Page 172 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 172
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
on epistemology, which demonstrate many troubles in explaining the per-
ception and the true value of a reality outside ourselves.1
Mieke Bal notes in the Introduction to the collection of writings on
cultural analysis, the “/…/ cultural analysis seeks to understand the past
as part of the present, as what we have around us, and without which no
culture would be able to exist” (Bal, 1999: p.1). These interdisciplinary ap-
proaches, which have been developed in the field of cultural analysis – no
matter how this peculiar discipline differs from one school of thought to
another – benefited from the development of knowledge and epistemolo-
gy in the humanities in the period of modernism. Concepts such as mem-
ory and identity, which are helpful by structuring these thoughts and writ-
ing herein, mark some of the most relevant themes of the discourses of
cultural analysis. The focusing of at least some schools of cultural analysis,
as Mieke Bal points out, was made possible not only by an inner concep-
tual development within the social and human sciences. It stems from or
follows from an on-going interaction and relationships between the writ-
ings within these sciences and many “moving” objects, which have been
observed and researched through them. Of course, we cannot talk about
the past at all unless we possess a memory in both possible meanings of the
term: the memory as a capacity and the memory as a recollection or remi-
niscence…, that is to say, the memory about things, people, events, and so
on. In both senses, the concept of memory must have been decisively influ-
enced by such wonders of the industrial age as, in particular, photography
and film. Of course, many other “wonders” of the age in question were rel-
evant for modifying the concept, as for instance the growth of literacy, the
rise of institutions such as schools, factories, media and a number of cultur-
al institutions – museums and archives most certainly not the least impor-
tant among them. Photography and film unquestionably functioned in this
complex context, but they played a key role due to their specific relation to
the development of perception. Or, to be more precise: the specific impact
of the phenomena of photography and film on human perception result-
ed from their significance within the process of so-called mechanical re-
production, as Walter Benjamin had already made clear by the early 1930s.
1 Philosophy in the times of many revolutions (scientific, social, industrial) mainly in
English and French philosophies of empiricism and rationalism dealt a lot with the
problems of perception. Immanuel Kant has probably done the utmost of what was
possible in a context “without” such means of representation that evolved later. His
“transcendentalism” became much more understandable in the time of Hollywood,
according to Adorno and Horkheimer.
170
on epistemology, which demonstrate many troubles in explaining the per-
ception and the true value of a reality outside ourselves.1
Mieke Bal notes in the Introduction to the collection of writings on
cultural analysis, the “/…/ cultural analysis seeks to understand the past
as part of the present, as what we have around us, and without which no
culture would be able to exist” (Bal, 1999: p.1). These interdisciplinary ap-
proaches, which have been developed in the field of cultural analysis – no
matter how this peculiar discipline differs from one school of thought to
another – benefited from the development of knowledge and epistemolo-
gy in the humanities in the period of modernism. Concepts such as mem-
ory and identity, which are helpful by structuring these thoughts and writ-
ing herein, mark some of the most relevant themes of the discourses of
cultural analysis. The focusing of at least some schools of cultural analysis,
as Mieke Bal points out, was made possible not only by an inner concep-
tual development within the social and human sciences. It stems from or
follows from an on-going interaction and relationships between the writ-
ings within these sciences and many “moving” objects, which have been
observed and researched through them. Of course, we cannot talk about
the past at all unless we possess a memory in both possible meanings of the
term: the memory as a capacity and the memory as a recollection or remi-
niscence…, that is to say, the memory about things, people, events, and so
on. In both senses, the concept of memory must have been decisively influ-
enced by such wonders of the industrial age as, in particular, photography
and film. Of course, many other “wonders” of the age in question were rel-
evant for modifying the concept, as for instance the growth of literacy, the
rise of institutions such as schools, factories, media and a number of cultur-
al institutions – museums and archives most certainly not the least impor-
tant among them. Photography and film unquestionably functioned in this
complex context, but they played a key role due to their specific relation to
the development of perception. Or, to be more precise: the specific impact
of the phenomena of photography and film on human perception result-
ed from their significance within the process of so-called mechanical re-
production, as Walter Benjamin had already made clear by the early 1930s.
1 Philosophy in the times of many revolutions (scientific, social, industrial) mainly in
English and French philosophies of empiricism and rationalism dealt a lot with the
problems of perception. Immanuel Kant has probably done the utmost of what was
possible in a context “without” such means of representation that evolved later. His
“transcendentalism” became much more understandable in the time of Hollywood,
according to Adorno and Horkheimer.
170
