Page 203 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 203
Summary
A number of papers for journals, lectures and conferences constitute the
basis for this book. Since most of them are dealing with artistic, cultural
and political phenomena, they were arranged in different parts, which are
focused on some specific theoretical problems or specific fields or phenom-
ena. Although these texts, which were written over a period of about two
decades, are not organised strictly in chronological order, they should indi-
cate a trajectory of the author’s own conceptual evolution.
Aura, Culture and what Becomes from Form?
Part one of the book deals with Walter Benjamin’s theoretical intervention
in the 1930s and some contemporary contexts, which confirm its relevance.
In a historical context, mass culture as an actually established entity is al-
most entirely situated in the 20th century, and only from the viewpoint of
this century were its earlier manifestations traceable to a time of the devel-
opment and breakthrough of capitalism along with the industrial and po-
litical revolutions. The disappearing of what Benjamin called aura through
the intrusion of the reproduction of the classic works of art, and even more
significantly, through a development of the new forms of art made possi-
ble by technical devices, brings a turn into the functioning of the art itself.
The media, for instance, represent the state of affairs as they express and
propagate the dominant views and attitudes, in the words of many theore-
ticians in the category of the Western Marxism: the ideology. As such, the
201
A number of papers for journals, lectures and conferences constitute the
basis for this book. Since most of them are dealing with artistic, cultural
and political phenomena, they were arranged in different parts, which are
focused on some specific theoretical problems or specific fields or phenom-
ena. Although these texts, which were written over a period of about two
decades, are not organised strictly in chronological order, they should indi-
cate a trajectory of the author’s own conceptual evolution.
Aura, Culture and what Becomes from Form?
Part one of the book deals with Walter Benjamin’s theoretical intervention
in the 1930s and some contemporary contexts, which confirm its relevance.
In a historical context, mass culture as an actually established entity is al-
most entirely situated in the 20th century, and only from the viewpoint of
this century were its earlier manifestations traceable to a time of the devel-
opment and breakthrough of capitalism along with the industrial and po-
litical revolutions. The disappearing of what Benjamin called aura through
the intrusion of the reproduction of the classic works of art, and even more
significantly, through a development of the new forms of art made possi-
ble by technical devices, brings a turn into the functioning of the art itself.
The media, for instance, represent the state of affairs as they express and
propagate the dominant views and attitudes, in the words of many theore-
ticians in the category of the Western Marxism: the ideology. As such, the
201
