Walter Benjamin and Art

309 Pages·2005·22.917 MB·English

by  Andrew Benjamin (editor)

WALTER BENJASMIN AND ART
WALTER BENJAMIN STUDIES SERIES
Series Editors: Andrew Benjamin, Monash University, and Beatrice
Hanssen, University of Georgia.
Consultant Board: Stanley Cavell, Sander Gilman, Miriam Hansen,
Carol Jacobs, Martin Jay, Gertrud Koch, Peter Osborne, Sigrid Weigel and
Anthony Phelan.
A series devoted to the writings of Walter Benjamin - each volume will focus
on a theme central to contemporary work on Benjamin. The series aims to
set new standards for scholarship on Benjamin for students and researchers
in Philosophy, Cultural Studies and Literary Studies.
Walter Benjamin and Romanticism (2002), edited by Beatrice Hanssen and
Andrew Benjamin.
Walter Benjamin and Art
Edited by Andrew Benjamin
A\ continuum
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® Andrew Benjamin and Contributors 2005
First published 2005
Reprinted 2006
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 0-8264-6729-6
PB:0-8264-6730-X
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Walter Benjamin and Art/edited by Andrew Benjamin.
p.cm. — (Walter Benjamin sudies series) Includes bibliograpical references and index.
ISBN 0-8264-6729-6 - ISBN 0-8264-6730-X (pbk.)
1. Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940. Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzier barkeit.
2. Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940 - Aesthetics. 3. Art and Society. I. Benjamin, Andrew E. II. Series.
PT2603. E455K868 2004
834'. 912-dc22
200456178
Typeset by Fakenham Photosetting Ltd, Fakenham, Norfolk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
contents
Acknowledgements vi
Abbreviations vii
Introduction ANDREW BENJAMIN 1
1 Reception in Distraction HOWARD EILAND 3
2 The Timing of Elective Affinity: Walter Benjamin's Strong
Aesthetics JOANNA HODGE 14
3 Materialist Mutations of the Bilderverbot REBECCA COMAY 32
4 Is There an Answer to the Aestheticizing of the Political?
PETER FENVES 60
5 Benjamin or Heidegger: Aesthetics and Politics in an Age of
Technology BEATRICE HANSSEN 73
6 The Work of Art in the Age of Ontological Speculation:
Walter Benjamin Revisited ARNE MELBERG 93
7 The Mimetic Bond: Benjamin and the Question of
Technology FABRIZIO DESIDERI 108
8 Aura, Still ROBERT KAUFMAN 121
9 Walter Benjamin and the Tectonic Unconscious
DETLEF MERTINS 148
10 Aura, Face, Photography: Re-reading Benjamin Today
DlARMUID COSTELLO 164
11 Benjamin on Art and Reproducibility: The Case of Music
RAJEEV S. PATKE 185
12 The Work of Art in the Age of its Electronic Mutability
KRZYSZTOF ZIAREK 209
13 Rehearsing Revolution and Life: The Embodiment of
Benjamin's Artwork Essay at the End of the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction SAUL OSTROW 226
Notes 248
Contributors 289
Index 293
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of a number of these papers appeared in the following pub-
lications. All were revised for this publication.
Rebecca Comays' 'Materialist Mutations of the Bilderverbot\ in ed. David
Michael Levin, Sites of Vision: The Discursive Construction of Vision in
the History of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1997).
Fabrizio Desideri, // fantasma dell'opera: Benjamin, Adorno e le aporie
dell'arte contemporanea (II Melangolo: Geneva, 2002).
Howard Giland, 'Reception in Distraction', in Kevin McLauglin and
Philip Rosen (eds), Benjamin Now: Critical Encounters with The Arabs
Project, boundary 2, 30. 1 (2003): 51-66.
Robert Kaufman, 'Aura, Still', October^ (2002): 45-80.
Detlef Mertins, 'Walter Benjamin and the Tectonic Unconscious', in The
Optic of Walter Benjamin, ed. Alex Coles (London: Black Dog Press,
1999).
Abbreviations
AP The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1999).
C The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin 1910—1940, ed. Gershom
Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno, trans. Manfred R. Jakobson and
Evelyn M. Jakobson (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press,
1994).
CC Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, The Complete Correspondence
1920-1940, ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Nicholas Walker (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
GB Gesammelte Briefe, ed. Christoph Gb'dde and Henri Lonitz (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995 and following years).
GS Walter Benjamin: Gesammelte Schriften, eds. Rolf Tiedemann and
Hermann Schweppenhauser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1974ff).
OT The Origin of the German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London:
Verso, 1998).
SW Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, ed. Michael W. Jennings
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1997-2003).
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Introduction
ANDREW BENJAMIN
Central to any discussion of the work of art in the contemporary period, and
this will be the case whether those discussions are situated within philosophy,
literary criticism, art history, or cultural studies, is Walter Benjamin's text
'The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility'. There were
three versions of the German text and a contemporary French translation by
Pierre Klossowski.1 The text was first drafted in 1935 and rewritten between
that date and 1939.2 The history of the text's production provides an impor-
tant glimpse into the contested relation between art and politics in the late
1930s. More exactly, the final version provides a way into an understanding
of the role of art in any analysis of fascism as well as in finding possible
avenues of response to its emergence. It should be noted that Benjamin's essay
is concerned as much with a diagnosis as it is in the argument that shifts in
technical production generate interpretive possibilities that could not be
easily recuperated by fascism. On one level the text's history is vital to any
sustained investigation of Benjamin's project. Nonetheless, the text has had
a profound influence on approaches to art that far outweighs its historical
particularity. As such the text demands both contextualizing approaches, as
well as others that acknowledge its impact and relevance beyond the hold of
its initial setting. (Both are at work in this collection.)
While there are many aspects of Benjamin's essay that can be privileged,
one of the most compelling concerns the relationship between, on the one
hand, the history of artistic production in terms of the history of techniques
and technological development, and, on the other, the concomitant effect of
that development on the concepts and categories through which art is to be
understood. In other words, while artistic practice may have a history, that
history has a profound impact on the understanding and thus interpretation
of art in any one period. What is given centrality therefore is no longer art
as occupying a transcendent realm. Techniques open upon different ways
of thinking both the history of art and equally any philosophy of art. Here
would be the most radical point of departure from the other essay that
has come to dominate contemporary discussions of art - though it should
be added that it is a domination felt more acutely within philosophy than
elsewhere - namely Heidegger's The Origin of the Work of Art? Heidegger's
project was to 'discover the essence of art'.4 Benjamin will continually argue
that what is essential inheres in the changes within the techniques pertaining
to art's production. Points of affinity and separation between Heidegger and
Benjamin cannot ignore questions of production.