Page 220 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 220
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
come a ‘life form‘ (and thus a reality in its own right)” (Elsaesser, Hagener,
2010: p. 12). In a self-reflective turn (meaning cinema theory as the subject)
they proceed with their argument, based on the assumption that film the-
ory “put the body and the senses at the centre” of its interest in the direc-
tion, which in the age of ubiquitous digital communication does not seem
far-fetched anymore. They point out that the cinema is proposing to us “/…/
besides a new way of knowing the world, also a new way of ‘being in the
world’, and thus demanding from film theory, next to a new epistemology
also a new ontology‘” (Ibid.).
Transcending cinema, at first glance runs rather smoothly. It is tak-
ing place almost exactly in a manner of the Hegelian Aufhebung. The rea-
son for such an appearance should be sought in the fact that we still have
to deal with the frame – no matter in what kind of apparatus, which could
be a cinema screen or a range of screens of diverse digital devices. “Theo-
rists of new media have made much of the notion of cinema as the domi-
nant language of culture and of the computer desktop as a cinematic space:
‘screen culture’ is posited as the hegemonic cultural interface” (Nakamu-
ra, 2008: p. 63). To what extent is virtual reality undermined by the effect of
immediacy, such as it has been inaugurated by Walter Benjamin and, just
recently, in other terms by Jacques Rancière? The problem now obtains the
generational historicised framework, within which, curiously, history itself
melts in the presence of a form of always accessible “knowledge” that abol-
ishes “old” hierarchies of relevance of historic narratives about events, in-
stitutions, people and periods.
Key Words: culture, media, cinema, politics, identity
218
come a ‘life form‘ (and thus a reality in its own right)” (Elsaesser, Hagener,
2010: p. 12). In a self-reflective turn (meaning cinema theory as the subject)
they proceed with their argument, based on the assumption that film the-
ory “put the body and the senses at the centre” of its interest in the direc-
tion, which in the age of ubiquitous digital communication does not seem
far-fetched anymore. They point out that the cinema is proposing to us “/…/
besides a new way of knowing the world, also a new way of ‘being in the
world’, and thus demanding from film theory, next to a new epistemology
also a new ontology‘” (Ibid.).
Transcending cinema, at first glance runs rather smoothly. It is tak-
ing place almost exactly in a manner of the Hegelian Aufhebung. The rea-
son for such an appearance should be sought in the fact that we still have
to deal with the frame – no matter in what kind of apparatus, which could
be a cinema screen or a range of screens of diverse digital devices. “Theo-
rists of new media have made much of the notion of cinema as the domi-
nant language of culture and of the computer desktop as a cinematic space:
‘screen culture’ is posited as the hegemonic cultural interface” (Nakamu-
ra, 2008: p. 63). To what extent is virtual reality undermined by the effect of
immediacy, such as it has been inaugurated by Walter Benjamin and, just
recently, in other terms by Jacques Rancière? The problem now obtains the
generational historicised framework, within which, curiously, history itself
melts in the presence of a form of always accessible “knowledge” that abol-
ishes “old” hierarchies of relevance of historic narratives about events, in-
stitutions, people and periods.
Key Words: culture, media, cinema, politics, identity
218
