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A review by oskhen
The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media by Walter Benjamin
4.0
The sheer magnitude of Walter Benjamin's writing is quite overwhelming when faced with the task of summarizing his views. The notes I took while reading amounts to a sizeable essay in-and-of themselves. At the core of his thought is the phantasmagoria and the profound effect it has on the way we relate to the world. The phantasmagoria is likened to an optical media device, and its effects: the denial of the most fundamental things of life.
This denial, like a filter between the subject and his experience, has a transitory form. It changes with time because of its reflexive relationship to man.
The essay which this book was named after, The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, sets out to sketch the shift in perception Benjamin noticed happening with the rampant evolution of technology. This shift is marked by the decay of the aura. His marxist roots are made clear by the way he elevates the problem, finding "the social basis of the aura's present decay" in the consumerist commodity fetishism which grant them, quoting Marx Das Capital, "sensuous, yet extrasensory properties." The phantasmagoria is in another way understood as the structural effect of commodity networks based precisely in the "debilitating effect over the human perceptual apparatus and intellect" which they are granted in capitalistic society.
I can't help but liken Benjamin's decay of the aura to Carl Jung's book Modern man in search of a soul. In general, the critique is the overvaluation of the concept as opposed to individual experience.
The importance placed in concepts, in symbolic existence, has a detrimental effect on our appreciation of life. A tree is no longer a magical creation by nature, something beautiful to marvel at, it's just a tree. Conceptualization is a fundamentally devaluing process, placing objects in the background to make room for 'more important matters'. In the essay To the Planetarium, we find references to what is lost.
I want to especially point out this perceptual shift which the decay of the aura signifies. The experience of the aura is today often regarded as mystical. To understand this notion, a quick look at the psychoanalytical movement of the mid-20th century will surely help. Jacques Lacan claims that "the unconscious is structured like a language" and Jacques Derrida famously said that "there is nothing outside of the text." What we find here is the complete overtaking of the symbolic, of the conceptual, over experience, in short, the decay of the aura. Which is quite terrifying if you think about it, because suddenly the system is all that is left, and the battle for retaining the aura is seen as leftovers from religious indoctrination. There is, for Benjamin, redemption in art.
"who we are, the character of the physical environment in which we move, and the character of the historical moment in which we live - are in fact denied to us."
This denial, like a filter between the subject and his experience, has a transitory form. It changes with time because of its reflexive relationship to man.
"Just as the entire mode of existence of human collectives change over long historical periods, so too does their mode of perception."
The essay which this book was named after, The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, sets out to sketch the shift in perception Benjamin noticed happening with the rampant evolution of technology. This shift is marked by the decay of the aura. His marxist roots are made clear by the way he elevates the problem, finding "the social basis of the aura's present decay" in the consumerist commodity fetishism which grant them, quoting Marx Das Capital, "sensuous, yet extrasensory properties." The phantasmagoria is in another way understood as the structural effect of commodity networks based precisely in the "debilitating effect over the human perceptual apparatus and intellect" which they are granted in capitalistic society.
”What, then, is the aura? A strange tissue of space and time: the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be. To follow with the eye – while resting on a summer afternoon – a mountain range on the horizon or a branch that casts its shadow on the beholder is to breathe the aura of those mountains, of that branch."
I can't help but liken Benjamin's decay of the aura to Carl Jung's book Modern man in search of a soul. In general, the critique is the overvaluation of the concept as opposed to individual experience.
"The stripping of the veil from the object, the destruction of the aura, is the signature of a perception whose ’sense for all that is the same in the world’ has so increased that, by means of reproduction, it extracts sameness even from what is unique. Thus is manifested in the field of perception what in the theoretical sphere is noticeable in the increasing significance of statistics"
The importance placed in concepts, in symbolic existence, has a detrimental effect on our appreciation of life. A tree is no longer a magical creation by nature, something beautiful to marvel at, it's just a tree. Conceptualization is a fundamentally devaluing process, placing objects in the background to make room for 'more important matters'. In the essay To the Planetarium, we find references to what is lost.
"They alone shall possess the earth who live from the powers of the cosmos. Nothing distinguishes the ancient from the modern man so much as the former's absorption in a cosmic experience scarcely known to later periods. ... The ancients' intercourse with the cosmos had been different: the ecstatic trance. For it is in this experience alone that we gain certain knowledge of what is nearest to us and what is remotest from us, and never of one without the other. This means, however, that man can be in ecstatic contact with the cosmos only communally. It is the dangerous error of modern men to regard this experience as unimportant."
I want to especially point out this perceptual shift which the decay of the aura signifies. The experience of the aura is today often regarded as mystical. To understand this notion, a quick look at the psychoanalytical movement of the mid-20th century will surely help. Jacques Lacan claims that "the unconscious is structured like a language" and Jacques Derrida famously said that "there is nothing outside of the text." What we find here is the complete overtaking of the symbolic, of the conceptual, over experience, in short, the decay of the aura. Which is quite terrifying if you think about it, because suddenly the system is all that is left, and the battle for retaining the aura is seen as leftovers from religious indoctrination. There is, for Benjamin, redemption in art.
"In the true work of art, delight knows how to make itself fleeting, how to live in the moment, disappear, become new."