Course:MDIA300/Walter Benjamin

Background and Overview

Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin was a Germin-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, theorist and essayist of the 20th century. He was associated with the Frankfurt School, a group of thinkers who drew on Marxist and Hegelian philosophy to critique capitalism and modern society. While Benjamin ideas often intersected with those of Theodor W. Adorno's, they also tended to diverge from the Frankfurt School’s conventional theoretical approaches.

Benjamin’s reputation grew largely through his essays, which explored themes such as social criticism, linguistics, and historical nostalgia. Some of his most notable works include 'The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility', 'One-way Street', and 'The Arcades Project'. Collectively, these works have sparked enduring theoretical discussions about culture, philosophy, and society.

Works

Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproduction

One of Benjamin's notable works is ‘’Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproduction,’’ which focuses on modern aesthetics and political criticism. When discussing modern aesthetics he examines photography and film, exploring how they shape human perception. This connects to his concept of the aura, a topic often mentioned in discussions of media theory. In the essay he writes,

‘’One might subsume the eliminated element in the term ‘’aura and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.’’

He implies that aura represents a work’s unique presence and authenticity, qualities diminished by modern technology.Benjamin highlights how these technologies have altered our relationship to art, detaching people from its uniqueness and original context. His essay remains an important framework for analyzing authenticity in modern aesthetics, and its detachment from its uniqueness and original context. His essay remains an important framework for analyzing authenticity in modern media, art, and technology, offering a critical lens for understanding how reproduction transforms our perception of reality.

Arcades Project

'The Arcades Project', is an incomplete collection of writings dealing with a diverse array of subjects related to Parisian urban life. It is a treatise on modern Parisian life and architecture, with a particular focus on arcades, glass structures which dominated 19th century Parisian architecture, and the flâneur, an idler who strolled through the arcades. He examined the ways in which the the arcades transform public space into a site of consumerism, and flânerie into an activity of consumption. As is the case for most of Benjamin’s writings, he explores how the arcades aid in the process of transforming and flattening the spatiotemporal dimensions of the city as he comments:

“The most heterogeneous temporal elements thus coexist in the city. If we step from an eighteenth-century house into one from the sixteenth century, we tumble down the slope of time. Right next door stands a Gothic church, and we sink to the depths. A few steps farther, we are in a street from out of the early years of Bismarck's rule . . . , and once again climbing the mountain of time. Whoever sets foot in a city feels caught up as in a web of dreams, where the most remote past is linked to the events of today.”

The work is unique for its fragmentary structure, with the quotes and writings ordered in a peculiar non-linear fashion, more similar to a database than a book. Benjamin's friend and editor, Theodor Adorno, was frustrayed as he believed the work was not sufficiently critical of the consumerism and commodity fetishism that arose as a result of flâneur culture. However, proponents of the work argue that rather than being a critique of capitalism, the Arcades Project serves as a document of the emerging consumer culture and its effects.

Theses on Philosophy

A few decades after Benjamin's passing, ‘’These on the philosophy of History'’ was published, an essay, composed of twenty short theses on historical material and historicism. In the opening excerpt, Benjamin explores historical materialism as a way of understanding the past, drawing heavily from marxist ideas similar to many of his other works.

One of the most striking aspects of this essay is the accompanying image of an oil painting. According to Benjamin it represents the ‘’angel of history.’’ The image is abstract but captures a sense of fear and loss of control reflecting how individuals can feel disoriented by the constant changes in society and the passage of time. In section 10 Benjamin notes that people, especially political leaders, perceive history in different ways .

This essay has sparked significant debate due to its many interpretations. Some critics argue that it rejects Marxism while others view it as deeply political and engaged with Marxist thought while others view it as deeply political and engaged with Marxist thought.

Short History of Photography

This essay is a seminal work in the study of photography as a form of art and its embeddedness within the social, economic, and political framework of society. It addresses the anxieties surrounding the advent of photography, particularly among artists. He also examines the works of Eugéne Atget and August Sanders, and how their experiments liberated the photograph from its bourgeois aura and situated it within the realm of creativity. It is within this essay that Benjamin develops the idea of the optical unconscious; the idea that the mediation of the camera apparatus allows for unique modes of perception and aids in the process of disenchantment with the world.

Concepts in Media Studies

Aura

Aura is the authenticity attributed to a work of art, given its unique presence in time and space. It is the most influential concept attributed to Benjamin, for whom the development of new modes of technological reproduction signaled the debilitation of aura. The concept, first mentioned in ‘A Short History of Photography’, was fully developed in ‘Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ and has proven to be an integral contribution to the study of developing media technologies, and varied effects they have on individual human perception and society at large.

Spatiotemporality

The topic of media’s relationship with space and time is pervasive within many of Benjamin’s works. The concept of aura, the effects of developing photographic technology on time and space, the spatiotemporal relations between the changing urban landscape and Parisian citizens, and the disorienting effects of history; the ways in which space and time transforms, and is transformed by developing media technologies.