Page 40 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 40
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
philosophical subject/object relationship, it is quite obvious that his obser-
vations crushed the “binarism” of the traditional aesthetics. Benjamin’s es-
say is also one of the first among those texts that brought forward a produc-
tive new approach to the kind of interdisciplinary theory within the social
sciences and humanities by deriving decisive concepts from the phenome-
non of the “mechanical reproduction”. It has been obvious more or less for
anybody from what was visible “on the surface” of the industrial reality, but
it did take time to be read properly.
However, it looks like the definitely dialectical term of aura, contrary
to its intention, represented a possibility for some readers to inverse Benja-
min‘s argument against the traditional aesthetics. Naturally, there is a pos-
sibility that we have to deal here with a simple misreading of the mean-
ing of the notion.2 Anyway, this is not of any big importance; it only gives
us some evidence that the “hegemonicaly” founded comprehension works
somehow like the Freudian defence against recognizing the truth. In any
case, a wider comprehension of Benjamin’s contribution to the epistemolo-
gy in the age of the industrial society, and a recognition of his aesthetical-
ly informed observation of the displacement of the whole chain of mean-
ings, concerning the “manufacturing” of art, the recognition of works of
art in the context of mass culture and the profoundly changed perception
of works of art, have come rather late. Benjamin’s work became much more
transparent for scholars and artists only in the late 1960s, when along the
political protests in the prosperous Western world, a new artistic practice,
which was previously confined to the narrow public interest, succeeded to
make itself visible in the streets and, of course, in the media. A change in
the way the public perceives works of art had enormous consequences. Due
to this change, people were increasingly seeing the reality, and their own
positions within it, very differently as compared to the pre-industrial peri-
od; if, of course, we take for granted that we can guess what kind of percep-
tion art people could have had in the “pre-technological” age. Even neurol-
ogists and psychologists later on, to some extent, confirmed the changes in
2 By reading numerous interpretations of Benjamin‘s “reproduction essay”, no matter
how ingenious or simple they may be, one cannot get rid off of the impression that
most authors somehow take the concept of the aura for granted; almost as if we have
to deal with just another application of a term, almost as if we have to deal with just a
classification of works of art, dividing them between “auratic” and “non-auratic”. Of
course, as soon as the concept of aura is uttered, there is no such thing as an “auratic”
work of art. Benjamin himself only mentions “traces” of aura in this new age, which
is constituted by the disappearance of aura, which itself became visible only through
its disappearance
38
philosophical subject/object relationship, it is quite obvious that his obser-
vations crushed the “binarism” of the traditional aesthetics. Benjamin’s es-
say is also one of the first among those texts that brought forward a produc-
tive new approach to the kind of interdisciplinary theory within the social
sciences and humanities by deriving decisive concepts from the phenome-
non of the “mechanical reproduction”. It has been obvious more or less for
anybody from what was visible “on the surface” of the industrial reality, but
it did take time to be read properly.
However, it looks like the definitely dialectical term of aura, contrary
to its intention, represented a possibility for some readers to inverse Benja-
min‘s argument against the traditional aesthetics. Naturally, there is a pos-
sibility that we have to deal here with a simple misreading of the mean-
ing of the notion.2 Anyway, this is not of any big importance; it only gives
us some evidence that the “hegemonicaly” founded comprehension works
somehow like the Freudian defence against recognizing the truth. In any
case, a wider comprehension of Benjamin’s contribution to the epistemolo-
gy in the age of the industrial society, and a recognition of his aesthetical-
ly informed observation of the displacement of the whole chain of mean-
ings, concerning the “manufacturing” of art, the recognition of works of
art in the context of mass culture and the profoundly changed perception
of works of art, have come rather late. Benjamin’s work became much more
transparent for scholars and artists only in the late 1960s, when along the
political protests in the prosperous Western world, a new artistic practice,
which was previously confined to the narrow public interest, succeeded to
make itself visible in the streets and, of course, in the media. A change in
the way the public perceives works of art had enormous consequences. Due
to this change, people were increasingly seeing the reality, and their own
positions within it, very differently as compared to the pre-industrial peri-
od; if, of course, we take for granted that we can guess what kind of percep-
tion art people could have had in the “pre-technological” age. Even neurol-
ogists and psychologists later on, to some extent, confirmed the changes in
2 By reading numerous interpretations of Benjamin‘s “reproduction essay”, no matter
how ingenious or simple they may be, one cannot get rid off of the impression that
most authors somehow take the concept of the aura for granted; almost as if we have
to deal with just another application of a term, almost as if we have to deal with just a
classification of works of art, dividing them between “auratic” and “non-auratic”. Of
course, as soon as the concept of aura is uttered, there is no such thing as an “auratic”
work of art. Benjamin himself only mentions “traces” of aura in this new age, which
is constituted by the disappearance of aura, which itself became visible only through
its disappearance
38
