One can envision a corresponding object to in philosophy. Presented as an automaton that could defeat skilled chess players, The Turk actually concealed a human (allegedly a dwarf) who controlled the machine. Benjamin uses The Turk, a famous chess-playing device of the 18th century, as an analogy for historical materialism. One interpretation of Benjamin in Thesis I is that Benjamin is suggesting that despite claims to scientific objectivity, the historical materialism of vulgar Marxists is actually a quasi-religious fraud. In the essay, Benjamin uses poetic and scientific analogies to present a critique of historicism. Theses is the last major work Benjamin completed before fleeing to Spain where, fearing Nazi capture, he died by suicide on 26 September 1940. Ĭomposed of twenty numbered paragraphs, the brief essay was written by Benjamin shortly before he attempted to escape from Vichy France, where French collaborationist government officials were handing over Jewish refugees like Benjamin to the Nazi Gestapo. It is one of Benjamin's best-known, and most controversial works. " Theses on the Philosophy of History" or " On the Concept of History" ( German: Über den Begriff der Geschichte) is an essay written in early 1940 by German philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin. He also argues that our habits are formed from the tactical, not perception (the optical) (240).Über den Begriff der Geschichte (2010 edition, Suhrkamp) When we can no longer stand in front of the material object, we perceive it differently (222). Our sense perception is changed because the medium changes. He argues that the ways of seeing have been changed by technological changes. However, within the phenomenon which we are here examining from the perspective of world history, print is merely a special, though particular important, case” (219). He vaguely ties these ideas to writing: “The enormous changes which printing, the mechanical reproduction of writing, has brought about in literature are a familiar story. This article is linked to the idea that people may fear technological changes because of indoctrination.) This, according to Benjamin, is what the Fascists are doing they are using art to indoctrinate people. Though mechanical reproduction allows us to begin critiquing the work, we are so inundated and habituated into the art forms that we can become distracted and no longer look for the ideologies embedded in the work. Because the art work’s meaning is no longer determined by the ritual, its meaning is found in ideology. However, mechanical reproduction dissipates the aura, which means the art is open to politics. With the cult, a person will not question the object because its aura is in the ritual and the person will not question the ritual because he/she believes in it. The aura is attached to the cult (ritualistic and religious use). Aura is uniqueness, situatedness, traces of history/ancestry, the artist purring his/her own energy into the art, and materiality (the physical item is required in order to transfer ownership). The aura is equated with authority and is derived from use value. He believes that mechanical reproduction has removed the aura from the work of art. Particularly, he discusses paintings as compared to photography and stage acting as compared to film. Benjamin argues that the ways in which we perceive, understand, and value art has changed.
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