BENJAMIN
Course Information
180.821
Introduction to Cultural Studies: Truth and Error
Dr. James Burton Ph.D.
Semester: WS14/15
19.04.2015
Andrea Lpez Lpez: 1461123
1. BIOGRAPHY ........................................................................ 3
2. FRANKFURT SCHOOL ...................................................... 4
2.1. TRADITIONAL THEORY AND THEORY
CRITICAL ............................................................................... 6
2.2. CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF MARXISM...................... 6
2.3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF ILLUSTRATION ........... 6
2.4. CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF TOTALITARISMS AND
NEOCAPITALISM ................................................................. 6
3. THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL
REPRODUCTION..................................................................... 7
4. KEY CONCEPTS ABOUT WALTER BENJAMIN: ........ 8
5. CONCEPT OF COPY ........................................................ 11
5. WHAT IS THE INFLUENCE OF WALTER
BENJAMIN NOWADAYS? ................................................... 13
CITATION ............................................................................... 15
1. BIOGRAPHY
(Berlin, 1892 - Portbou, 1940) German
philosopher and critic. The son of an
Israelite antiquarian, he studied at the
Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium in Berlin
and then in a private school in
Thuringia. He published his first essays
in the youth magazine Der Anfang.
When the war of 14 exploded he
volunteered, but was declared unfit for
service. In 1917 he married Dora
Pollak, and with her he went to
Switzerland to attend the courses of
the University of Bern, where he
graduated in 1919 with a thesis on the
concept of art criticism in German
romanticism
(Der
Begriff
der
Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik,
published in Berne in 1920).
He returned to Berlin, confronted with difficulties of all kinds, both economic
and sentimental (then differences with his wife began differences that in
1930 would result in their separation). He did a translation of the Tableaux
Parisiens Baudelaire, and he prepared a plan for a magazine (Angelus Novus)
that never saw the light. In 1922, Hofmannsthal published one of his essays
on Goethe's Elective Affinities in Neue Deutsche Beitrge.
Between 1923 and 1925 Benjamin worked on his biggest work: another
essay, this time concerning the origins of German Tragic Drama (Ursprung
des deutschen Trauerspiels). The text in question, philosophical analysis of
an art form, an example of the speculative method of its author whose
thinking is not confined to meditation on the classic themes of philosophy,
rather, it arises from an application to concrete cultural evidence; hence the
aspect of the assay, that presents philosophical investigation of Benjamin.
After presenting the work at the University of Frankfurt am Main, they
denied him the occupational license that desired. The author then initiated
an extensive partnership in newspapers and magazines that often afforded
him the opportunity to travel around Europe. Under the influence of Latvian
stage
director
Asja
Lacis
and
Lukcs's
work Geschichte
und
Klassenbewusstsein he approached communism; in their thinking, never
focused only on one orthodoxy, the Marxist concept of alienation always
occupied a central place.
He was charged with the drafting of the article "Goethe" in Soviets
Encyclopedia, and during the winter of 1926-27 he made a trip to
2. FRANKFURT SCHOOL
To
understand
the
thinking and theories of
Walter Benjamin it is
important to realize the
ideals and principles on
which
the
Frankfurt
School was based.
in
of
of
of
of
"second
Flaneur
Term learned from Baudelaire. Urban, consumer, neurasthenic and some
dandy walker that synthesizes the anonymity of the city and the modern
economy, both of which impose new conditions of experience. Walking is
almost a new way of philosophizing, the indefatigable traveler knows that
cities have an underground story that only he can grasp. At the same time,
the visitor is resistant to the extent that his act is idle and opposed to the
model of capitalist productivity. Walking as a way to receive an account of
things.
City
Nobody had thought before Benjamin culture so deeply immersed in its
urban and material environment. He caught with great insight the scope of
urban transformation in culture. The Benjamins city is the new modern city
living and emblem of the transience of the times imposed as a new
experience. The paradigm of this new city is Paris.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics should produce a truth content to release revolutionary
energies. In this regard, you must create illuminations as revelations that
capture the existence of a hitherto unseen thing that is liberating for each
historical moment. This is the potential of knowledge of aesthetics.
Photography
Benjamin warns of the danger of the political use of the new means of
reproducing images such as film and photography. Photography, specifically
portrait, was manipulated to meet the bourgeois taste and desire to belong
to a social group. In short history of photography, Benjamin begins to
articulate the concept of aura and criticism to modern means of
reproduction of the image.
Goethe
The great essay on Goethe's Elective Affinities is
the example of criticism in the sense that
Benjamin thought he should have. In it is
distinguished from the false totality in art, as
Goethe intended: the symbol itself is truer than its
supposed universalization. Thereby it rejects a
cultural tradition of myth and meaning of the
symbol.
History
The image of angel looking at lots of ruins is the best summary of
Benjamin's conception of history which, according to him, is not a science
but a form of memory. If science proves aseptically, memory changes. For
Benjamin, the past lingers like a disjointed debris in the present and the
new emerges as a fragment. Benjamin looks for different and silenced
prehistories of the present for searching traumas of memory (violent past
emergencies today) to capture the trace of exploitation and barbarism, and
thus redeem memory.
Illuminations
Benjamin lightings, illuminations opposed to religion, are profane. The
illuminations are the poetic work of the image, the union of elements in
distant appearance, the meeting of which produces a revelation and
conversion of historical time.
Image
Benjamin is highly critical of new commercial uses and indiscriminate image,
showing the conflict between the single (and aural) event and reproduction
in series. The loss of the aura of the image carries an aesthetic
impoverishment, a loss of their cultural value and thread connecting with
the past. The autonomy of the image as a fetish of capitalism.
Language
According to Jewish tradition, the word is when God creates things. Hence
the language has a sacred element. Benjamin is always displayed against
the instrumental conception of language in modernity, which has emptied
the word sacred.
Marxism
Benjamin himself claimed that it was not a Marxist dialectical materialist. He
came to Marxism through reading Lukcs, although his Marxism was always
unorthodox. According to him, Marxism did not invalidate Judaism; on the
contrary, completed its new economic and social consciousness. InTheses
on the Philosophy of History wrote: Al concept classless society must be
refunded to the true Messianic face, and this in the interest of revolutionary
politics of the proletariat itself. The last text written by Benjamin, Theses on
the Philosophy of History, is a compendium of his peculiar historical
materialism.
Memory
The concept of memory for Benjamin comprising an epistemological content,
a philosophy of history and a policy proposal. Epistemological concept,
means addressing the past not only as that which was but as that which
failed. An approach which places otherwise to this: watch the forgotten past
but also consider what, at present, is in danger of being excluded. New
knowledge that transforms the philosophy of history: history of the winners
with a significant absence of truth, the losers. In his theory of history,
5. CONCEPT OF COPY
The rationale copy, its why, according to Benjamin meets the need of the
masses of bringing art objects themselves, which is not possible with the
original, which presents characteristics of distance and superiority are you
intrinsic. The problem does not originate in the copy but the reaction that
occurs in the presence of art reproductions.
5.
WHAT IS THE INFLUENCE OF
WALTER BENJAMIN NOWADAYS?
With The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction, the thinker
Walter Benjamin sought a reading on new
forms of artistic creation and reception
born as a result of technical advances of
modernity on the one hand, constitute a
statute for significance of the work of
modern art and, secondly, a reformulation
of Marxist thesis on the influence of
infrastructure in the superstructure from a
contemporary point of view. However,
unwittingly, he also developed the first
approach to a surprisingly current reality:
the mass reproduction. In front of their peers and colleagues from the
Frankfurt School, as Adorno and Horkheimer, Benjamin did not provide
technical reproduction as necessarily evil. Benjamin, therefore, argued that
the existence of bulk copies refuncionalized both the artwork and the public
role itself, idea shared by most theorists now, but this refuncionalization,
even despite being created from the system, could represent a
revolutionary instrument through capacity. The revamping of the artwork is
constructed, for Benjamin, on two levels: one, the reception and another,
that of creation, inseparable from each other because power always keeping
appropriated both thus, the artwork in the area of elitism. However,
playback allows, on the one hand, access to the masses artworks
demystifying its traditional role (and therefore removing then from the
sphere of the sacred to become of daily use) and, secondly, the active
public participation in the creation of the artwork; that is reproducing
themselves (being the perfect example of this film). Benjamin believes that
this knowledge capacity provided by the mass reproduction may involve the
inauguration of citizenship with respect to a traditionally used for power
handling instances of other classes figure; thus reproducing the artwork
provides a weapon of struggle against the ruling class, becoming an
emancipatory tool for the newly released class society and a possible attack
on the fascist media. Benjamin does not make obvious differences between
the original artwork, defined by its uniqueness, and copying or
reproduction; however, gives them space and different characteristics, not
conceiving the copy as an attack on the artwork precisely because its
function is different. While the original artwork has what Benjamin called
"aura" (a feeling of remoteness bound by the history of that work, which
passes from the context of its creation to the vicissitudes experienced by
the original), the copy lacks the same.
A definition of what is a work of art, from the technical reproducibility, no
longer exists being that it is snatches away what Benjamin calls its
"parasitic existence in a ritual" and therefore allows not only a definition
based on the criteria of the hearing itself, which becomes part of the same
CITATION