Hansen Blue Flower

Benjamin, Cinema and Experience: "The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology" Author(s): Miriam Hansen Source: New
German Critique, No. 40, Special Issue on Weimar Film Theory (Winter, 1987), pp. 179-224 Published by: New German Critique Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/488138 . Accessed: 29/03/2013 14:52
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Cinema and Experience: Benjamin, in the Land ofTechnology" "The BlueFlower
Hansen Miriamrn
ofhumanbeingsthrough theappaIn therepresentation humanself-alienation has founda mostproductive ratus, in the Age of Its Technical realization.["The Artwork version,1935)] (first Reproducibility" involontaire: notonlydo itsimages themimoire Concerning not come when we try to call themup; rather, theyare imageswhichwe have neverseen beforewe remember them.This is most clearlythe case in those images in which -like in some dreams- we see ourselves.We standin front of ourselves, thewaywe might have stood somewherein a prehistoric but never before our past, in the Yet these waking gaze. images, developed of the lived moment, are the mostimportant darkroom we willeversee. One might say thatour mostprofound moments have been equipped -like those cigarette of ourselves. packs -with a littleimage,a photograph And that"whole life"which, as theysay,passes through or in mortal are dying danger people's mindswhenthey is composedofsuchlittle byin as rapimages.Theyflash id a sequence as the bookletsof our childhood,precursorsofthecinema,in whichwe admireda boxer,a swimdemeror a tennis player. ["A ShortSpeech on Proust," liveredby Benjaminon his fortieth birthday, 1932] Benjamin's reputation in contemporary film theory and criticism reststo a large extentupon his 1935/36 essay, "The Work of Artin the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," probably the single most often cited text by Benjamin or any other German writeron film.' That the
1. "Das Kunstwerk seinertechnischen im Zeitalter ("The Reproduzierbarkeit"
179
andCinema 180 Benjamin essay was writtenunder the influence of Brecht facilitatedits to debates on Brechtian cinema as theytook place durassimilation in the The particular the for British 1970s, instance, ing journalScreen. blend of Marxismand modernism of thatdetermined the reception more obscure the tended to Benjamin'swork,however, incongruous oftheArtwork features itsproband ambivalent Essay,notto mention in relation lematicstatus to Benjamin'sotherwritings. Such a reading was no doubt encouragedby the programmatic tenorof theessayitofitsargument theconstruction a Yet self, through sequenceoftheses. theone-sidedand reductive that secured the have may gesture essaya in textbooks is cannot be taken at face it value; place college just as bound up with in which thepolitical constellation theessaywaswritten as are the contradictions triedto resolve. thatit so desperately In thefollowing, I willelaborate on some oftheincongruities ofthe and them in of Artwork situate relation to a as Essay theory experience it emergesfromsome of Benjamin'smiddle as well as latertexts. Brushedagainstthegrainof itsprogrammatic message,theessaystill of to a number at the boundariesbetween speaks questionsarising film history,film theory and film criticism.More specifically, Benjamin's remarkson filmtouch upon an area for which Tom fromEisenstein, has proposedthe productively Gunning, borrowing This termoffers a historical ambiguousterm"cinema of attractions." whichtakesitscue from modes offasciconceptoffilmspectatorship in earlycinema,feedingon attractions nationprevalent such as the its kinetic and magicaland illusionist powerof filmic representation, to character movement (notyetsubordinated temporal manipulations and the chronological of linearnarrative) momentum and, above all, an openlyexhibitionist look of tendency epitomizedby therecurring actorsat thecamera.Withthestandardization ofthenarrative film(in the U.S. around 1906-07),such "primitive" attractions were systematically suppressed -
of viewerabsorption and identification. Ratherthandisapstrategies
if not pressed into service -
by narrative
in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility"), Artwork Gesammelte (=GS), Schriften 1.2, ed. RolfTiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 471- 508; Frenchversion, trans.Pierre version, 431-469; second version, 1974),first 709-739. The second version is included in Illuminations, trans.Harry Klossowski, cited Zohn,ed. Hannah Arendt (New York:SchockenBooks, 1969); in thefollowing in mostcases modified. The essay is reprinted in one of the most as I, translation widely disseminatedcollege textbooks in the field,Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen's Film Theory thirdedition (New York: Introductory and Criticism: Readings, OxfordUniversity omitsBenjamin's footnotes whichconPress,1985); thisreprint version. tain large chunksfromthe first
Miriam Hansen
181
the cinemaof attraction continued"underpear, Gunningcontends, in film and as a compoboth certain ground," avant-garde practices I would nentof particular the add, in the and, musical) genres(e.g. erotic of stars.2 the historical Although appeal particular phenomenon in question can be tracedmost distinctly the processof its through in itsunderelimination and appropriation, it nonetheless preserves, an alternative vision of cinema--a existence, rangeoffilm/specground fromthe alienatedand alienating tatorrelations thatdiffer organizationof classicalHollywoodcinema. is itself endebtedto a historical disThe dual focusofthisargument articulated course on the cinema. It resumes a perspective among WesternEuropean avant-garde artistsand intellectuals during the of the forthepossibilities 1920swhichwas markedby an enthusiasm in ofitsactualdevelopment, newmediumand a simultaneous critique and theatriitsopportunistic recourseto traditional literary particular In thisspirit, Dadaistsand Surrealists celebrated the cal conventions. cinema'sprimitive heritage, comedywithitsanarespecially slapstick or trick filmsin the styleof MliRs. Likewise, chic physicality many on theleft Sovietfilm as an alternawriters seized upon contemporary - and reconciling tiveto mainstream cinema,as a model ofrealizing - thecinema'saesthetic and political (cf.theGermanreceppotential A decade later, whenBenjamin wrote hisArtwork Essay,the"all-out in film of which and photogthe historical gamble process"(Kracauer) all but to a decisive role3 seemed were lost; insteadof play raphy the media of "technical a revolutionaryculture, advancing to were themselves lending oppressive social and reproduction" of myth in and foremost the fascist restoration forces--first political in and the but also mass newsreels, liberal-capitalist through spectacles and in Stalinist cultural Nonetheless, Benjamin's politics. marketplace
2. Tom Gunning,"The Cinema ofAttraction: EarlyFilm,Its Spectatorand the WideAngle 8.3/4 (1986): 63-70. The question of the difference Avant-Garde," or alterity of earlycinema has been debated by a numberof film scholars-among them Robert Allen, Charles Musser, Noel Burch, David Bordwell and Kristin of eroticism in thestar cult see myartiThompson. On the transgressive potential Valentinoand Female Spectatorship," cle, "Pleasure,Ambivalence, Identification: 25.4 (Summer 1986): 6-32. Thomas Elsaesser examines similar Cinema Journal questions withregardto the historicalspecificityof Weimar Cinema; see "Film and Visual Pleasure:WeimarCinema," in Cinema Cinema Histories, History Practices, ed. PatriciaMellenkampand PhilipRosen (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America,1984), 47-84. 3. Siegfried derMasse Kracauer,"Die Photographie"(1927), in Das Ornament (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,1963; 1977), 38-39.
tion of Potemkin).
182
and Cinema Benjamin
in the avantconcernwiththe photographic media stillparticipates ofthe 1920s(unlike Adorno'sworkon mass culture gardeperspective whichclearly belongsto another period).The belatedmomentof the of its statements, Artwork Essay onlyenhancesthe utopianmodality the emphasisfroma definition of what filmis to its failed shifting and unrealizedpromises. Thus,thecinemabecomesan opportunities the same object--aswell as a medium--of "redemptivecriticism," of critical workon Baudethatinspired effort Benjamin's preservation laireand the ParisArcades,thePassagen-Werk.4 oftheArtwork conceived conBenjaminactually Essayas a heuristic a "telescope" which would help him look through"the struction, of the nineteenth so as bloodyfog" at the "phantasmagoria century" in itthefeatures ofa future, The to delineate liberated world.5 "bloody thetransconfrontation, fog"of 1935 made himdeploy,in a strategic ofexperience in industrial formation (ofwhichthecinemawas society bothsymptom and agent)against ofart,in particutraditional notions of of a cult belated He had been a critique lar pursuing pour l'art l'art. in his polemics againstthe the latterfor quite a while,specifically - not onlyin of fascism threat Georgecircle.Now, withthegrowing - he perbut and other countries as well Italy Germany European of aesthetic individual intellectual ceived a complicity ideology(and with the fascist and F.T. Marinetti) exponents like ErnstJuinger of politicsand war.6 aestheticization
or RedemptiveCriticism: The 4. Juirgen Habermas, "Consciousness-Raising 17 (Spring of Walter Benjamin" (1972), New German Critique Contemporaneity 1979): 30-59; Habermas in factincludesthe Sovietfilmof the twenties among the objects of Benjamin's redemptivecriticism,a claim that is borne out by a in theArtwork ofSovietfilm EssaywithBenjamin'searlier, comparisonofthestatus somewhatmore distancedand criticalreporton "The Situationof Russian Film in his response Art"(1927), GS 11.2:747-751,and his defense of Battleship Potemkin threadrunto emphasize the redemptive to Oskar Schmitz,ibid., 751-55.The first of aesthetic theory work, history, connecting philosophy ningthrough Benjamin's of everyday Kracauerwhose and the phenomenology life,was of course Siegfried to a deep affinity withsuch intentions, likewise own workof the 1920s testifies "Zu den Schriften WalterBenjamin's"(1928),Ornament rootedinJewishmysticism: AnAesthetic derMasse,249-255. Also see RichardWolin,Walter ofRedemption Beinjamin: Press, 1982). (New York:Columbia University 5. Das Passagen-Werk (=PW), ed. RolfTiedemann(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983), KonvolutN ("Epistemology, sectionof the Passagen-Werk, II: 1151. An important is included in The Theoryof Progress"),trans.Leigh Hafrey& Richard Sieburth, between 15.1-2 (Fall-Winter Forum 1983-84): 1-40. On the relationship Philosophical see Susan Buck-Morss,"Benjamin's the ArtworkEssay and the Passagen-Werk NewGerman RedeemingMass-CulturefortheRevolution," Critique Passagen-Werk: 29 (Spring/Summer 1983): 212. <1>" (1936), GS III: 6. Epilogue to theArtwork Essay,I, 241-42; "PariserBrief
Hansen Miriam
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From this perspective,reproductiontechnologyfiguresas an unintentional (I, ally,as itwere,priorto anyrevolutionary possibilities To 231). repeat the by now familiar argument: the technical ofexisting works ofartand, whatis more,itsconstitureproducibility of photography and filmhave createda histiverole in theaesthetics standard whichaffects thestatus ofartin itscore.Withtheelimtorical ofqualitiesthataccruedto theartwork ination as a unique object-its and its "aura"the standardof presence,authenticity authority, universalreproducibility shattersthe culturaltraditionthat draws from theexperience ofart,thusbaringtheentanglement of legitimacy artand social privilege. At the same time,technical asreproduction oftheursumesa crucialrole in viewof thecrisis and reorganization ban masses.In thisconstellation, technical as reproduction converges, theinstian objective withself-critical tendencies within development, movements tutionof art itself, forcedinto the open by avant-garde such as Dada and Surrealism (1, 237-38,249-50). Having establishedthe terms"aura" and "masses" as opposite offorce, a funcfield Benjaminproceedsto assert poles ofthepolitical massesand themediaoftechnical tionalaffinity between reproduction If the be called a phenomenological syllogism. by wayof whatmight aura is definedas "the unique phenomenonof a distance,however massesarecharacterized byan anticloseitmaybe," thecontemporary 'closer' to "the desire and thetical intention, [...] bringthings spatially which is as as toward the ardent their bent overcoming humanly, just of its by accepting reproduction." uniqueness every reality i.e.lessrefgrows stronger Every daytheurge Junabweisbarer, of togetholdofan object atvery closerange byway utable] itscopy[Abbild], itsreproduction. itsimage or,rather, [Bild] as offered byillustrated magaUnmistakably, reproduction differs from theimage. and zinesandnewsreels Uniqueness are as closelylinkedin the latter as are permanence in theformer. To pry an and reproducibility transitoriness itsaura, isthemark from todestroy ofa peritsshell, object whose ofthe ofthings "sense universal ception equality [Sinn itextracts ofits itevenfrom a uniqueobject that bymeans
inderWelt]" das Gleichartige has increased to sucha degree fiir
17 (Spring1979): 120482-95; "Theories of GermanFascism,"NewGerman Critique of Benjamin'srejection of theGermanaesthetic tradi128. On thepoliticalcontext und Kulturindustrie: tion,see Burkhardt Lindner,"TechnischeReproduzierbarkeit noch hatte im Kontext,"in: Lindner,ed.,"Links Benjamins'PositivesBarbarentum' zu entrdtseln...": allessich Walter imKontext Benjamin (Frankfurt: 1978), Syndikat, 180-223.
184 Benjamin andCinema

in the fieldof perception Thus is manifested reproduction.
is noticeable in thegrowing in thetheoretical what sphere ofstatistics.7 importance in the historical shifts Mounted as an argument about large-scale collective organization of human perception, this passage two, perhaps three,interdependent distinguishes aspects of such a its manifestation and change: along spatial temporal registers of and the modality permanence/transitoriness), (distance/proximity, vs. of an objectin relation to others, the defined register singularity by or likeness.These aspectsmay overlap in similarity multiplication, linesof thedecayoftheaura,yetthey illustrating giveriseto diverging bewhen tries to establish a functional affinity argument Benjamin tweenmedia and masses. to The spatio-temporal lineofargument links and photography film socialchangethrough was to theconceptof"shock,"whichBenjamin elaborate in his 1939 essay on Baudelaire ("Some Motifs in Baudelaire")and whichhe alreadyassumesin the Artwork Essay,esversion. to inthe The of human pecially first perception adaptation the dustrial modes ofproduction and transportation, especially radical of spatial and temporalrelations,has an aesthetic restructuration in theformal ofthephotographic media -the procedures counterpart in and the moment of fragmenting arbitrary exposure photography in film. of continuity and and editing Withitsdialectic gripofframing thrust ofitssounds and tactile withtherapidsuccession discontinuity, in therealmofreception whattheconveyor rehearses and images, film Resumbeltimposesupon humanbeingsin therealmofproduction.8 this of cites Kracauer's Benjamin grimparing concept "distraction," itssubversion cultofart ofthebourgeois allelforitscultural negativity, on individual and of a mode of reception predicated contemplation
7. I, 223, translation modified. Zohn's translation the crucialdistincobliterates tionbetweenBildand Abbild, which have acquired an antiobviouslyrelatedterms thetical historicaljuncture:"Everyday the urge grows meaningat thisparticular to gethold of an object at veryclose rangebywayof itslikeness, itsreprostronger - same difference. duction." Likeness, reproduction At a loss foran antithetical termin what follows, Zohn insteadconstructs an oppositionbetween"reproduction" on the one hand and "image seen by theunarmedeye" on theother,a freestyle additionto Benjamin's text. 8. Draftnotes relatingto the Artwork Essay, GS 1.3: 1040; also see "Baudelaire," I, 175.
Hansen 185 Miriam In its emphasis on formaldiscontinuity and illusionist absorption.9 film's rehearsal oftheshockeffect wouldthuscoincide and disruption, ofpolitical i.e. the Brechtian elements ofa with thetenets modernism, "cinema of attraction." (Yet,as I will argue later,the psychoanalytic of premises Benjamin'sconceptof shockcertainly pointbeyondthis affiliation). of experienceis traced While the spatio-temporal reorganization that in the reception, lineofargument primarily therealmofcinematic on and multiplicity seems to rely, to a greater likeness stresses extent, the iconic relationship of cinematicrepresentation, the peculiarity discussion of betweenfilm and referent. Followingan interesting the masses as the establishes screenacting,'0 pre-eminent Benjamin in subject matterof a liberatedcinema which he sees prefigured certainRussianfilms(e.g. Vertov): "Any man todaycan lay claim to (I, 231). To be sure,thisphrasealso concerns changesin beingfilmed" of the relations of reception,in particular,the democratization between author and which the traditional hierarchy upsets expertise on thefluctuating hisnotionofexpertise Butmodelling reader/viewer. in and between commentator participant populardiscourse boundary on sportsevents(e.g. newspaperboys discussingthe outcome of a bicyclerace), Benjamin draws a problematicanalogy betweenlive eventsand a medium of spatio-temporal displacement-an analogy filmand reality. between thatassumesan unproblematic relationship of the iconic self-evidence thus photographic Relying upon and political sensesof conflates he suggestively semiotic reproduction, for the the latter vouch revolutionary potential making representation, of the former. with references thisrevolutionary Moreover, potential byillustrating the cinema and polytechnical to statistics education,he clearly places that a term on the side of "experiential poverty"(Erfahrungsannut), in of that a marks problematic period, slippage, Benjamin'swritings a historical thedeclineofexperience between phenomenology tracing and the politicalendorsement of such a declineforthe sake of what
in this derMasse, translation 9. Kracauer,"Cult of Distraction" (1926), Ornament issue. 10. The question of screenactingis treatedat much greater lengthin the first linkbetween an important versionof the essay(GS 1.2: 449-455) whereit furnishes of the cinema, a point to Benjamin's notion of shock and the politicalfunction later. whichI will return
andCinema 186 Benjamin he callsa "new,positive ofthisagenconceptofbarbarism.""In light between"Bild" (image)and "Abbild" da, the distinction (imagein the sense of copy, reflection, into a binary reproduction)congeals reduced to one of that a side opposition; opposition, politically cinema would have to become a training groundforan progressive With the of the auratic barbarism. enlightened denigration image in of reproduction, favor denies the masses theposBenjaminimplicitly in of aesthetic whatever form (and thus,like the sibility experience, the 1920s,risks Communist aesthetic needs to be during Party leaving the More he cuts himself off from by enemy). important yet, exploited - crucialat leastto a theory a crucialimpulseof his own thought of in the of its Since age declining communicability. experience to current debatesin filmstudiesrestsupon Benjamin'scontribution an elaboration oftheplace ofcinemain conjunction with this thevery I will a of his take detour some through ory, aspects concept of a term which "Erfahrung," only in the "experience" approximates and most sense. vaguest preliminary
The self-denigrating slantof the Artwork Essay comes into focus when with other of only compared writings his middle and later tries to redeeman auratic mode of periodin whichBenjaminactually for a and materialist Relevant hereare historical practice. experience on photography above all his essayson Surrealism, and on the "mihis workon Proust, Leskovand Baudelaire; meticcapability"; Kafka, his epistemologicalremarks on the "dialectical image" in the hisfirst-hand accountof theeffects of hashand, finally, Passagenwerk; or historical ish. Whetherconcernedwith aesthetic, psychological ofexperience in which all thesetexts contribute to a theory questions, the phenomenonBenjamincalls "aura" playsa precarious yetindispensablepart.
und Armut" (1933), GS I1.1: 213-219. Other essays in which 11. "Erfahrung Benjamin tips the scales in thisdirectioninclude "The Authoras Producer" and some of his commentaries on Brecht(Understanding Brecht [London: NLB, 19731)as well as the short piece, "The DestructiveCharacter,"Reflections (=R), ed. Peter Demetz, trans.Edmund Jephcott(New York: HarcourtBrace Jovanovich,1978), 301-303. For a contextualizing defenseof Benjamin's plea fora "positivebarbarism," see Lindner(note 6, above).
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Benjamin'sattitude towardsthe decline of the aura is profoundly aman "irritating justas theconceptofaura itself ambivalent, displays he ventures definia first In his 1931essayon photography, biguity."12 tionofthephenomenon("a peculiarweb ofspace and time"'1)which he resumes, in the Artwork withslight modifications, Essay. We define [the auralas theuniqueappearance [Erscheinung] ofa distance, closeitmay be. Resting on a summer however andletting one'sgazefollow a mountain on afternoon range thehorizon or a branch which on one castsitsshadow thatmeansbreathing the aura of thosemountains, that branch. [1,222-231 Withthisimageofan impersonalized subjectivity, Benjamindefines to natural in relation the aura as a mode of perception experienced a definition is of the offered objects;yet by way illustrating historical in thetraditional workofart. -the of the aura withering development of to a particular If the perception the aura thusrefers appearanceof fromthe all objects,it is also conceptualized, naturein potentially of as as dependent the social conditions start, upon perception, continhistorical gentupon change. whatmakes Whatthenis theparticular ofauratic quality perception, to experience in the emphaticsense of the it indispensible (Erfahrung) word? Significantly -and, perhaps,at first sightparadoxically- the in ofa of the aura rests natural objects upon "a projection perception social experience among human beings onto nature.""14That is in his lateressayon Baudelaire, as Benjaminelaborates experience, ofthegaze: "The personwe lookat,or who theanticipated reciprocity theaura feelshe is beinglookedat,looksat us in return. To experience it withthe capability of of a phenomenonmeans to invest[belehnen]
bei Zu Sprache undEtfahrung Menschliche: das vergessene 12. Marleen Stoessel,Aura, to some extent Walter remarks (Munich: Hanser, 1983), 25. The following Benjamin Also see Habermas, 44-47. retraceStoessel'sargument. der Photographie" 13. "Eine kleineGeschichte ("A ShortHistoryof Photograof this essay: one by Stanley translations GS 378. There are several phy"). II.1: WritStreet andOther Mitchellin Screen 13.1 (Spring1972): 5-26; anotherin One-Way ings,trans.Edmund Jephcottand KingsleyShorter(London: NLB, 1979); and a 15.6 (February third- and probablyleast reliable - by Phil Pattonin Artforum 46-61. 1977): 34 (Winter 14. "Central Park,"GS 1.2: 670; NewGerman 1985): 41; "On Critique Some Motifsin Baudelaire," GS 1.2: 646-47; 1, 188.
188
and Cinema Benjamin
WhileBenjaminalludesto a phenomenological conceptofthegaze, of theromantic nature he above all invokes metaphor openingitseyes der in which a kabbalistic occurs, Natur) (Augenaufschlagen already guise, in his 1916 essay on language.'"The notionof "Belehnung" implies kindofattentiveness or receptivity botha particular (thehumancapaof to or intentional) another's whether visual bility responding gaze, ofthisintersubjective in and theactualization experience therelationnature. oftheaura in natwith non-human Hence the experience ship nor 'natural'(in the sense of mythiimmediate ural objectsis neither involves oftransference, but a sudden moment a metaphoric activcal) ity.'6 The gaze thatnatureappears to be returning, does not however, mirror consciousidentity, but confronts us the subjectin itspresent, neverbefore seen in a waking state. with another this self, Undeniably, to thesphereofthedaemonic,in kindofvisionis notwholly unrelated in Freud's notionof the "uncanny"to whichI will return particular the with sexual and of auratic conjunction gender-specific implications to the experience.The Freudian connotation,like the reference involontaire and Benjamin'sglossingof Proustas an expertin memoire of the aura, suggests whatcommentators matters have pointedout: thatthe"unique appearanceofa distance" whichmanifests in the itself ofspatially markdimension, objectsis ofa temporal present perception in the moment which the of an trace unconscious, ing fleeting "prehistoric"past is actualizedin a cognitive image.'7
In the 15. "On Language as Such and the Languageof Man," R, 314-32; 325ff. withan answering ofendowingnature framework ofthisessay,themotif kabbalistic in an acousticand metaphysical dimension,in the problemof gaze is prefigured, in the disjunction between the mute language of nature and the translation, of eitherto a of human languages,and the fragmentary relationship multiplicity names. Also "The Task of the of see Translator" (1923), I, 69language paradisical 82. 16. Perhaps deliberately the connection,Benjamin explains in a understating of naturewithan answering footnote thattheendowment gaze is "a source of poethisremark withone try"and adds that"words,too,can have an aura," illustrating Karl Kraus:"The closeryou look at a word,thegreatofhis favorite quotationsfrom er the distancefromwhichit looks back" (I, 200). 17. Stoessel, 45. Also see Benjamin's comments on Baudelaire's "corresas thoseof theSymbolistes, but are "data pondances" whichare not simultaneous, of of remembrance," the "murmur" a (I, conveying prehistoric past 182 and note
memoire involontaire" (I, 188).
to the data of the the gaze. This experiencecorresponds returning
Hansen Miriam
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Indeed, an important aspectof Benjamin'snotionof theaura is its which his theory ofexperience with inscribes complextemporality First and antagonistic of and of thetwofold registers memory history. no doubt the social leaves that,being contingent all, Benjamin upon in conditions of perception, the experience of the aura is irrevocably of industrial modes of production, decline,precipitated by theeffects an alienating and urbanization, information, transportation especially Yet onlyin division of labor and theproliferation of shocksensations. can theaura be recognized, can itbe regitheprocessofdisintegration of(past)experience. The first stered as a qualitative impact component is ofthat marks which a particular historical declinein turn experience, in theworkofBaudelaire. whatBenjaminreads,as a "hiddenfigure," of perceptionthatmasquerades as The traumatic reorganization as an upmost obviously in spatialterms, manifests itself modernity whichMary of the subjectfrom a humanrangeof perception rooting ofsubjectivity."'s Ann Doane describes as a "despatialization Sincefor time over has Benjamin,however, conceptual priority space, thisshift of detemporalization. a matter The is ultimately and more crucially imagesof loss thathe evokesin hisessayon Leskov,"The Storyteller" crucialto theepic trafrom theerosionofspatialrelations (1936),drift of of the collective of listeners, the mystery dition- the proximity of to that of conditions the the experience, temporal faraway places the dissociationof collectivememoryand individualrecollection, of novelwriting and latter surviving onlyin theprivatized subjectivity oftimenotonlyhas erodedthecapability and The reification reading. as of as awareness communicability experience- experience memory, of temporality and mortality-but the very possibility of thatis imagining, a different world."The decayof the remembering, of a better naof thevision[Phantasievorstellung] aura and the atrophy one and of are the class ture(owingto thedefensive position struggle) same.'19
of auraticexpecharacter epiphantic 13, 198-99).The emphasison the momentary, the notionofJetztzeit, rienceis linkedto a Messianicconcept of time,in particular the timeof the Now. 18. MaryAnn Doane, " 'When the Directionof the ForceActing on theBody Is inWide 7.1&2 44. Doane's The argument (1985): Angle MovingImage," Changed': The Schivelbusch's vokesboth theArtwork Benjaminianstudy, Essay and Wolfgang in the19thCentury, trans.AnselmHollo (New York: and Travel Trains Railway Journey: Urizen, 1979). of thatthissentenceis precededby a description 19. PW,J76, 1. It is significant
190
and Cinema Benjamin
ofdeclineis trajectory upon thehistorical-materialist Superimposed - sense of belatedness, a less linear -though no less pessimistic ofJewish The affinity of the Messianism. endebtedto thetemporality on of aura with Benjamin'searlyspeculations language(see concept note 15,above) suggests another defined conceptofhistory, bythetraThe tensionofdestructive of Fall and Redemption. and utopijectory ofradical an impulsescharacteristic Messianism20 could actualJewish for seen a matrix ambivalence towards the aura, be as ly Benjamin's was enforced that ambivalence intentions evenbefore byrevolutionary veil of and politicaldespair.Thus, because the aura as the necessary to a beautiful (schiner Schein) merely pretends premature, appearance witha fallenworld,it requiresthe destructive, reconciliation private ofallegory, themortifying "masculine,"demystifying gesture graspof of criticalreading.For only in a fragmentary state,as knowledge, "quotation,"can the utopian sedimentof experiencebe preserved, can it be wrestedfromthe emptycontinuumof history which,for is with Benjamin, synonymous catastrophe.21
of the eroticgaze, linkingindividualsexual auraticexperiencein the reciprocity desire to the Utopian longingsof the human species,and followed by a somewhat laconic equation of thedecay of theaura withthedecayof potency. Whiletheissue here is impotencein Baudelaire,along withthehistorical dissociation of sexus and eros (J72a,2), Benjaminplaces itin a politicalcontext ofthebourgeoisie'sceasingto withthe future of the productive concernitself forcesunleashed in its service, the decline of the Utopian imagination J63a, 1; J75, 2). The connection between is resumedin thesecond of Benjamin's"Theses libidinaland politicalimagination ofHistory," on thePhilosophy in therestored I, 253-54 (evenmoreexplicit German edition, GS 1.2: 693-94), where the redemptivepromise of erotic happiness is established as thebasis of that"weakMessianicpower"whichlinksevery generation to the precedingones and by which the past "is referred to redemption."In this Walter des context,also see ChristineBuci-Glucksmann, und die Utopie Betnjamin Weiblichen (Hamburg: VSA, 1984), 34-35. and Apocalypse: Benjamin, 20. Anson Rabinbach, "Between Enlightenment Bloch and Modern GermanJewishMessianism,"New German 34 (Winter Critique Idea inJudaism 1985): 78-124. Also see GershomScholem,TheMessianic (New York: SchockenBooks, 1971), 1-36.Rabinbachshowsconvincingly thatBenjamin'stheolconogy of language cannot be separatedfromparticular politicalconfigurations the positionof GermanJewstowards WorldWar I, just as Benjaminscholcerning ars likeBuck-Morss, and Wolinhave arguedfora complex,ifproblematWohlfarth of his theologicalthoughtwith his later Marxism. See Rolf ic, interdependence Forum Tiedemann, "Historical Materialismor PoliticalMessianism?,"Philosophical 15.1-2(Fall-Winter "On theMessianicStructure Wohlfarth, 1983-84):71-104; Irving of Benjamin's Last Reflections," 3 (1978): 148-212. Glyph 21. The trajectorybetween allegorical destructionand redemption links TheOrigin Drama(1925) and Benjamin's earlierwork,in particular ofGerman Tragic
Hansen 191 Miriam oftransforming mode ofexperience, ofreThe possibility an auratic turnson a deemingit fromthe dead-endof cultand social privilege, of the productive forcesmomentin the development particular ofrecas the"dialectical, turn whichBenjamindesignates Copernican is the of the "dreamThis moment ollection." anticipated awakening in thesections ofthePassagenwerk a keymetaphor writingcollective," of to the historical ten before1935, and the dream refers nightmare a new with which is a natural "Capitalism phenomenon capitalism. of mythic dream-sleepcame over Europe, and in it, a reactivation a decisive Withthistheoretical trope,Benjaminadded powers.'"22 to the philosophical like Adorno,dangerous twist and, to critics "nature" both to which of terms, according concept "Naturgeschichte," thanantithetical. mediatedrather and "history," are dialectically Thus, nature left of inner and whileman's historical outer) subjection (both that was nothistorical in nature (and hencealienated), history nothing had assumed the appearanceof nature,maskingits social and itself as mythical fate.23 economicrelations Takingthisconceptone stepfuritsunprecedent19th with to the decided treat ther, century, Benjamin consumer of evernew commodities, ed proliferation goods and fashformof prehistory ions,as "an original (N3a,2) so as to [Urgeschichte]" thehistoriand exceeded of that both sustained the dreams at get layer of the As mythical cal orderof production. images, phantasmagorias classless a werebydefinition society modernity ambiguous, promising thevery whileperpetuating opposite;yetas dreamimagestheycould
of thefinalyears, his major essayon Goethe'sElective (1922), to hiswritings Affinities of Hison the his "Theses and of the N section Philosophy Passagen-Werk especially tory"(1940). Also see his "CentralPark," 46: "The image of 'redemption'entails brutalgrasp [Zugrif." the firm, seemingly 214ff.; Rudolf 22. PW, section K; K1,1; Kla,8. Buck-Morss, "Passagen-Werk," PW, 26ff. Tiedemann, Editor's Introduction, Dialectics TheOrigin 23. Susan Buck-Morss, (New York:The Free Press, ofNegative Historical and Wolin, 166f.;Burkhardt 52-57 History Nature"); ("Natural 1977), in Lindner, " 'Natur-Geschichte':Geschichtsphilosophieund Welterfahrung In his 41-58. + Kritik 31/32 Text programmatic Schriften," (1971): Benjamin's Adorno resumeda crucialtheme speech of 1932, "Die Idee der Naturgeschichte," and joined it with the Hegelian of Benjamin's study of the Baroque Trauerspiel andClassConsciousness inHistory conceptof"second nature"as elaboratedby LukAcs, (1923), in terms of Marx's analysis of commodity fetishism.Poststructuralist attemptsto conflateBenjamin's concept of nature with a Barthesiannotion of thetermbut also occlude the dialecticwithin "myth"not onlyreduce thehistorical nature." with "reconciliation of a utopian perspective
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into historicalimages, into strategies of wakbe read and transformed To Susan Buck-Morss, ing up. quote The nightmarish, infernalaspects of industrialism were veiled in the moderncityby a vastarrangement of things whichat the same timegave corporealformto the wishes were"natural"pheand desiresof humanity. Because they nomena in the sense of concrete matter, theygivethe illusion of being the realizationof those wishes ratherthan merelytheirreified,symbolicexpression.[...] It was as - bothdistorting of thecollective" illusion "dream-images - thattheytook on political and redeemablewish-image meaning.24 Benjamin found this perspective prefigured in the Surrealists, especially their explorations of "the most dream-like object in the world of things": the city of Paris. In Aragon's Paysan de Paris and Breton's Nadja, he recognized his own fascination with an urban landscape cluttered with objects that had lost their value as commodities, the most recent casualties of the cult of the New. to perceive the revolutionary Surrealism"was the first energiesthatapin in first iron the the the first 'obsolescent,' constructions, factory pear the earliest the have that buildings, begun to be exphotos, objects tinct,grand pianos, the dresses of fiveyears ago, fashionable restaurants when the vogue has begun to ebb from them."25 To be sure, in theirnegativity; the misery such energies are revolutionary primarily of interiors, of enslaved and enslaving objects, revealed in the afterlife translatesinto politics as a "revolutionarynihilism." Yet, as "everyof the prehistoric thingforgotten mingles withwhat has been forgotten world," the outdated displays of the Paris arcades present an "ideal kaum verflossenen panorama of a primeval time barely gone by [einer of world secret the affinities."26 Thus, Urzeit],""a unruly assimilation of the modern to the archaic not only challenges history's claim to proa chance of redeeming auratic experience as a coggress; it also offers
24. Buck-Morss, "Passagen-Werk,"213-14.
25. "Surrealism:The Last Snapshotof the European Intelligentsia" (February to to Scholem of 1929, Benjaminrefers 1929), R, 181 (trans.modified).In a letter the SurrealismEssay as "an opaque paraventbefore the Arcades project" (PW, on Surrealism see his "Traumkitsch" 1090). For an earlierstatement (1927), GS 11.2: 620-22. 26. "Franz Kafka"(1934), I, 131; Passagen-Werk II: 1045.
Miriam Hansen 193 oftheaura undemolition mode, transformed nitive by the historical reder the impactof shock.As Habermas observes:"The experience conshelloftheaura was, however, leased fromtheruptured already of the of the aura itself: the metamorphosis tainedin the experience of whole field into a a surprisThereby object counterpart [Gegeniiber]. is opened between and inanimate nature animate ingcorrespondences of frail encounter us in the structures up, wherein even things intersubjectivity."27 of such a To Benjamin,the Surrealists signalled the possibility to overcomethe esoteric, turnby theirefforts isolating redemptive of a public the auratic of to happiness give promise aspect inspiration, Whether and secularmeaning-to make it a "profaneillumination." in their collective anamnesis of dreams, their experimentsin defined thesphere or pursuits oferotic automatic passion,they writing and psychic of the sphereof their of political actionin terms physical an integral"sphere of images existenceand vice versa, projecting needs of a "collective be up to theexperiential thatmight [Bildraum]" in as a literSurrealism was not interested Benjamin physis."Clearly, in its and neo-romantic occult tendencies)but, ary movement(nor in theanti-aesthetic rather, collagesand perimpulseofitsmanifestos, ofimages oftheartificial - in theradicalcrossing formances flowering for reserved of second naturewitha mode of experience traditionally the mysmore primary nature."We penetrate thoseof an ostensibly world,by onlyto the degreethatwe recognizeit in the everyday tery as the of a dialectical that virtue impenetraeveryday perceives optics as everyday."28 ble and the impenetrable of experiencein a disenchanted The possibility world,indeed the also of impliesa crossing experience, verypossibility conceptualizing and epistemological in another sense, the chartingof a historical "workof passage." A figure a veritable transition, probablycloserto
45-46. or RedemptiveCriticism," 27. Habermas, "Consciousness-Raising of 28. "Surrealism,"R, 192, 190; GS II.1: 309f.,307. The politicalimplications on Benjamin's thisprogramare fleshedout more clearlyin Adorno's commentary recourseto the discourseof dreams: "The absurd is presentedas ifitwereself-eviWalter of itspower." Uber dent,in orderto striptheself-evident (Frankfurt: Benjamin be remembered that should also 54. It Benjaminsaw Surrealism 1970), Suhrkamp, as a practical critique of official Marxism, the tradition of "metaphysical theunconsciousand libidinalside of materialism" whichhas consistently neglected forthe revoluhuman experienceand failed"to win the energiesof intoxication tion." Also see Benjamin's draft notes,GS 11.3: 1021-41.
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is that of the persona than the Surrealists Benjamin's intellectual in both a the and flaneur, key figure Passagen-Werk the essays on in 1929,theyearhe wrotethe essayson SurrealBaudelaire.Already ofexperience in ism and on Proust, out histheory Benjaminsketched a reviewof a contemporary book on Berlin,"The Returnof the Flaneur."29 This review illuminates the connection between Benjamin'snotionof the aura and a secularized,profanemode of the most important experiencein a number of ways,anticipating of his of The of as flaneur aspects theory experience. journey thewriter is this Franz of the case to that (in Hessel) diametrically opposed who seeksout themonuments tourist and exoticattractions offoreign itis a purposeless intothepastwhich sites;rather, drifting purposeful turnsthe cityinto a "mnemotechnic device." The muse of memory on an itinerary takestheflaneur, whichleads,"ifnotdown invariably, to theMothers so Goethe's into a pastwhichis all themore Faust], [of it more since evokes than the author's individual, fascinating merely As thedetective/priest ofthe"geniusloci," theflaneur reads history." oftheminute this"more" in thephenomenology and inconspicuous, or the touchof a particular threshold tile." the "scentof a particular Since such images "inhabit"the cityas a collective the literal space, turnsintoa "metaphoric" "wooden threshold" one, and the "penafascinated tes" or "threshold at goddesses"- likethosethat Benjamin oftheParisarcades- become spatialallegories ofa temtheentrance or historical For anybody who change ("Zeitenwende"). poral crossing the can read its signs,who can make "stonyeyes" of these pagan harbors ofmeanings, deities"look back at us," thiscrossing a density at once habitualand disjunctive, and future, intersecting past history
des Flaneurs"'(reviewof Franz Hessel, Spazieren 29. "Die Wiederkehr in Berlin, on Benjamin's own writings 1929), GS III: 194-99. One mightas well substitute Berlin, "Berliner Kindheitum Neunzehnhundert"(1932; an earlier version of of Einbahnstrasse which is "A BerlinChronicle,"R, 3-60), as well as the fragments (1928) and the series entitled"Denkbilder," GS IV.l: 305-438. The "Denkbild" which (thoughtimage) is the medium of Benjamin's peculiar mode of theorizing to resolve the opposition betweena philosophical(Kantian)concept of attempts of the lived texture disjunctive) (and thus temporally experienceand the historical forBenjamin'swork ofchildhoodmemory theimportance moment.In thiscontext, of his insistence on thehistoricity cannotbe emphasizedoften enough,in particular the childhood experience of each generation;see Buck-Morss,"Passagen-Werk," 217ff.
private [...] childhood or youth, more even than the city's own
Hansen 195 Miriam unloss and desire,individualrecollection and myth, and collective conscious. from mode ofreading whichBenjamintried to theorize, an It is that in anthropological-historical perspective, his speculations on the and Adorno'slater LikeKracauer's earlier "mimetic concepts faculty." of "mimesis," Benjamin's too has to be distinguished, absolutely, confrom thetraditional, Platonic conceptofmimesisas wellas from of it actualwas Marxist theories reflection (Widerspiegelung); temporary ofthe -as muchas in observance to thelatter opposition lyin explicit of the Frankfurt Biblicaltaboo on representation-thatthe writers the the idea of mimesis.Moreover, School endorsed and redefined the of mimesis complements philosophical analysis of concept withnaturethatis in thatit envisionsa relationship Naturgeschichte, one and exploitation, to the dominantformsof mastery alternative into of thesubject/object thatwould dissolvethecontours dichotomy of reconciliation.30 and the possibility reciprocity to the first versionof the essay,"The referred Benjamin himself of language"and Doctrineof Similarity" (written 1933),as a "theory "On Languageas Such and on the itto his 1916 essay, linked explicitly thesecondversion after of Two Man." later, finishing Language years of the essay, "On the MimeticFaculty"(1935), he thankedGretel and Adorno for sending him Freud's essay on "Psychoanalysis hisownreflections on themiwith itsaffinity emphasizing Telepathy," of two these meticresidueoflanguage.31 Considering points reference, a it seems safenot to expectanything conceptof resembling realistic is not mimesis terms In Peirce), (following representation. semiotic between likeness a perceptual concernedwithan iconic relationship, facthe actualizedbythemimetic and If correspondences reality. sign of the to realm then it is the of to ulty pertain anyaspect signification, a of material which involves indexical, hinging contiguity relationship intoplay the dismomentin timeand thusbrings upon a particular of all reading.32 junctive temporality
87f.The 30. On "mimesis" in Adorno and Benjamin,see Buck-Morss, Origin, nomost of School's not to the Frankfurt is history, central, philosophy only concept and Adorno'sDialectic (1944), but also to Adorno's Enlightenment of tablyHorkheirner Theory (1970). publishedAesthetic posthumously GS 11.3: 950-58; another source Benjamin himself 31. Editors' commentary, book of Zohar. to Scholem is the kabbalistic suggestsin a letter 32. Philip Rosen has recentlydrawn attentionto the connection between
andCinema 196 Benjamin in humanbeingsrepondsto patterns ofsimilarThe mimetic faculty in is or it the to nature; ity correspondence capacity recognizeand in return. traces thiscapacity such correspondences Benjamin produce and ontogenetic modes of imitating the back to phylogenetic nature, to nature'ssuperiorforce, the latter former a necessary conforming "A without obvious purpose,in the games of children. stillpresent, or a teacher, but also at beinga childnot onlyplaysat beinga grocer or a train."33 As bothexamplessuggest, themimetic windmill faculty, is thatstimulate like the analogicalpatterns it, subjectto historical has definitely change. Thus, our capacityof perceivingsimilarity but the similarities we perceive diminished; (e.g. in faces) consciously or not at relateto the "countlesssimilarities perceived unconsciously all" like "the tip of the iceberg" to its submarinevolume. "The or we are concerned withthedecayofthisfaculty questionis whether withits transformation." Obviously,thisquestionoverlapswiththe of and the rephrasing of the question,as we shall the aura, question in ofexperidimension an see, opens up important theory Benjamin's ence. ofthemimetic A keyterm forunderstanding thetransformation facis thenotionof"non-sensuous Ahnlichkeit") ("unsinnliche ulty similarity" in a characteristic with reference to whichBenjaminillustrates, detour, in he himself a to the relates, note, (a paradigm astrology preliminary questionof the aura; GS 11.3:958; 956). In an archaicpast,he insists, betweena person'smomentof therewas a mimetic correspondence of the stars;more important birthand the constellation yet,it was on of ancients and to the new-born as thegift the perceived by passed The of this mimetic however, knowledge. perception correspondence, instant was bound to a momentin time,a fleeting (the momentof ofthestars) and dependedupon the theparticular constellation birth, of or foran interpretation. individual a reader, collective, presence
in the filmtheory of AndreBazin ("Historyof Image, and temporality indexicality 1987). Angle, forthcoming Image of History:Subjectand Ontologyin Bazin," Wide On the basis of Rosen's redemptivecritique of Bazin, there are indeed some interesting parallels between Bazin and Benjamin, although their concepts of to historical are worlds apart,owing not only to the latter'scommitment history materialism but likewiseto a different religiousand theologicalbackground. in Reflections, 33. GS 11.1:205, 210. The second versionof theessayis translated withan introduction by Knut Tarnowski, 333-36; the first version,translated by I 17 (Spring1979): 65-69. In thefollowing Anson Rabinbach,in NewGerman Critique indicated. relyon the first, longerversionunless otherwise
MiriamHansen
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Astrologyis merelya belated - and rather"crooked" - theoryin re-
- and often lationto thisearly practice, misinterpreting reinterpreting dateswhichby now have lostany sensuousand experi- thelatter's entialbasis of similarity. Benjaminmightas well have used the example of psychoanalysis: of repression relieson the assumption the Freudiantheory similarly in everything there is meaning that and that significant everything truly momentsof infancy has alreadyhappened in the past; the repressed unreadable in our adultlivesas alien,distorted return (and distorting), a windmill or a leaves the child But at signs. playing being Benjamin of non-senfrom to another "canon trainand insteadturns astrology - language.It need hardly be repeatedherethat suous similarities" of is language Benjamin's theory diametrically opposed to a and conventional viewoflanguageas a system Saussurean ofarbitrary mean that he subscribes to an signs. This does not necessarily via he shifts, viewof the originof language.34 Rather, onomatopoetic - therelationship wordsofdifferbetween theproblemoftranslation to an identical ent languagesdenoting meaning- to an area central imthe of linguistic written thetradition language, graphic mysticism: of theseconnections "The most important age of wordsand letters.
may well be the one ... between writtenand spoken language," gov-
of a highly non-sensuous erned by a similarity abstract, degree. entersthroughthe backdoor of At this juncture,psychoanalysis us to recognizeimages,or more prewhich"has taught graphology in handwriting" as a hiddentraceof cisely puzzles [Vexierbilder], picture in individual unconscious.35 The mimetic thewriter's faculty expressed more even must have an important writing, played Benjaminsuggests, ofwritten language:"Thus, along withlanpartin thearchaichistory has become an archive" - and, he adds later,our guage, writing or non-sensimilarities "mostcompletearchive"- "of non-sensuous is This "magic" aspectoflanguage, suous correspondences." however, of maniits the each from semiotic and meaning aspect inseparable
34. "On Language as Such and on the Language of Man" (1916), R, 314- 332; "The Task of theTranslator"(1923), I, 69-82; 74; "Probleme der Sprachsoziologie: Ein Sarnmmelreferat" (1935), GS III, 452-480; also see Rabinbach, "Introduction," 63. in graphology, directions 35. On different among whichhe singlesout a more recentpsychoanalytic Klages, see approach againstearlierpositions,in particular "Alte und neue Graphologie" (1930), GS IV.1,2: 596-98.
198 Benjamin andCinema thematerial fests itself basisoftheother. Hence, theperonlythrough is the of reading, of bound with the up temporality ception similarity of and their "flashmomentary ephemeralconfigurations meaning, Yetthegrowing and reading speed ofwriting ing" intoa constellation. also enhances "the fusionof the semioticand the mimeticin the desphereof language,"to a pointwhere(and herethe 1935 version from the earlier the transformed of mimetic one) parts "powers productionand comprehension [...] have liquidatedthoseof magic.""3 oflanguageas such,Benjamin'sreflections Rather thana theory on a theory ofreading. The mimetic themimetic dimension faculty imply ofreadingrespondsto a levelofmeaningwhichRoland Barthes,faute de mieux,has termed the "third" or "obtuse" meaning.37For thesemiotic bothBarthes's aspectoflanguageencompasses Benjamin, and of "informational" in ab"symbolic"levels meaning,whether or narrative stract discourses, philosophical, political, psychoanalytic while the mimeticaspect would correspondto the level of phyto Barthes excess.As thereference siognomic implies, Benjamin'snotionof readingwas not confined to written but material, rangedfrom on the surface the ancientreadingof constellations of the sky- "to - to a critical read whatwas neverwritten" readingof the "natural" of The medium of such phenomena nineteenth-century capitalism. is to but be the critical sure, reading language, "temporalabyss,"the which such is morethana metadisjunction cognitive propels reading, ofall language.3s nature Whilelanguage and expephoroftheaporetic riencein Benjaminare intimately can neither terms, interlocking they be identified subsumedby,each other. with,nor hierarchically
to themimetic the in a noterelating 36. R, 336. It is no coincidencethat, faculty, name of Brechtappears as an example of "a language purifiedof all magic elements" (GS 11.3:956). "The Third Meaning: ResearchNotes on Some Eisenstein 37. Roland Barthes, ed. & trans.StephenHeath (New York:Hill and Stills"(1970), Image- Music- Text, Wang, 1977). of linguistic to claim Benjaminforthe tradition 38. The mostbrilliant attempt is the late Paul de Man's readingof "The Task of the Translator,"Yale skepticism oflanguagewhich French Studies 69 (1985): 25-46. "Now itis thismotion,thiserrancy neverreaches the mark,which is alwaysdisplaced in relationto what it meant to oflanguage,thisillusionofa lifethatis onlyan afterlife, that reach,itis thiserrancy is not human,because it pertains to As such, history strictly Benjamincalls history. forthesame reason;itis notphenomenal,in theorderoflanguage;it is not natural, no knowledge a history thesense thatno cognition, about man,can be derivedfrom a linguistic and itis notreally whichas such is purely either, temporal complication;
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of a different useof Whatis at stakeforBenjaminis the possibility conone could mobilize the that mimetic historically power language, in languageagainst centrated the" 'Once upon a time'ofclassicalhisthe"pedagogicside" oftheArtorical narrative" (PW,N3,4). Defining "To train our image-makhe Rudolf Borchardt: cades Project, quotes to look stereoscopically intothedepths and dimensionally ingfaculty should oftheshadowsofhistory" (N 1,8).This heuristic gaze produce, illuminot hermeneutical mutually images(in whichpastand present but "dialecticalimages" -images nate each otheras a continuum), The "in which the past and the now flash into a constellation." dialectical optics of the historicalgaze arreststhe movementof oftheir archaic, ('natural,' dreamlike) mythical, imagesin themoment it it them a that into is, allegorizes "shock," "coming legibility"; gives But only"at a standstill" can they themintoquotability. become genmonads that resist thecatastrophic continuity uinelyhistorical images, in will to the of time.39"The first this be montage carry voyage stage into over (N2,6). history" principle seem like I resumethequestionoffilm Before bywayofwhatmight "non-sento thenotionof I willbriefly return a surreptitious analogy, between and theimplieddistinction suous similarity" (or resimilarity is at -which and and between sameness, semblance) affinity identity of leastas crucialto Benjamin'svisionof the cinemaas the principle mimetic his of the As we could see from faculty, genealogy montage. a changeofmeaning.It itself has undergone ofsimilarity thecategory not i.e. figurative, intonon-sensuous, haswithdrawn correspondences, of the and because subjective intersubjective capability perceiving only of has declined,but because,forrelatedreasons,the status similarity is comand i.e. obvious sensuous, literal, correspondences irrevocably and a conofuniversal commodity production promisedbytheeffects Indeed, standardization of social identity and subjectivity. comitant forms ofsimithese in sense the confronts reified emphatic experience in unfolds which kind of a different with Benjamin similarity larity
thatanimatesitis nota temporal Those disjunctions because thestructure structure. in languagedo getexpressedbytemporalmetaphors, but they are onlymetaphors" (44). For an early response to deconstructionist readingsof Benjamin, see Irving New German 17 "Walter Benjamin's Image of Interpretation," Wohlfarth, Critique 70-98. 1979): (Spring of History," GS 1.2: 702-03,I, 39. PW, N2a,5; N3,1. "Theses on the Philosophy 262-64.
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ofone thing to another his "Image of Proust"(1929): "The similarity in us a wakeful reflects which we areused to,which state, only occupies of the dreamworldin whicheveryvaguelythe deeper resemblance thingthat happens appears not in identicalbut in similarguise, one to another"(I, 204). opaquely similar In Proust,the logic of unconsciousassociationthatdistinguishes from is thatofthememoire involontaire, theinvoluntaidentity similarity which interweaves remembrance and recollection ry (Eingedenken) into a textual inversion of "Peneor, rather, forgetting counterpart againstthe linear lope's work,"yetlike hersa workthatstemsitself in the Proustian as well as Freudian course of time. Remembrance, withconsciousremembering which sense,is incompatible (Erinnerung) to fixatethe image of memoryin an already tends to historicize, narrative event(Erlebnis); notself-reflection, butan integral interpreted a "bodily,"to some degreeabsent-minded "presenceof "actuality," Proust turnedday intonight and rememmind,"is itsprerequisite.40 into an interminable textual unceasing, bering process,drivenby a will to obsessive whichnearly made "blind,senseless, [...] happiness," own of heartbeat The "elegiac" direction Benjamin's stop in affinity. Proust's quest, afterall, was Benjamin's own, just as the writer's a formerly endeavorto recapture, collective solitary "synthetically," mode of experienceremaineda daemonic shadow for the critic's and historiographic career,inseparablefrom his politicalitinerary thecompulsionto transfigure a distorted existence Moreover, project. into a "prehistoric"world of correspondences marks a decisive in the idea of "eternalrecurrence," betweenthe mythical ambiguity, of and of"the sameness the reproduction catastrophic utopiancraving the of which characterizes movement the once desire, inexagain" yet structure of the wish: haustible
which Childrenknowa symbolof thisworld:the stocking ofthisdreamworldwhen,rolledup in the has thestructure itis a "bag" and a "present"at thesame time.And drawer, do not tireof quickly as children thebag and changing just its contents intothirdthing-namely, a stocking- Proust could not get his fillof emptying the dummy,his self[die in orderto keepgarnering that das Ich], at one stroke Attrappe,
40. GS II.1: 311; I, 202; "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire," sections II and III;
"Madame Ariane," R, 89.
Hansen 201 Miriam third theimage which hiscuriosity satisfied or,more thing, his homesickness for homesickness assuaged precisely, [...] in thestate theworld ofresemblance, in distorted a world which face ofexistence thetrue surrealist breaks through. [I, 204-5] as Irving Wohlfarth The distortion, reading pointsout in an excellent ofthispassage,"lies in theeyeofthebeholder qua identical subject."If is "surrealist," theonlyadequate mode of the"truefaceofexistence" is of or dismimetic one transformation, representation figuration of the "distortion placement distortion."4' and between similarity It is no coincidencethat the distinction sameness again comes into play, a few years later,in Benjamin's "Hashish in Marseilles" (1932). A physiognomic experiment par of thedrughad evokedin him "a deeplysubmerged excellence, feeling which other more difficult to than was any analyze happiness" in thatstate.Gropingfora description, he sensationhe experienced Novellas recalls a phrase fromJohannes V. Jensen's Exotic (1919): " 'Richardwas a youngman witha sense foreverything in theworld This in der sentence alles thatwas the same [Sinn Gleichartige Welt].' fiir now to confront the much. It me me enabled had pleased very political and rational sense it had had for me earlier with the individual, (R, 142-43). yesterday" magicalmeaningofmyexperience the to underscore If beforehe had taken significance Jensen'sphrase it acquireda of nuancesin an age of unprecedented standardization, distorted different meaning in conjunction with his artificially perception:"For I saw only nuances, yet these were the same." and sameness to a this blurringof similarity Benjamin attributes sudden "ravenoushungerto tastewhatis the same in all places and countries,"but he introducesthis hungerby way of a metaphoric of the Marseilleancobblestones(which operation,a double troping might as well have been in Paris) as the bread (loaves) of his Towardstheend of thepassage,Benjaminrecallsa train imagination. "All men are brothers," whoselastand ofthought with, beginning link"might haveinvolved he assuresus - "less trivial "imagesofanimals." undertheimpactofthedeepening crisis, When,soon after, political
Benjamin reaches the conclusion that intellectualson the leftcannot
80. 41. Wohlfarth, "Image of Interpretation,"
202
and Cinema Benjamin
of the aura, he finally seems to but actively promotethe demolition abandon the distinction betweensimilarity and samenessaltogether, intothemanifest, 'obvious' iconicity of themimetic collapsing faculty The quotationfrom in photographic representation. Jensenreturns modified as a generalmode of the Artwork form, Essayin a slightly "sense forthings in theworldthatare the whose growing perception - and youngRichardis object by means of technical reproduction masses" as the collective elided in favorof the "contemporary expoAdorno's chargeof romanticizing nentof thatsense.42Incurring the off of from his the element similarity Benjamin splits proletariat, of of mimesis and as "sense attaches to the it, sameness," concept itbyplacingitin diametrical masses;he further positivizes opposition thegroundof his theory of to the aura. Thus, he not onlysurrenders the tension of difference and he also affinity; experience, motivating of memoryand history makes the discontinuities congeal into the and a linearpresenceof polytechnical education,popular expertise notionof"testing" whichcannotbe dissociated from pseudo-scientific in Benjamin,it is thislapse its industrial-capitalist origin.If anything intopresencewhichwould haveto be considered nostalgic, especially in light of his later writings (the second Baudelaire essay and the "Theses on the Philosophyof History") which restore the to his thought, dimensionsof dialectical at a timewhen temporality the political-and withit his personal- situation had darkenedbeyond recall.
das Gleichartige in der Welt]" has seized even the unique same [Sinn fiur
ofmimetic Even in theArtwork thereare glimpses Essay,however, in relation and that the cinema's role figuration, cognition suggesting could to experiential impoverishment go beyondmerely promoting and consummating thehistorical themediumof process.Undeniably, in thatprocess.As a technology likephotography, of film, participates it an to the archive of reproduction, expands, unprecedented scope, discursive and thus reduces the "voluntary, memory" inevitably play
42. The first versionof theArtwork toJensen(GS Essaystillincludesa reference of the phrase as "sense of the universalequalityof 1.2: 440). Zohn's translation things" (I, 223) substitutespolitical pathos for physiognomicperception,exin the Essay. aggerating Benjamin's own tendency
Miriam Hansen 203
recollection.Likewise, its mechanical procedures of involuntary in temporal and spatial relations,disregarding 'natural' intervene of shock sensations and thus compound the proliferation distances, that seal human consciousnessin a permanentstate of psychical in theverystructure of defense.And, finally, the cinema epitomizes, theapparatus, thedeclineofthehumancapability to return thegaze, a historicalexperience Benjamin found registeredin Baudelaire's ofeyesthatcould be said to "have losttheability to look" description But of because its and (I, 189). precisely contemporaneity complicity transformation of human perception, filmcould withthe industrial a cognitive task: "Film is the first also fulfill art formcapable of how matter withpeople's lives.Hence, film interferes can be showing an excellent means of materialist (1, 247). Chaplin's representation" are a case in point: by chopping up exercises in fragmentation expressivebody movementinto a sequence of minutemechanical impulses,he rendersthe law of the apparatusvisibleas the law of human movement- "he interprets himself (GS 1.3: allegorically" 1040; 1047). Besides allowingforan allegorical the analysisof the shockeffect, of film also extends to mimetic designed capability specific techniques itself to maketechnology artificial disappear.The complexand highly mannerin whichfilmcreatesan illusionof reality, Benjaminargues, it a in of contemporary status the technical mediation gives particular film us life. As ifbya logicofdouble negation, grants "an aspectofreis of is whathumanbeingsare which free all which ality equipment," to expectfroma workof art" (I, 234). "entitled The shooting ofa film, ofa soundfilm, especially [...]presinwhich ents a process itis impossible toassign toa spectatora viewpoint which wouldexclude from thescenebeing suchextraneous accessories as camera enacted equipment, theposition ofhis etc.- unless crew, machinery, lighting identical with that ofthe lens.[...]In thetheater one eyewere is wellawareof theplacefrom on stage which theevents be detected cannot as illusionary. Thereis no immediately such place forthe moviescene thatis beingshot.Its nature isa nature ofthesecond theresult illusionary degree,
the studio That is to say,in the mechanical of editing. equipment sodeeply haspenetrated into that its the reality freed from pure aspect, is theresult substance ofequipment, foreign ofa special procedure, a particular camera andlinking the shot namely, shooting from set-up with other ones.The equipment-free similar aspect of reality
andCinema 204 Benjamin ofartifice; ofimmethesight herehas becometheheight oftechin land diate has the 'blue become flower' the reality
nology. [I,232f.]
This passageis one ofthemostpuzzlingin theessayand itis notexactof of the proverbial 'blue flower' lyilluminated by Zohn's translating intoan "orchid."What GermanRomanticism, Novalis'"blaue Blume," does Benjaminmean bythe"equipment-free How, aspectofreality"? does it differ from ask somewhat the one might effect, reality bluntly, ofthe oftechniqueand production whichfilmtheorists themasking of classical Holly1970s were to pinpointas the ideological basis First ofall, thereality wood cinema?4" apconveyedbythecinematic no is and no less than the "natural" more paratus phantasmagoric phenomena of the commodityworld it endlesslyreplicates;and film ofcapitalist objective Benjaminknewall too wellthattheprimary if chainofmirrors. was to perpetuate thatmythical Therefore, practice it had to disrupt filmwereto have a critical, that function, cognitive chain and assume the taskof all politicizedart,as Buck-Morss paraoftheArtwork theilluEssay:"not to duplicate phrasestheargument as itself sion as real,but to interpret illusion."" reality Still,whydid Benjaminchoose, albeitwitha shade of irony, the Blue the of the Flower unattainable auratic object highly metaphor I perceivein the of desire?45 of the romantic quest, the incarnation ofdistortion" thatBenjamin above passagean echo ofthe"distortion of whichthe "dialecticaloptics" of the tracesin the workof Proust, is just a more contemporary, collectivized Surrealists (and certainly "the equipment-free less memorable)version.Accordingly, aspectof to with a declinwho have learned live even that reality" generations to its false resurrections are "entitled aura and expect froma ing alienatedand refracted workofart" seems to me linked,in whatever in thestateof fortheworlddistorted manner,to that"homesickness
43. ChristianMetz, The Imaginary Signifier (Bloomington:Indiana University of the Basic Cinematic Press, 1982); and Jean-Louis Baudry,"Ideological Effects Apparatus,"repr.in PhilipRosen, ed., Narrative, (New York:CoIdeology Apparatus, Press,1986), part3. lumbia University 44. Buck-Morss, 214. "Passagen-Werk," 45. Also see Benjamin'sreview of Aragon,"Traumkitsch" (1927), whichbegins witha reference to Novalis' Heinrich vonOflerdingen: "It is not so easy any more to dream of the Blue Flower" - insteadof opening up a blue distance,the dream world has turnedgraywithdust (GS 11.2:620).
Miriam Hansen 205 resemblance"whichProust's writing pursuedto thepointofasphyxwould have to desistfromsubiation. Such filmpractice, however, ofsecondnature in mythical thecontradictions merging imagesofthe and and instead lend its itself domesticated enslaved, first, long to "a world in which the true surrealist face of mimeticcapability existence breaksthrough." (and Benjaminhimself explicit maynot have made thatconnection not have sugmight approvedof it),yetseverallinesof his argument whichthecinemacould be redeemed- forfilm gesta positionfrom - as a mediumof experifilmtheory as wellas filmpractice history, ence. To developtheselines,I willdouble backon thequestionofhuin conjunction whichI had mentioned man self-representation earlier, of the iconic quality of cinematic with Benjamin's shortcircuiting withthepolitical of themasses.In thefirst version rights signification of the Artwork detail on the Essay, Benjamin elaboratesin greater of instead of human and which, beings technology relationship from confronts force of nature them them as a second liberating myth, in the forces of nature as as a more elementary just overwhelming is of archaic times. This confrontation rehearsed,in the field art, wheneveran actor plays before a camera instead of the virtually present theater audience: "To act in the stream of klieglights of sound and simultaneously meet the requirements (Jupiterlampen] recordingis a highlydemanding test. Passing this test means to in the face of the apparatus."The screen maintainone's humanity actor has to muster a total and bodily presence of mind while from theaura thatemanates thehereand now,thepresence foregoing of the stage actor. At the same time, he or she knows, when the inhumangaze of the camera,thatit substitutes for confronting absentyetintentionally anothergaze, physically present thatof a mass audience. The latter's interestin the actor's performance or character the actor the individualfilm,story portrayed: preexists of their withan own dailybattle a representative becomes a stand-in, alienating technology. an apparatus that Foritis likewise the supervises [Apparaturl of every day,theoverwhelming majority bywhich, process inoffices incities andworking andfactories are peopleliving
of theirhumanity. In the evening,the same expropriated to themovietheaters to watchan actortakeremassesflock hishumanity (or vengein theirplace, not onlyby asserting
andCinema 206 Benjamin as such)intheface oftheaptothem whatever may appear hisowntributbymaking that serve paratus very apparatus umph.[GS1.2:450] In the second version of the essay, Benjamin comes close to his argument, now emphasizingthe audience's placement reversing on the side of the cameraand admitting identification withthe actor only insofar as the viewer identifieswith the testing,critical, of the apparatus(1, 228) -i.e. trimming it to a impersonalattitude of the obvious Brechtian distanciation. idealization Bracketing concept I still at workin theearlier version, (though just as much in thelater) because it consider the unrevised passage significant recognizes dimensionseven in a more naive formof and collective historical and identification that involvement, aspectsof fascination spectatorial of scopic and exhaustedby the textualinterplay are not necessarily reasonto mistrust narrative Granted, Benjaminhad every registers." itfuelled in thescreenactor, whether thepseudothemasses' interest ofsuccessin thearenaof cultofthestaror redefined standards auratic even more to thepointin the 1980s (1,247) -an observation politics a morepositive viewin the thanin the 1930s.Ifhe appearsto be taking so on he no does less grounds.Forthe political passagequoted above, of New Objectivity culturenotwithstanding, rhetoric and proletarian oftheactor's"humanity" its thetriumph is,after all,a Pyrrhic victory; is to the due it to move an audience negative reality temporarily power of alienation. Hence the experience eclipses,the social and historical and of reified to the cinema's mirroring alternative administering is not simply a positive of themasses of identity forms representation thatwould giveaesthetic to the a filmpractice but,rather, expression scarsof human self-alienation (Selbstentfremdung). of such scars is not confinedto the The mimetictransformation to it extends the betweenhuman beings human body; relationship and theirenvironment -indeed, to invoke the more recent(and perhaps unique) example of Claude Lanzmann's Shoah,the most of human self-alienation radical sight/site might be that of an is adumbrated evacuatedof humanlife.This possibility environment
46. Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and NarrativeSpace"; Stephen Heath, in Rosen, ed. Narrative, "Narrative Space," both reprinted Apparatus, Ideology; Mary Cine-Tracts Ann Doane, "Miscognitionand Identity," 3.3 (Fall 1980): 25-32; Teresa Indiana University de Lauretis, Alice Press,1984), esp. ch. 5. Doesn't (Bloomington:
Miriam Hansen 207 of Photography" in Benjamin's"ShortHistory (1931),an essaywhich with first of of a definition the aura) anotherstrand (along anticipates of the"opticalunconscious."In his theArtwork Essay:themetaphor of Benjamintracesa dialecrepresentation, genealogy photographic from of the thelast ticalmovement human countenance, images early late of desire and auratic intimations of through 19threfuge mortality; withits masquerade of social identity century portrait photography, of thebackdropof bourgeoisinteriors; to Atget's against photographs "like scenes and Parisstreets, deserted (shot courtyards shopwindows has been displacedwith ofcrime")in whichthehumanform serialforof uncleared mationsofeveryday hand-trucks, objects(rows bootlasts, oftheobject" from a "the emancipation tables).Havingthusinitiated more the auraticcontext, deteriorated Atgetinspired programmatic to promotea "therapeutic alienation ofSurrealist efforts photography environment and humanbeings"- therapeutic between againin the of defamiliarization of the dialectics senseofa "distortion distortion," commercial thepersonality-centered, and similarity. Onlya breakwith traditionof representation, Benjamin concludes, will restore a towards boththehumanbodyand theworld sensibility physiognomic This is demonstrated of things. by "the bestof Russianfilms"which in pholikethefacesofpeople who have no investment teachus that, "even milieuand landscapewillrevealthemimmortality, tographic who can read thenamelessappearselvesonlyto thosephotographers in theircountenance."'47 inscribed ance [namenlose Erscheinung] a more and facesis merely The "nameless appearance" of things of the phenomenonforwhichBenjamincoined designation mystical ofthe"opticalunconscious," theshorthand "[das]Optisch-Unbewusste." ofphotographic on a mimetic In the 1931 essay,he elaborates affinity and of the technique(especially possibilities enlargement split-second with"image aspectsof itsmaterial, exposure)withthe physiognomic readable though thatinhabitthe smallestthings, worlds [Bildwelten] in have shelter dreams" to found covert (GS enough day II.1: 371). As a different nature "it is he willrepeatin the Artwork Essay, evidently
47. GS II.1: 380; 379. The auratic connotation, inseparablefrom Benjamin's Erpolitical assessment of photography,obviously gets lost when "namenlose is translatedas "anonymity" (Screen13.1: 21); for a link between scheinung" Benjamin's kabbalisticnotion of the "name" - as in the paradisicallanguage of of similarity names - and his conceptof mimesis, as theorganonofexperience, see 88-90. PW, 1038; also Buck-Morss, Origin,
208 Benjamin andCinema whichspeaksto thenakedeye;difthatspeaksto thecamerathanthat above all because itsubstitutes, ferent fora space interwoven withhuman consciousness,another space, an unconsciouslypermeated space" (I, 236f.). The attribution of psychic,physiognomic, even psychoanalytic faculties to thecamerais a toposofearly1920sfilm in theory, notably and Bela of the Balkzs.48 Benjamin'sconceptualization Jean Epstein ofphotography, however, "opticalunconscious"in thecontext points to a more specific source,Kracauer'sgreatessayof 1927. Prefiguring ofmodernity that thesuperimposition and prehistory was to Benjamin and thePassagen-Werk, advance in his essayon Surrealism Kracauer's reflections on photography locatetheradicalfunction of themedium with an of its in (intercut analysis ideological,mythological function) thearbitrary momentof exposure,themomentof chancethatmight an at once alienated and releasedfrom thetyrcapture aspectofnature human In of intention -the of that tradition anny "dregs history."49 indebtedtoJewish and, likeKracauer, mysticism, Benjamindevelops thenotionof an "opticalunconscious"fromtheobservation thatthe of some earlyphotographs, and temporality despiteall preparation on the of both model beand the artistry compel part photographer, holderto seek the "tinysparkof accident,"the "here and now" by whichtheimageis brandedwithreality, and thusto findthe "inconin spicuous spot" whichmight yield, the qualityof thatminutelong to theretrospective past,a "momentoffuturity gaze" (GS responding 371). II.1: Such a belatedformof "magic" is unavailableto the medium of ofthecode ofmovement, not film, giventhecompulsory temporality
48. Epstein, Bonjour especially the essays "Grossissement"("MagniCin6ma, October 3 [1977]: 9-15) and "Le Cin&-Mystique" fication," 10(Millennium Filmn Journal 11 [Fall-Winter 1982-83]:191-93),both translated by StuartLiebmanwhomI thank fordrawingmyattention to Epstein's review of Herbier'sEl Doradoin L'fsprit Nouveau 14 (Oct./Nov.1921): 1969-70.On the psychoanalytic in undercurrent BalLzs's filmtheory, see Gertrud of Things," Koch, "B61a Baltzs: The Physiognomy thisissue. Also see Balizs's amazing essay,"Physiognomie"(1923), whichanticipates not onlythenotionof an opticalunconsciousbut also keyaspectsof Benjamin'stheory of mimeticreading,includinga similarconceptof "distance," Schrften FilmI, zurn ed. Helmut H. Diederichs(Munich: Hanser, 1982), 205-8. 49. Kracauer, "Die Photographie" (note3, above),24-25,28, 32, 37-39; also see Heide Schlfipmann, of Film: On Siegfried Kracauer'sWritings of "Phenomenology the 1920s," thisissue.
Miriam Hansen 209 to mention narrative. This may be one answer to the question Essay: "If the aura is in Benjaminposes in his notes to the Artwork whynotin film?"(GS 1.3: 1048).Whenhe resumes early photographs, the metaphor of the "opticalunconscious"withreference to film, he and to some extentrevisesthatquestion,thoughagain complicates differentiation between thetwomedia. Whilethe evadinganyexplicit illustrated the "optical unconscious" with PhotographyEssay from and the Essaydrawson the examples biophysics botany, Artwork and mechanizedworld,the discourseof alienated of a social imagery experience.Significantly, Benjamin introducesthe "optical unconin the Artwork to scious" Essay (second version)with a reference Freud'sPsychopathology the historical Life, noting impactof ofEveryday this work on the perceptionof conversational parapraxes ("FehlAs Freud has alteredour awarenessof lanim Gesprach"). leistungen cinematic he techniquessuch as close-up,timelapse guage, argues, and slow motionphotography and, above all, montagehave changed of thevisualworld: our perception Ourtaverns andcity ouroffices andfurnished streets, rooms, ourtrain stations andfactories tohave uslocked appeared up and exploded thisprisonbeyond hope.Thencamefilm world with the ofone-tenth sothat in seconds, dynamite now, themidst ofits ruins anddebris, wecalmly embark far-flung on adventurous travels. [I,236] In thiscontext, Benjaminemphasizesthefragmenting, destructive, effect of cinematic to cut devices,their allegorizing tendency through the tissueof reality like a surgicalinstrument the (I, 233). Revealing 'natural'appearanceof the capitalist as an landeveryday allegorical ofan "unconsciously scape,thecamera'sexploration permeated space" thusoverlaps withthearea ofinvestigation pursued,in different ways, theSurrealist, thedialectical historian. Not surprisingly, bytheflaneur, an "impassioned"film on thearcheology ofParis Benjaminenvisioned inthePassagen-Werk and we add from a whole (C 1,9) might examples tradition of city films from Godard, ranging Vigo and Vertov through Kluge,Sanderand Ottinger. Ifthemimetic offilm wereput to suchuse, itwould not capabilities a critical function butalso a redemptive sedionlyfulfil one,registering mentsofexperience that are no longer or notyetclaimedbysocialand
economic rationality, making them readable as emblems of a "forgotten future." In other words, although filmas a medium enhances the
210
and Cinema Benjamin
historicaldemolitionof the aura, its particularformof indexical to objects,to mediationenablesitto lend a physiognomic expression thelook, similar to auraticexperiencein make second naturereturn would notonly Such filmpractice, however, phenomenaofthefirst. have to reject the misguided ambition to adapt and prolong the bourgeoiscultofart;itwould also haveto abandon classicalstandards of continuity and verisimilitude and, instead, focus its mimetic on hiddencorrespondences in deviceson a non-sensuoussimilarity, ofcommodities in whicheventhedreamworld "encounter us the may offrail ofthegaze, in the structures Such a return intersubjectivity." would a moinvolve transsense, emphatic always gressive, unsettling of directadnot,as in commercialconventions ment;it is certainly dress, "a question of the photographedanimals,people or babies 'looking at you'whichimplicatesthe customerin such an unsavory manner."5? Likehisremarks on film theArtwork throughout Essay,Benjamin's ofthe"opticalunconscious"oscillates between a descripelaboration and their tionoftechnical innovations bepossibilities, emancipative tween historicalanalysisand a utopian discourse of redemption. is thanmerely a case ofmethodological thissliding Rather confusion, a movement within dialectical certain motivated by keyconcepts(e.g. 'nature,''history,' 'aura') and theoretical tropes(e.g. 'eternalrecurwhosemeaningdepends upon theparrence,''dreamingcollective') in whichthey are deployed.Thus, therecuperaticularconstellation intoplaya constitionofthecinemaas a mediumofexperience brings in of an crututive ambiguity Benjamin'sconcept "shock," ambiguity of a "distracted" mode ofreception. cial to his endorsement In the historical shockfigures as the earlier, emphasized etiology it proshield with the defensive of modem life, synonymous stigma is ofexperience. Buttheterm theimpoverishment vokesand thuswith
50. "Short Historyof Photography," GS II.1: 371; Screen13.1: 8. Also see on the complementary betweenstarcult and the Benjamin's remarks relationship "cult of the public" in the Artwork version(GS 1.2: 452; 456) which Essay, first an important and Adorno's critiqueof the Culture anticipate pointof Horkheimer On the question of the "fourth look" - the look of the character at the Industry. fiction- see Paul Willemen,"Letter to spectatorwhich breaks the voyeuristic John," Screen21.2 (Summer 1980): 53-65, 56; Peter Lehman, "Looking at Ivy 5.3 (1983): Lookingat Us Lookingat Her: The Camera and the Garter,"Wide Angle 59-63.
Miriam Hansen 211
also used to describethemomentof sexual recognition (as in Baudelaire'ssonnet"A une passante," whilelinkedto a particI, 169)which, inflicted ular historical (thealienation experience upon love by urban ofloss,exemplifies thecatastrophic and dislocating an experience life), in general.5' In thisdialectical experience ambiguity, impactofauratic as shockmayassume a strategic an artificial however, significance the human body into momentsof recognition. means of propelling a "tactile"elementinto the fieldof "optical reception" Introducing deviceslikeframing and montage would thus (GS 1.2: 466), allegorical similar to other function the havea therapeutic procedures planned rituals of extraordinary physical and mental states, like drug flaneurist Surrealist seances or psychoanalytic walking, experiments, sessions proceduresdesigned to activatelayersof unconscious "From this of subjectivity. memoryburied in the reifiedstructures film and could considered as staged be photography perspective, forreclaiming collective events[Veranstaltungen] and anthropological substance perverted only at the point when theiractual,historically disintegrates."52 of such criticalreinscription, It is the possibility which finally, to a newepic culture the makesthecinemaindispensible Brechtian (in in his 1930 review ofD iblin's Berlin Alexsense),as Benjaminsuggests The cinema'spromiseofcollectivity resideslessin themianderplatz. ofeconomically intopolitical raculousconversion motivated quantity in in the Artwork the than shock-like qualitysuggested Essay(I, 244), or of social documents images, configuration, re-figuration, of an alienatedyetcommon experience. sounds, textualfragments ofmontage The revolutionary thushingesnotonlyupon the potential rehearsalofthe shock-effect formal but also, and perhapsprimarily, offilm the"complicity techupon themimetic powerofitselements, with the milieu." the Since nique unconsciously permeatedspace re51. Cf. For conflicting of Benjamin'snotionof"shock," see Karl interpretations Heinz Bohrer,Die Asthetik des Schreckens: Die pessimistische undErnst Romantik Jiingers (Munich: Hanser, 1978), partIII, and AnsgarHillach, "Erfahrungsverlust Friihwerk und 'chockfoirmige der WahrWahrnehmung': Benjamins Ortsbestimmnung des Hochkapitalismus," Alternative 132/33(1980): 110-118; nehmungim Zeitalter also see Stoessel,238f. 52. Stoessel, 161.
experiences which become 'quotable' as such [menschheitsgeschichtliche]
212
and Cinema Benjamin
vealed at thishistorical one, thecinejuncturecan onlybe a collective in a traditional class structures ma becomes place which collapse,alto crossover,a possibility - and no lowingthebourgeoisintellectual doubt an autobiographicalneed - which Benjamin had already "The proletariat is the hero of spelled out in his defenseofPotemkin: thosespaces whose adventures makethebourgeoisabandon himself heartin the movie theater, because he mustrelish witha throbbing the 'beautiful'even and especially whereit speaks to him of the deof his own class."53 struction
Menschlichen am "forgotten human residue in things [des vergessenen ofreified humanlabor,Benjamininsisted that this was Ding]"'was that
return ofan auratic mode ofexperience The discontinuous through thebackdoorofthe"opticalunconscious"allowsus to reconsider the of itself and to some of aura its concept perhaps demystify The that Surrealists and the quality physiognomic implications. beforethemProust- soughtin themostordinary objectsmayinvite ofanalysis ofcommodity butultimately eludes theories Marxist terms When Adorno proposed a clarification of fetishism and reification. thatthe traceof the the notionof aura along those lines,suggesting
not necessarily the object of forgetting he had in and remembering mind in the Baudelaireessay."The treeand thebush thatwe endow [withan answering gaze] were not createdby human hand. Hence, in objectswhichis not theresult oflathere mustbe a humanelement human element, as MarleenStoesselarguesin bor."54 Thatforgotten is nothing heringeniouscommentary, but thematerial origin- and that human share non-human thephyswith nature, finality beings from hisreadical aspectofcreation whichBenjaminhimself eclipses ing of Genesis in the 1916 essay on language. The dialectic of
53. "Erwiderungan Oscar A.H. Schmitz" (1927), GS 11.2: 753. The reviewof BerlinAlexanderplatz is entitled"The Crisis of the Novel," GS III: 230- 36; on montage, 232f. The functionof film,as of D6blin's novel, is similar to that - a as "epic narrator" of the"sense of Benjaminascribedto theflaneur sharpening a sense for detail" chronicle, document, reality, (III: 194). 54. Letter Adorno to Benjamin,29 February from 1940; Benjamin'sresponse,7 May, 1940, repr.GS 1.3: 1130-35; 1132.
Hansen 213 Miriam
Frau" ("Oh you were warst in abgelebten Zeiten oder meine meine Schwester
which constitutes his theoryof exand remembering forgetting a therefore has more to do with kindof fetishism: different perience and beliefthatoccupied Freud.55 the curiouseconomyof knowledge theauratic wishas unsatisfiable The pull of thepast thatmaintains of prehistory Baudelaire'svieanterieure maybe veiledin metaphors - but it has a psychicsource whichis, quite literally, too close to du home. The desirethatbeckonsBenjaminfromGoethe'sline,"Ach,
And in bygonetimesmysister is clearly ormywife")56 transgressive. toAdornoquoted revelation (intheletter Benjamin'sautobiographical " leads us straight as to "root of of the above) [his]'theory experience' to whatwe mighthave suspectedall along. Remembering childhood withhis family, summervacations he recallshis brother after saying, wir nun "Da waren walksthrough gewesen" idyllic obligatory landscapes, ofauratic we would now havebeen"). The curioustemporality ("there - the utopianglimpseof a prehistoric memory pastat once familiar not resembles certain and disturbingly coincidentally strange in that describes his on "The Freud dreams essay Uncanny"(1919),reas something of thefemalegenitalia themto a male perception lating
uncanny (unheimlich):
is theentrance totheformer Thisunheimlich place,however, of all human to the Heimat beings, place where [home] dwelt once upon a timeand in the beginning. everyone Thereis a humorous 'Love is home-sickness'; and saying: whenever a persondreamsof a place or a landscape 'thisplaceis familiar to me. I still in thedream, thinking, theplaceas being wemay havebeenthere before,' interpret or herbody.In thiscase,too, the the mother's genitals
55. Stoessel,61f., 72-77, and ch. 5, especially 130ff. Adorno, in his letterto betweentwo kinds of forgetting thatcome Benjamin,had proposed a distinction into play in Benjamin's theoryof experience, an "epic" and a "reflectory" to consider this (GS 1.3: 1131). It would be interesting forgetting ["reflektorisches"] distinctionin light of the ambiguitythat riddles Freud's own interpretation of is located in processes of as to whetherthe fetishist's fetishism, inconsistency ("Fetishism" repression(i.e. in the unconscious) and a compromise-formation entailsa splitting on thesame level,as in his latertext, itactually [1927]) or whether of theEgo in theProcessof Defense"(1938);J.Laplanche& J.-B.Pontalis, "Splitting TheLanguage trans.D. Nicholson-Smith (New York: W.W.Norton, ofPsychoanalysis, 1973), 119. 56. I, 187; myemphasis.
214
and Cinema Benjamin
is what the unheimlich wasonceheimisch, home-like, familiar; "un" the of is mark prefix repression.57 as displaced The pre-Oedipalwish can only survive as repressed, denialwhichforFreud,in anycase, is a and transformed byfetishistic of the threat castration. defense seemsdrivagainst Benjamin's writing thatdisplacement, to and to rehearse en by a desireat once to reverse of the illusion while the fetishistic destroy preserving promise happiof experience hoversover ness thatit allowed to sustain.His theory ofan intensity that and aroundthebodyofthemother as a memory he anof critical As becomes the measureof all cognition, thought. ofthePassagen-Werk: "Whatthe nouncesin one oftheearliest sections theman) finds in theold foldsofthe child(and,weakly remembering, thathe held on to that'swhatthesepages should mother'sskirt contain" (K2,2). Yet even this rare reference to the mother'sbody residesin the fabric of succumbsto fetishistic mediation- memory us to the sectionon fashion the cloth- and thusrefers B); (Konvolut linked to death, the "sex appeal of the here fetishism is explicitly inorganic"which guides the senses throughthe "landscape of the [female]body" (B3,8; B9,1). The image of the mother'sbody, as disturbingto Benjamin as to patriarchaldiscourse in general, - ofwhichcastration is perhapsthe desireand mortality shortcircuits mostpowerful metaphor. the source of anxiety and fetishistic More often, therefore, remains textually unacknowledged (or ironically displacement and promiseof thepre-Oedipalwishare in a sense threat distanced): held in a semi-repressive re-fetishized, abeyancewhichallowshim to ofitspsychic, and experiential thereflections aesthetic intensity. garner This complexstrategy ofallusionand evasionis nowhere as evident as in Benjamin'sconceptofthegaze, pitchedbetween auratic visionand In a note to his essayon of subjectivity. the historical reorganization on theconnection bethemimetic (1935),Benjaminspeculates faculty their "Are notthestars with distant tweentheaura and astrology: gaze thegaze was thefirst oftheaura? Can we concludethat theUrphdnomen mentorof the mimetic (GS 11.3:958) Again,a prehistoric, faculty?" is offered insteadof a more obvious one, phylogenetic perspective of the between the constitution gaze in the relationship namely,
57. Freud, On Creativity and theUnconscious (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 152-53; trans.modified.
Miriam Hansen 215 motherand child. The memoryof what is all too close has to be defenseallows projectedinto a stellardistance;yetthismetaphoric of which a dimension defies the to reciprocity Benjamin conceptualize of with ceaseless its social and historical reproorganization looking, ofmirror ductionof thesubjectin terms identity, unity, presenceand mastery. ofthegaze in Benjamincomes closestto namingtheabsentmentor touchas implicitly thesecond Baudelaireessay,whenhe citesProust " who of secrets of 'Some are fond a the aura: people ingupon theory thatobjects retaina trace of the looks thatonce themselves flatter of returning thegaze.)" restedupon them.'(Whatelse but the ability that beof a that a look leaves The residue, lingers (I, 188). prototype look that chilin is the and its actualization time, maternal space yond even as theyare separatdren (of both sexes) knowupon themselves to an Assimilated enables themto separate.5" ing,and whichactually Oedipal economy,the memoryof this imaginedglance is likelyto - and hence bound to return as distant and succumbto repression to shifts Proust's "evasive" remarks, strange.Elucidating Benjamin in I of dreams characterization ("The things see, perception Valery's see me just as much as I see them") to arriveat Baudelaire'slines, avecdes de symboles / Qui 1'observent desforets "L'homme y passed travers that reads with distance" The Benjamin "gaze heavy regardsfamiliers."59 axis turns on the same in Baudelaire's"regard that, according familier" which a psychic ambivalence to "heimlich," to Freud,links"unheimlich" of the gaze: "The deeper the the narcissistic complacency challenges thestronger whicha gaze had to overcome, absenceofthecounterpart the other,thisabsence remains its spell. In eyes thatmerelymirror undiminished" (1, 189-90). in a patriarchal discourse on Benjamin undeniablyparticipates that as theauratic visioninsofar gaze dependsupon a veilofforgetting, which reinscribes form of fetishism is,a reflective yetunacknowledged In hisalmost and threat. thefemalebodyas sourceofbothfascination he of that and obsessive defense, however, undoing very experimental to vision,to theimage and a positionin relation seems to be seeking
58. Jessica Benjamin,"A Desire of One's Own: Psychoanalytic Feminismand Studies,Milwaukee,Working Century Intersubjective Space," CenterforTwentieth 2 (Fall 1985), 9ff. Papers forests of symbols/ Whichlook at him with 59. "Man wends his way through theirfamiliar glances" (1, 181-82; 189).
216
Benjamin and Cinema
been assignedto women,as a group the eye,whichhas traditionally excluded from historically scopic mastery.Insofar as the social of vision is it is organization predicated on sexual difference, in of cinema which the conventions classical center the epitomized and fetishistic viewerin a positionof voyeuristic distance. separation of the female image to a voyeuristically Given the centrality and defined the woman's look fetishistically pleasure, spectatorial occupies a precarious too close to (ifnot impossible) place, because it remains over-identified with theimage thebody,narcissistically .Y The distance thatappears in the auraticgaze is not exactly the same thingas the fetishistic distance thataffords themale subjectpleasurewithout anxiis the "absence" the has to that overcome be ety(nor gaze equated thepre-Oedipalwishthat witha Lacanian "lack").61 On thecontrary, mode, Benjamin'sconceptof the propels,albeitin a semi-repressed the balanceofknowledge fetishistic and belief, gaze potentially upsets of into the distance and binary calling question opposition proximity that governs 'normal' vision, along with its alignmentof sexual and identity. If anything, theauratic difference, subjectivity gaze seeks thatsustains "the dummy, to unravelthe compromise the self"so as of a different in to conjureup thememory world,a "worlddistorted the state of resemblance." By definition, such a mode of vision destabilizesthe identical subject: "I have experience,"Benjamin quotes from Kafka,"and I am not joking when I say thatit is a on dryland" (I, 130). seasickness To recapitulate: theregister ofdistance and proximity in Benjamin's boththevisualsense and comprises parameters, just as thegaze itself thatof a phenomenological Not onlyare distanceand intentionality.
concept of the gaze and theory of experience exceeds spatial
60. MaryAnn Doane, "Film and theMasquerade: TheorizingtheFemale Spec23.3-4 (Sept.-Oct.1982): 74-87; 78-80. tator,"Screen 61. TerryEagleton attempts to read Benjamin's concept of the gaze through out themetaphor of cannibalism whichculminates theauthor'spoem, "Homage to WalterBenjamin" (184). Undoubtedly, thereare a numberof contiguities between Benjamin and Lacan's concept of the gaze (perhaps owing to a common but thereare also crucialdifferences: undercurrent), phenomenological Benjamin, like Freud, was obsessed with questions of temporality and memory; Lacan's concepts,as faras I can tell,fundamentally relyupon spatialmodels,whichmayaccount fortheiroftencriticized lack of historicitv.
Lacan ("Of the Gaze as ObjectPetita") in WalterBenjaminor Towardsa Revolutionary Criticism (London: Verso, 1981), 38f.; this attempt - as most of the book - bears
Miriam Hansen 217
in a singlemetaphor of psychic but entwined ambivalence, proximity their political significanceis bound up with the question of slantofexperience and at once to themnemonic referring temporality, of of itspossibility; to the historical conditions indeed,thecongealing the temporal dialectic of experience into spatial categories(the the negativedistance of reifiedlabor or aestheticcontemplation, is a of itself closeness of the commodified image) sign the illusory dimensions With the"opticalunconscious," times. Benjaminreadmits his intohisvisionofthecinema,against and historicity oftemporality of it as the mediumof presenceand tracelessness. own endorsement The material fissure a consciously and an "unconsciously between perfor a disjunction theviewer, meatedspace" opens up a temporal gap and thatmay trigger and withit promisesof reciprocity recollection, remain That these unrealized, largely promises intersubjectivity.62 in classical of vision,narrative and subjectivity giventhe imbrication of it force the not diminish the critical does Rather, cinema, argument. that and one-sidedvoyeurism us thattheprivatized, reminds isolating in classical cinema representsa particular defines spectatorship - and not necessarily of an ontological function formation historical forinstance, Metz and the apparatusas theorized, Baudry. by a perspective offers thenotionoftheopticalunconscious Moreover, associated not on marginalizedformsof spectatorship, historically of also withthe but cinema "cinema with (the attractions") early only in to classical modes female relation of audiences position precarious of narration and address.Whetherdefensively by male stereotyped Kinosucht or in women's own of their commentators articulated analysis as was often to thecinema),femalespectatorship perceived (addiction a and compensatory, as seeking at once excessive a mode ofreception denied by social reality in thegaze whichwas increasingly distance of film In her 1914 study and, forthatmatter, practice.63 bydominant
62. This temporalgap thatopens up in the world of thingshas nothingto do withthe time-lag betweenseeing and knowing thatassures the male child a cognitivesuperiority withregardto theregime ofcastration (Doane, "Masquerade," 79f.). of "trompe closer to the effect Rather,it is structurally l'oeil"whichDoane describes in her essay on "The Moving Image" (note 18, above), 45-49, as an undoing of a and thereby breakingdown into its elementsthe psychicaldefenseby staggering fetishism. compromiseof knowledgeand beliefthatconstitutes 63. Patrice Petro, "Perceptions of Difference:Contours of a Discourse on Sexuality in Early German Film Theory," this issue; Heide Schlipmann, undFilm33 (Oct. 1982): 45-52; Hansen, "EarlySilentCinema: "Kinosucht,"Frauen
andCinema 218 Benjamin motionpictureaudiences,Emilie Altenlohfoundwomen - across than male class boundaries- generally respondingmore strongly the and of to kinetic besides film, synaesthetic moviegoers aspects a interest in social if they melodramas, expressing greater especially and eventhough featured femaleprotagonists; were to they likely have film,the women interviewed forgotten plot or titleof a particular remembered sentimental as well as images of situations, vividly In the over-identification ocean wavesor drifting ice-floes. waterfalls, in thefailure with suchimages, to maintain a narratively disstabilized of Benjamin's"daydreaming surrender tance,is therenot an element to faraway things"(I, 191)? Whatis more,thisdifferent economyof distanceand proximity also recallsa different of public organization and privatespheres,a time when lookingwas not yet reduced to isolation.To quote Horkheimer and Adorno's notorious voyeuristic whichare intended to enhanceherinstatement: "Inspiteofthefilms in finds the housewife the of movie theater a the darkness tegration, sit of where she can for a few hours free of place refuge obligations whenthere just as she used to gaze out of thewindow, [unkontrolliert], a day'swork[Feierabend]."64 werestillhomesand thehourafter Such a mode ofabsorption to be sure, maybe regressive, just as theidentificato masochism, unrelated in function, wholly yetitalso has a cognitive in giving Adorno'swords, release to the awareness that "temporary [...] one has missedfulfillment."65 The affinity witha dispositionattributed to femalespectatorship notion of "distraction"from a cruciallydistinguishes Benjamin's Brechtian of distanciation thepolitical concept (Verfremdung). Certainly, of a distracted valorization mode of reception first elaborated (as by
29 (Spring/Summer Whose Public Sphere," New German 1983): 147-84; Critique ZurSoziologie 173ff. The term"Kinosucht" is used in Emilie Altenloh'sdissertation, in the desKino(Leipzig: SpamerscheBuchdruckerei, 1914), 65. Benjaminhimself, first versionof the Artwork susceptible Essay, singlesout women as a particularly of illusorymass participation filmindustry's forthe capitalist (GS strategies target in fashion his "philosophical"interest 1.1: 456). On theotherhand,he motivates by has for whichthe femalecollective scent[Witterung] to "the extraordinary referring us in the future"(PW, Bla,1). awaiting things and Theodor W. Adorno,Dialectic 64. Max Horkheimer (1944; ofEnlightenment 1947), trans. John Cumming(New York: SeaburyPress,1969), 139. 9.1 and Social Science in Philosophy 65. Adorno, "On Popular Music," Studies (1941): 41-42.
tion - to the point of tears - with sentimentalsituationsmay not be
Miriam Hansen 219 in itsnegation withtheintentions of epic theater Kracauer) converges of the bourgeoiscult of culture,in its radical critiqueof fetishistic of individual illusionism and corresponding attitudes contemplation we can see how and catharsis. Likewise, Benjamin,in his searchfor aestheticmodels, might have assimilated Brecht's contemporary of demonstrating of alienation through (Entfremdung) strategy patterns his of a to own notion dialectical devicesofestrangement (Verfremdung) optics, the mimetic displacement he traced in Proust and the Yet the temporalgap that opens up with the optical Surrealists. to the gravity of the of spatialorientation the surrender unconscious, thanviceversa seizesthebeholderrather gaze, thememory imagethat - these aspects of Benjamin's theory of experience belie his endorsementof entertainment as criticalexpertise. If anything, distractionstill contains the possibilityof losing oneself, albeit of abandoning one's wakingself to the dreamlike, intermittently, in thatBenjaminsought discontinuous sequenceof senseimpressions Paris the his own experiments with hashish or drifting through Arcades. The psychoanalyticundercurrentof Benjamin's quest for links the Marxian analysisof alienationto the experience,finally, frontier betweenpsycheand body,the realmwhichFreudtropedas the bodily ego. The notion of human self-alienation implies the the idea of a as with nature as historical Naturgeschichte, exchange just the entailsaccepting reconciliation withnaturecrucially memoryof to from whichare sacrificed, thoseaspectsofhumannature generation of non-human domination the sake of the social for generation, nature.While Benjamin knewwell enough thatideologyand class on theleveloftheunconscious, weremosteffective interest especially - like Adorno he nevertheless if propped onto Oedipal necessity, Marcuse- tookeros to be a sourceofresistance and, forthatmatter, a defiance of fate.66 forms of identity, social Invariably, against to the body is governedby the the however, subject'srelationship
66. See PW, 01,1, wherehe linkssexual libido to thekabbalistic conceptof the "name": "The name itself is thecryof nakedlust." Also see "Eduard Fuchs,Collector and Historian" (1937), trans.Knut Tarnowski,New Germnan 5 (Spring Critique withnaturein theend turns on this 1975); 27-58; 50-54. The idea of a reconciliation libidinalmaterialism, of naturewith theliberated just as thenotionof a "complicity humanbeing" whichchildren knowfrom talesis associatedwiththerareexpefairy rienceof eroticbliss (Gliick) (I, 102).
andCinema 220 Benjamin offorgetting and remembering as theauratic same dialectic gaze and, like the latter,can be traced only through tropes of psychic and familiarity. ambivalence- distanceand proximity, strangeness Thus Benjaminspeaksin his essayon Kafkaof the body,"one's own alien land [Fremde]" body," as "that most forgotten (I1,132; 126), a as and familiar as the frontier creatures thatpopulate territory strange Kafka'stales. is ofauratic butthere experience; Forgetting maybe theprerequisite whichdoes not necessarily reachthereflective an aspectto forgetting Whether or notitplaysa partin fetishism, themost leveloffetishism. form of is and of the forgettingrepression, price repression purposeful "the formthatthings assume in oblivion"(I, 133). The is distortion, of a "mysterious guilt"thatBenjaminobservesin Kafka's projection ofdistortion takesus backonce (or in Tieck's"Fair Eckbert"67) figures of For domain the self which auratic vision into the the uncanny. again and unsolicited calls up froma prehistoric past, unexpected,is a than a narcissistic daemonic double, more likelyan antagonist egoideal.68Althoughhe would not have concurredwiththe Freudian of theimportance ofthisdouble,Gershom Scholemelucidates reading this figure in his speculations on "Benjamin's Angel," as a condensationof utopian, satanic and melancholystrandsin his oftenenough associated troubledgenius. Benjaminhimself friend's of auraticvisionwitha momentof danger,even the confrontation on hisforthieth he delivered death,as in thespeechon Proust birthday to Scholem,thiswas thedateofhisintended (see epigraph). According
- though at the time not executed - suicide.69
67. Stoessel points out that the repressedwhich returnsin Tieck's storyas was actually his thatthehero's deceased wife knowledge uncannyis the"forgotten" half-sister (Aura,138f.).Though Benjamin invokesthisstory again in his exchange thequestionofforgetting, avoids anyreference he carefully withAdornoconcerning to the incestuousnatureof the "mysterious guilt." 68. Freud discusses the phenomenon of the daemonic double in his essay on the physicist and one involving he reportstwo incidents- one autobiographical the shock of seeing oneselfor, rather, one's ErnstMach - illustrating mistaking own image forsomeone else's, in Mach's case a "shabby-looking school-master" and in his personal case an unpleasantlooking elderlygentleman(156). Doane as an instance elaborateson thiseffect (whichin both cases is linkedto movement) of thetrompe the Direction...," 44ff.). ("When l'oeil in andJudaism 69. Scholern, "WalterBenjaminand His Angel" (1972), in OnJews Crisis (New York: SchockenBooks, 1976), 198-236; 236. Also see Scholern'sWalter
and theUnconscious, the uncanny (On Creativity 140-143). At a later point in the essay,
Miriam Hansen 221
thegap ofhumanself-alienation that opens itself Bythesame token, the mediated unconscious is to thetechnically virtue of gaze by optical not exactly of an idyllic, harmless, let alone nostalgic quality. in connection with especially Benjamin'srecourseto psychoanalysis, the cinema,takeson itsfullsignificance onlyagainstthe backdropof In the first versionof social and politicalconstellation. the particular to Freud's the reference the Artwork ofEveryday Essay, Psychopathology Lifeis missing;instead,the sectionon the "optical unconscious"is Mouse" and continues, entitled pasttheendingofthesection "Mickey on itseponymic hero.With in the second version, witha speculation film can its techniquesof mimeticfiguration, Benjamin suggests, modes outsideso-callednormal visualizea wholerangeofexperiential formsof catastrophes, displacements, perception- deformations, a dreams and hallucinations, processwhich nightmares psychosis, form: intoa collective "Film individual involves translating experience in old that the Heraclitean has launchedan attack truth, waking against worlds."This we sharea worldwhilesleepingwe are each in separate is evident, according to Benjamin, not so much in cinematic of figures of the of the dreamworld,but in "the creation renderings dream such as the earth-encircling collective MickeyMouse" (GS 1.2: 462). dreamis as muchsubjectto historical The collective changeas indiof to put a phenomenology vidual dreams,and just as he attempted dreaming and waking at the service of historicalmaterialism, "The of dreamsthemselves: on the historicity Benjaminalso insisted of would the anecof dreams statistical serenity push beyond analysis fields.Dreams have dedotal landscapesintothewasteland of battle and oftimehavesettled creedwars,and warssincethebeginning right Adorno,as is well wrongand have definedthe limitsof dreams."70 had severeobjectionsto Benjamin'snotionof the "collective known, shades ofJungbut because in dream,"notonlybecause he suspected as he may could hisviewanyexisting Right collectivity onlybe false.7"
The trans.HarryZohn (Philadelphia: Story Publication ofa Friendship, Jewish Benjamin: Societyof America,1981), 186ff. 70. "Traurnkitsch," GS 11.2:620. 71. Adorno, "On the FetishCharacterin Music and the Regressionof ListenSchool ed. AndrewArato & Eike Reader, ing" (1938), repr. in TheEssential Frankfurt as a responseto Gebhardt(New York:Urizen, 1978),270-99; thisessaywas intended theArtwork to Benjamin,tr.H. Zohn, in Aesthetics and Politics Essay.Also see letters (London: NLB, 1977), 113, 118f.,123f.
222 Benjamin andCinema havebeen in questioning illusions the concerning Benjamin'spolitical his friend's of theproletariat, he underrated self-organization insights The bourgeoistaboo on sexuality, intomass psychology. as Benjamin in has forms of another context, argues imposedparticular repression the development of sadisticand upon the masses,thereby fostering masochistic complexeswhichcould in turnbe used forpurposesof to Disneyin the Passagen-Werk domination.72 Thus, while references stressthe utopian content,albeit weakened and repressed,of the theArtwork collective ofMickey Mouse fantasy, Essayreadsthefigure in termsof the politicalconstellation more specifically of the 1930s. Giventhetechnologically enhanceddangerofmass psychosis, certain filmsmay function as a kind of psychicvaccination: hyperbolizing and masochistic sadistic allowtheir viewers a phantasies paranoia,they and out collective In acting through premature therapeutic laughter. this historical of the constellation, MickeyMouse joins the tradition American film, slapstick up to and including Chaplin,and as withthe latter that "the never forgets laughter [thesefilms] provoke Benjamin hoversoveran abyssof horror."73 on Mickey thefinal version Mouse, cutfrom Benjamin'sreflections on Adorno's advice, are remarkable in especially comparisonwith Horkheimerand Adorno's indictment of Donald Duck in their on the "Culture in Dialectic (1944). Industry" ofEnlightenment chapter Much as the Disney films themselvesmay have changed in the intervening years, Horkheimer and Adorno's analysis of the sadomasochistic mechanismsoperatingin "the iron bath of fun" reveals a relatively model of spectatorship: reductive,behaviorist "Donald Duck in thecartoons, liketheunfortunate in real life, getsa so that the viewers can used to the same treatment."74 beating get of spectatorship is in theend more complex, Benjamin'sconception in a critique ofideology thanin redeeming because he is lessinterested and modernity fora theory thereified and poliimagesofmassculture ticsof experience.
72. "Eduard Fuchs," 51. 73. GS 1.2: 462; 11.2: 753. In Benjamin's radically anti-auraticessay, Mouse appears in a somewhat (1933), Mickey ambiguous "Experienceand Poverty" of roleas thedreamhero ofthosewho are fedup withtheaccumulatedexperiences cultureand humanity the Artwork (GS II.1: 218f.). In the materialaccompanying we findthefragmentary of Disney'smethod note:"The availability Essay,however, forfascism"(GS 1.3: 1045).
74. DialecticofEnlightenment, 138 (trans. modified).
Hansen 223 Miriam

difference and mimetic expeGrantingfilmdimensions of figurative rience that Horkheimer and Adorno reserved only for works of high art,Benjamin could envision a cinema thatwould be more than a medium of illusionist presence, a cinema that would release its archaic dream into a practice of profane illumination. To be sure, this vision has to be grounded in a critical or, to use analysisof the cultureindustry Hans Magnus Enzensberger'sterm,the "consciousness industry"- all the more since Horkheimer and Adorno's pessimisticassessment has not only been vindicated in retrospectbut is daily being surpassed by political reality.Benjamin's concept of experience, however, with its remains a cruand intersubjectivity, emphasis on memory, historicity cial ingredientin theories concerned with an alternativeorganization of the media, in particular Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge's study, and Experience PublicSphere (1972). Adorno himself,especially in some of his lateressays, resumed Benjamin's perspective,to some extentreand revisinghis earlierobjections surroundingthe issue of collectivity I a from Adorno's conclude with "Prologue to quotation ception.75 Television" (1953) which asserts the utopian promise of auratic distance in the very technology that appropriates and reproduces the viewer's desire as that of a consumer. It is impossibleto prophesy whatwillbecome of television; its current to do withthe invention statehas nothing itself, noteventheparticular forms ofitscommercial exploitation, in and by whichthe miracleis but withthe social totality harnessed. The clichewhichclaimsthatmodem technology ofthefairy has fulfilled thefantasies talesonlyceasesto be a cliche if one adds to it the fairytale wisdom that the of wishesrarely fulfillment benefits thosewho make them. is themostdifficult The right artof all, and wayof wishing to unlearnit fromchildhoodon. Justas the we are taught man whom thefairy has granted threewishesspends them on wishing a sausageon his wife'snose and thenwishing it whom the geniusof human awayagain,the contemporary domination of nature allows to see into the distance there buttheusual,embellished nothing bythelie perceives to his thatitis different whichlendsa cloakoffalsemeaning as existence.His dream of omnipotenceis consummated
on Film" (1966), trans.Thomas Y. 75. See especiallyhis essay,"Transparencies references 24-25 (Fall/Winter Levin,NewGerman 1981-82): 199-205;further Critique to thisessay, 186-198. in my introduction
224
and Cinema Benjamin To thisday,Utopiashave been realizedonlyto impotence. disabuse human beingsof any utopiandesireand commit to thestatus themall themorethoroughly quo, to fate.For to realize the promise that still television [Fernsehen] resonatesin its name, it would have to emancipateitself fromeverything the that revokesits innermost principle, mostdaringsenseof wishfulfillment, the by betraying idea of Great Happiness to the department storeof the small verrdt comforts Gliicks ans Warenhaus fiirs [dieIdeedes Grossen
kleine].76
76. Adorno,Eingirffe 1963), 80. Suhrkarnp, (Frankfurt:
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Benjamin, Cinema and Experience: "The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology" Author(s): Miriam Hansen Source: New

Cinema and Experience: Benjamin, in the Land ofTechnology" "The BlueFlower

of viewerabsorption and identification. Ratherthandisapstrategies

if not pressed into service -

and Cinema Benjamin

inderWelt]" das Gleichartige has increased to sucha degree fiir

184 Benjamin andCinema

and Cinema Benjamin

memoire involontaire" (I, 188).

to the data of the the gaze. This experiencecorresponds returning

and Cinema Benjamin

and Cinema Benjamin

and Cinema Benjamin

Astrologyis merelya belated - and rather"crooked" - theoryin re-

and Cinema Benjamin

"Madame Ariane," R, 89.

and Cinema Benjamin

Miriam Hansen 203

and Cinema Benjamin

Miriam Hansen 211

experiences which become 'quotable' as such [menschheitsgeschichtliche]

and Cinema Benjamin

Hansen 213 Miriam

and Cinema Benjamin

Benjamin and Cinema

Miriam Hansen 217

tion - to the point of tears - with sentimentalsituationsmay not be

Miriam Hansen 221

Hansen 223 Miriam

76. Adorno,Eingirffe 1963), 80. Suhrkarnp, (Frankfurt:

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