‘phalansteries’, the “self-contained agrarian
collectives” of Fourier's socialist utopia. In the Fourier
convolute of the Arcades Project,
these are compared to the two main articles of Benjamin's
politics: “the idea of revolution as an innervation of the
technical organs of the collective… and the idea of the
‘cracking open of natural teleology’” (AP, [W7, 4],
631). For Benjamin, art, in the form of film—the
“unfolding <result> of all the forms of perception, the
tempos and rhythms, which lie preformed in today's
machines”—thus harboured the possibility of becoming a
kind of rehearsal of the revolution. “[A]ll problems of
contemporary art”, Benjamin insisted, “find their
definitive formulation only in the context of film” (AP, [K3, 3],
394). In this respect, it was the combination of the communist pedagogy
and constructive devices of Brecht's epic theatre that marked it
out for him as a theatre for the age of film (UB, 1–25; Wizisla
2009).
Benjamin's writings on film are justly renowned for their twin
theses of the transformation of the concept of art by its
‘technical reproducibility’ and the new possibilities for
collective experience this contains, in the wake of the historical
decline of the ‘aura’ of the work of art, a process that
film is presented as definitively concluding. Much ink has been spilt
debating the thesis of the decline of the aura in Benjamin's
work. On the one hand, with regard to some of his writings,
Benjamin's concept of aura has been accused of fostering a
nostalgic, purely negative sense of modernity as loss—loss of
unity both with nature and in community (A. Benjamin, 1989). On the
other hand, in the work on film, Benjamin appears to adopt an
affirmative technological modernism, which celebrates the consequences
of the decline. Adorno, for one, felt betrayed by the latter position.
He wrote to Benjamin on 18 March 1936:
In your earlier writings… you distinguished the
idea of the work of art as a structure from the symbol of theology on
the one hand, and from the taboo of magic on the other. I now find it
somewhat disturbing —and here I can see a sublimated
remnant of certain Brechtian themes—that you have now rather
casually transferred the concept of the magical aura to the
‘autonomous work of work’ and flatly assigned a
counter-revolutionary function to the latter. (CC, 128)
Brecht himself, meanwhile, was appalled by even the residually negative function of the aura, recording his response in his Workbook:
“it is all mysticism mysticism, in a posture opposed to
mysticism. … it is rather ghastly” (cited in Buck-Morss
1977, 149). Yet Adorno did not defend ‘auratic art’ as
such. (His defence of autonomous art was grounded on the experience
derived from following the ‘autonomous’ technical
development of laws of form.)
Clearly, the concept of the aura plays a number of different roles
in Benjamin's writings, in his various attempts to grasp his
historical present in terms of the possibilities for
‘experience’ afforded by its new cultural forms; which he
increasingly came to identify (some say precipitously) with
revolutionary political potential. Yet Adorno was wrong to see a simple
change of position, rather than a complex series of inflections of what
was a generally consistent historical account. Benjamin had written
affirmatively of “the emancipation of object from aura” as
early as 1931, in his ‘Little History of Photography’, in
which he described Aget's photographs as “suck[ing] the
aura out of reality like water from a sinking ship” (SW 2, 518).
It is here that we find the basic definition of aura: “A strange
weave of space and time: the unique appearance or semblance of
distance, no matter how close it may be.” Importantly, the
examples given with this definition are from nature: mountains and a
branch observed “at rest on a summer's noon … until
the moment or the hour become part of their appearance…”.
The ‘destruction’ of the aura by transience and
reproducibility is judged “a salutary estrangement” (SW 2,
518–9). Similarly, when ‘The Storyteller’ recounts
the “dying out of the art of storytelling” and “the
incomparable aura that surrounds the storyteller”, it is
nonetheless maintained: “nothing could be more fatuous than to
wish to see it as merely a ‘symptom of decay’, let alone a
‘modern symptom’. It is rather, only a concomitant of the
secular productive forces of history…” (SW 3, 146; 162).
‘The Work of Art’ essay extends and enriches the earlier
account of photography's technological transformation of
perception (“the optical unconscious”) with reference to
film. The difference resides in the insistent political dimension of
the later essay (after Hitler's taking of power in 1933), and its
determination to introduce concepts “that are completely useless
for the purposes of fascism” (SW 3, 102). The main problem with
the auratic (which is deemed historically residual, not eliminated,
indeed is perhaps ineliminable [Didi-Huberman 2004]) was that, Benjamin
believed, it was precisely “useful for fascism”. This
context over-determines the essay throughout, with its almost Manichean
oppositions between ritual and politics, cult value and exhibition
value. Quite apart from the intervening technological and social
developments, it makes it a very difficult text simply to
‘use’ today. For some, however, it is precisely the
connection it draws between a certain kind of mass culture and fascism
that provides its continuing relevance (Buck-Morss 1992).
Primary Literature
The current standard German edition of Benjamin's work remains
Suhrkamp's seven volume Gesammelte Schriften, edited by
Tiedemann and Schweppenhauser, although a new Kritish
Gesamtausgabe is currently being edited, also by Suhrkamp and
projected at twenty-one volumes over the next decade. The standard
English edition is Harvard University Press' recent four
volume Selected Writings and The Arcades
Project.
| AP |
The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland &
Kevin McLaughlin, Cambridge, MA. & London: Belknap Press, 1999. |
| B |
Briefe, eds. Gershom Scholem & Theodor Adorno, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1978. |
| BC |
Berlin Childhood Around 1900, trans. Howard Eiland, Cambridge, MA. & London: Belknap Press, 2006 |
| CB |
The Writer of Modern Life: Charles Baudelaire, trans. Howard Eiland et. al., Cambridge, MA. & London: Belknap
Press, 2006 |
| CBS |
The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, ed. Gershom Scholem, Cambridge, MA.,: Harvard University
Press, 1989. |
| CC |
Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin: The Complete Correspondences 1928–1940, ed. Henri Lonitz, Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1999. |
| CWB |
The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910–1940, eds. Gershom Scholem & Theodor W. Adorno, Chicago & London:
University of Chicago Press, 1994. |
| GS |
Gesammelte Schriften, eds. Rolf Tiedemann & Hermann Schweppenhauser, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp
Verlag, Bd. I-VII, 1972-1989. |
| KG |
Werke und Nachlaß. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, eds. Momme Brodersen et. al., Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag,
Bd. 1–20, 2008–. |
| MD |
Walter Benjamin: Moscow Diary, ed. Gary Smith, Cambridge, MA. & London: Harvard University Press, 1986. |
| OGT |
The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne, London: Verso, 1998. |
| OWS |
One-Way Street and Other Writings, trans. J. A. Underwood, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2009. |
| SW |
Selected Writings, ed. Howard Eiland & Michael W. Jennings, Cambridge, MA., & London: Harvard University Press,
1991–1999. |
| UB |
Understanding Brecht, trans. Anna Bostock, London: Verso, 2003. |
Biographies in English
- Leslie, E., 2007, Walter Benjamin: Critical Lives, London: Reaktion Books.
- Brodersen, M., 1996, Walter Benjamin: A Biography, London & New York: Verso.
- Scholem, G., 1981, Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship, New York: Review Books.
- Witte, B., 1991, Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography, Detroit: Wayne University Press.
- Wizisla, E., 2009, Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht: the Story of a Friendship, London: Libris.
Selected English Anthologies
- Benjamin, A. (ed.), 1989, The Problems of Modernity: Adorno and Benjamin, London: Routledge.
- ––– (ed.), 2005a, Walter Benjamin and Art, London & New York: Continuum.
- ––– (ed.), 2005b, Walter Benjamin and History, London & New York: Continuum.
- Benjamin, A. and Hanssen, B. (eds.), 2002, Walter Benjamin
and Romanticism, London & New York: Continuum.
- Benjamin, A. and Osborne, P. (eds.), 1994/2000, Walter
Benjamin's Philosophy: Destruction and Experience, London
& New York: Routledge/Manchester: Clinamen Press
- Ferris, D. S. (ed.), 2004, The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Fischer, G. (ed.), 1996, With The Sharpened Axe of Reason: Approaches to Walter Benjamin, Oxford & Herndon, Va.: Berg.
- Hanssen, B. (ed.), 2006, Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, London & New York: Continuum.
- Osborne, P. (ed.), 2005, Walter Benjamin: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory, Volume I: Philosophy, Volume II: Modernity, Volume III: Appropriations, London & New York: Routledge.
- Smith, G. (ed.), 1988, On Walter Benjamin: Critical Essays and Recollections, Cambridge MA. & London: MIT.
- ––– (ed.), 1989, Walter Benjamin: Philosophy,
Aesthetics, History, Chicago & London: University of Chicago
Press.
Selected Secondary Literature
- Adorno, T. W., 1955, ‘A Portrait of Walter Benjamin’, in Prisms, Cambridge, MA.: MIT., 1983, 227–242.
- –––, 1931, ‘The Actuality of Philosophy’, in Telos 31, Spring 1977, 120–133.
- Agamben, G., 2005, State of Exception, trans. K. Attell, Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
- Asman, C. L., 1992, ‘Theatre and Agon/Agon and Theatre: Walter Benjamin and Florens Christian Rang’, in MLN, 107:3, 606–624.
- Benjamin, A., ‘Tradition and Experience: Walter Benjamin's Some Motifs in Baudelaire’, in Benjamin, A. 1989, 122–140.
- Brederkamp, H., 1999, ‘From Walter Benjamin to Carl Schmitt, via Thomas Hobbes’, in Critical Inquiry, 25:2, 247–266.
- Buck-Morss, S., 1977, The Origins of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt Institute, Hassocks: Harvester Press.
- –––, 1989, The Dialectics of Seeing, Cambridge, MA. & London: MIT Press.
- –––, 1992, ‘Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered’, in October, 62, 3–41, reprinted in Osborne 2005, I: 291–331.
- Bullock, M. P., 1987, Romanticism and Marxism: The Philosophical
Development of Literary Theory and Literary History in Walter Benjamin
& Friedrich Schlegel, New York, Bern & Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
- Caygill, H., 1994, ‘Benjamin, Heidegger and the Destruction of Tradition’, in Benjamin and Osborne 1994/2000, 1–31.
- –––, 1998, Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience, London: Routledge.
- –––, 2004, ‘Walter Benjamin's Concept of Cultural History,’ in Ferris 2004, 73–96.
- –––, 2005, ‘Non-Messianic Political Theology in Benjamin's “On the Concept of History”’, in Benjamin, A. 2005b, 215–226.
- Cohen, M., 1993, Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist Revolution, Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.
- Cowan, B., 1981, ‘Walter Benjamin's Theory of Allegory’, in New German Critique, 22, 109–122.
- Derrida, J., 1989–90, ‘Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundations of Authority”’, trans. Mary
Quaintance, in Cardozo Law Review, 11, 973–1045, reprinted in Osborne 2005, 1: 398–432.
- –––, 1994, Spectres of Marx: the state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the New International, trans. P. Kamuf, London: Routledge.
- –––, 1997, The Politics of Friendship, trans. G. Collins, London & New York: Verso.
- –––, 1999, ‘Marx and Sons’, in Ghostly demarcations: a symposium on Jacques Derrida's Spectres of Marx, ed. M. Sprinker, London & New York: Verso, 213–269.
- Didi-Huberman, G., 2005, ‘The Supposition of the Aura: The Now, the Then and Modernity’, in Benjamin, A., 2005b, 2–18.
- Eagleton, T., 1981, Walter Benjamin, Or, Towards a Revolutionary Criticism, London: NLB.
- Frisby, D., 1996, ‘Walter Benjamin's Prehistory of Modernity as
Anticipation of Postmodernity? Some Methodological Reflections’, in
Fischer 1996, 15–32.
- Gilloch, G., 2000, Walter Benjamin: Critical Constellations, Cambridge: Polity.
- Habermas, J., 1983, ‘Walter Benjamin: Consciousness-raising
or rescuing critique’, in Philosophical-Political
Profiles, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence, Cambridge, MA. &
London: MIT Press, 129–163, reprinted in Osborne 2005, I:
107–136.
- Hamacher, W., 2002, ‘Guilt History: Benjamin's Sketch “Capitalism as Religion”’, in Diacritics, 32:3/4, 81–106.
- Hansen, M., 1987, ‘Benjamin, Cinema and Experience: “The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology”’, in New German Critique, 40, 179–224; reprinted in Osborne 2005, II: 253–290.
- Hanssen, B., 1995, ‘Philosophy at Its Origin: Walter Benjamin's Prologue to the Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels’, in MLN, 110:4, 809–833.
- –––, 1998, Walter Benjamin's Other History: Of Stones, Animals, Human Beings, and Angels, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press.
- Hodge, J., 2005, ‘The Timing of Elective Affinity: Walter Benjamin's Strong Aesthetics’, in Benjamin, A., 2005a, 14–31.
- Lacoue-Labarthe, P., 1992, ‘Introduction to Walter Benjamin's The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism’, in Studies in Romanticism, 31:4, 421-432, reprinted in Hanssen and Benjamin, A. 2002, 9-18.
- Lambrianou, N., 2005, ‘Neo-Kantianism and Messianism: Origin and
Interruption in Hermann Cohen and Walter Benjamin’, in Osborne 2005, I:
82–104.
- Leslie, E., 2000, Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism, London: Pluto.
- Löwy, M, 2005, Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin's ‘On the Concept of History’, trans. Chris Turner, London & New York: Verso.
- McCole, J. J., 1993, Walter Benjamin and the Antinomies of Tradition, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
- Menninghaus, W., 2002, ‘Walter Benjamin's Exposition of the Romantic
Theory of Reflection’, trans. Robert J. Kiss, in Hanssen and Benjamin,
A. 2002, 19–50, reprinted in Osborne 2005, I: 25–62.
- Osborne, P. 1995, The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde, London & New York: Verso.
- Rrenban, M., 2005, Wild, Unforgettable Philosophy: In Early Works of Walter Benjamin, Lanham & Oxford: Lexington Books.
- Roff, S. L., 2004, ‘Benjamin and Psychoanalysis’, in Ferris 2004, 115–133.
- Schmitt, C., 1956, Hamlet or Hecuba: the intrusion of time into the play, trans. D. Pan & J. Rust, New York: Telos Press, 2009.
- Steiner, U., 2001, ‘The True Politician: Walter Benjamin's Concept of the Political’, trans. C. Sample, in New German Critique, 83, 43–88.
- Tiedemann, R., 1983–4, ‘Historical Materialism or Political
Messianism? An Interpretation of the Theses “On the Concept of
History”’, in Smith 1989, 175–209, reprinted in Osborne 2005, I:
137–168.
- Weber, S., 2008, Benjamin's -abilities, Cambridge, MA., & London: Harvard University Press.
- Weigel, S., 1996, Body- and Image-Space: Re-Reading Walter Benjamin, London & New York: Routledge.
- Wohlfarth, I., 1978, ‘On the Messianic Structure of Benjamin's Last Reflections’, in Glyph 3, 148–212, reprinted in Osborne 2005, I: 169–231.
- –––, 2008–9, ‘Walter Benjamin and
the Red Army Faction’, Parts, 1–3, Radical
Philosophy 142–144, Nov/Dec 2008, Jan/Feb 2009, March/April
2009, 7–19, 13–26, 9–24.
- Wolin, R., 1994, An Aesthetics of Redemption, Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.
