Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Change

211 Pages·2010·2.45 MB·English

by  Anca M. Pusca

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Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Change
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Also by Anca M. Pusca
EUROPEAN UNION
Promises and Challenges of a New Enlargement
REVOLUTION, DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION AND DISILLUSIONMENT
The Case of Romania
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Walter Benjamin and the
Aesthetics of Change
Edited By
Anca M. Pusca
Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
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Selection and editorial matter © Anca M. Pusca 2010
Individual chapters © their respective authors 2010
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of
this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2010 by
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Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements viii
List of Contributors ix
Aesthetics of Change: An Introduction 1
Anca M. Pusca
Chapter 1 Towards a Global Space of Democratic Rights: 10
On Benjamin, Gramsci, and Polanyi
Renate Holub
Chapter 2 Erasing the Traces, Tracing Erasures: Cultural 55
Memory and Belonging in Newcastle/Gateshead, UK
Zoë Thompson
Chapter 3 ‘Sunshine and Noir’: Benjamin, Kracauer and 82
Roth Visit the ‘White Cities’
Graeme Gilloch
Chapter 4 Liquidation and Shattering: Aesthetics and 95
Politics in Cold Climates
Esther Leslie
Chapter 5 Fashion and Its ‘Revolutions’ in Walter Benjamin’s 108
Arcades
Petra Hroch
Chapter 6 Proof of the Forgotten: A Benjaminian Reading of 127
Daguerre’s Two Views of the Boulevard du Temple
Elizabeth Howie
Chapter 7 Commodity Display and the Phantasmagoria of 144
Modernity: Exploring Walter Benjamin’s Critique
of History
Rolando Vázquez
Chapter 8 The Aura of Art After the Advent of the Digital 158
Konstantinos Vassiliou
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vi Contents
Chapter 9 Towards a Benjaminist Political Economy 171
Claes Belfrage
Conclusion 193
Anca M. Pusca
Index 198
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List of Illustrations
2.1 The Sage, Gateshead. 2008. 62
2.2 Inside The Sage, Gateshead. 2008. 63
2.3 Bottle Bank. 1925. 70
6.1 Daguerre 8 am picture of Boulevard de Temple. 1938. 129
Courtesy of Bayerisches National Museum, Munchen,
Germany.
6.2 Daguerre 12 pm picture of Boulevard de Temple, 1938. 130
Courtesy of Bayerisches National Museum, Munchen,
Germany.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank each of the contributors to this volume for their
excitement and dedication to the project as well as the other parti-
cipants to the Walter Benjamin: Aesthetics of Change conference that
made this project possible in the first place. Special thanks go to Claes
Belfrage and Daniela Tepe for helping to organize the conference, the
Department of Political Science and International Studies and the
Department of Sociology at the University of Birmingham, UK for co-
sponsoring the conference, as well as the European Commission for
funding my research while at the University of Birmingham. I would
also like to thank the Bayerisches National Museum, Munchen, Germany
and the Libraries & Arts Service of Gateshead Council for their generos-
ity in allowing us to reproduce the first Daguerre photographs of Paris
in Chapter 6 and Bottle Bank, Gateshead photograph in Chapter 2,
respectively. Last but certainly not least I would like to thank my editors
at Palgrave Macmillan, Olivia Middleton, Philippa Grand,and Shirley Tan
for their excellent feedback and support throughout the life of this project,
as well as the Politics Department at Goldsmiths, University of London,
my new home during the last stages of this publication.
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List of Contributors
Claes Belfrage is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics and Inter-
national Relations at the University of Swansea, UK. His research focuses
on processes of financialization, welfare state restructuring and European
integration, using critical social theory, cultural political economy and
aesthetic theory to conceptualize the embedding and disembedding of
the economy in the everyday.
Graeme Gilloch is a Reader in the Department of Sociology, at the
University of Lancaster, UK. He is the author of two monographs on
Benjamin: Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City(1996) and
Walter Benjamin: Critical Constellations(2002). He is currently writing
an intellectual biography of Siegfried Kracauer.
Renate Holub is the Director of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University
of California at Berkeley. She is the author of Antonio Gramsci. Beyond
Marxism and Postmodernism [translated into Farsi and Korean]. Cur-
rently she is completing a study on the philosophical foundations of
human rights.
Elizabeth Howieis Assistant Professor of Art History in the Visual Arts
Department of Coastal Carolina University, US. Her work focuses on
modern and contemporary art with an emphasis on the history and
theory of photography.
Petra Hroch is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at
the University of Alberta, Canada. Her research focuses on visual and
performance art, aesthetic, social, and political theory. Petra is a Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council Joseph-Armand Bombardier
Canada Graduate Scholar and Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholar.
Her doctoral research is also supported by the Ralph Steinhauer Award
of Distinction.
Esther Leslie is Professor in Political Aesthetics in the School of
English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London, UK. She is
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