[PDF] walter benjamin ing of the four versions

View - Download walter benjamin

Previous PDF

Next PDF

THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF ITS

TEe H N 0 LOG I CAL REP ROD U C I B I L I TY

AND OTHER WRITINGS ON MEDIA

walter benjamin walter benjamin

THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF ITS

TECHNOLOGICAL REPRODUCIBILITY

AND OTHER WRITINGS ON MEDIA

Edited by Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty,

and Thomas Y. Levin $18.95

Translated by Edmund

Jephcott, Rodney

Livingstone, Howard Eiland, and Others

Benjamin's famous "Work of Art" essay sets out his boldest thoughts-on media and on culture in gen eral-in their most highly developed form, while retain ing an edge that gets under the skin of every one who reads it. In this essay the visual arts of the m achine age morph into literature and theory, and t hen back again to images, gestures, and thought.

This essay, however, is only the beginning of a

vast collection of writings that the editors have assembled to demonstrate what was revolutionary ab out Benjamin'S explorations on media. Long before Marshall McLuhan, Benjamin saw that the way a bullet rips into its victim is exactly the way a m ovie or pop song lodges in the soul.

This book contains the second, and most dar

ing, of the four versions of the "Work of Art" essay the one that addresses the utopian developments of the modern media. The collection tracks Ben j amin's observations on the media as they are revealed in essays on the production and recep tion of art; on film, radio, and photography; and on the modern transformations of literature and painting. T he volume contains some of Benjamin's best-known work alongside fascinating, little known essays-some ap pearing for the first time in

English. In the context of his passionate engage

ment with questions of aesthetics, the scope of

Benjamin'S media theory can be fully appreciated.

-rhe Work of Art in the Age of

Its Technological Reproducibility,

and Other Writings on Media -,he Work of Art in the Age of

Its Technological Reproducibility,

and Other Writings on Media

WALTER BENJAMIN

EDITED BY

Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin

TRANSLATED BY

Edmund ]ephcott, Rodney Livingstone, Howard Eiland, and Others

THE BELKNAP PRESS OF

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2008

Copyright © 2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States

of America

Additional copyright notices

appear on pages 425-426, which constitute an extension of the copyright page.

Benjamin, Walter,

1892-1940.

[Kuostwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischeo Reproduzierbarkeit. English] The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, and other writings on media / Walter Benjamin; edited by Michael

W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin;

translated by

Edmund Jephcott ... [et al.].-lst ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-674-02445-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Art and society. 2. Photography of art. 3. Mass media-Philosophy.

4. Arts, Modern-20th century-Philosophy. 5. Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940-

knowledge-Mass media. 6. Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940-Translations into English. I. Jennings, Michael William. II. Doherty, Brigid. III. Levin, Thomas Y.

IV. Jephcott, Edmund. V. Title.

N72.S6B413

2008

302.23-dc22 2008004494

CONTENTS

A Note on the Texts

Editors'Introduction

I. The Production, Reproduction, and Reception

of the Work of Art

1. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological

Reproducibility: Second Version

2. Theory of Distraction

3.

To the Planetarium

4. Garlanded Entrance

5. The Rigorous Study

of Art

6. Imperial Panorama

7. The Telephone

8. The Author as Producer

9. Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century

10. Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian

11. Review of Sternberger's

Panorama

II. Script, Image, Script-Image

12. Attested Auditor of Books

13. These Surfaces for Rent

14. The Antinomies

of Allegorical Exegesis

15. The Ruin

16. Dismemberment

of Language

17. Graphology Old and New

III. Painting and Graphics

18. Painting and the Graphic Arts

19.

On Painting, or Sign and Mark

20. A Glimpse into the World of Children's Books

21. Dream Kitsch

v IX 1 19 56
58
60
67
75
77
79
96
116
158
171
173
175
180
187
192
219
221
226
236
vi CONTENTS

22. Moonlit Nights on the Rue La Boetie 240

23. Chambermaids' Romances of the Past Century 243

24. Antoine Wiertz: Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head 249

25. Some Remarks

on Folk Art 254

26. Chinese Paintings at the Bibliotheque Nationale 257

IV. Photography

27. News about Flowers 271

28. Little History of Photography

274

29. Letter from Paris (2): Painting and Photography 299

30. Review of Freund's Photographie en France au dix-neuvieme

312

V. Film

31. On the Present Situation of Russian Film 323

32. Reply to Oscar

A. H. Schmitz 328

33. Chaplin 333

34. Chaplin

in Retrospect 335

35. Mickey Mouse 338

36. The Formula in Which the Dialectical Structure of Film Finds

Expression 340

VI. The Publishing Industry and Radio

37. Journalism 353

38. A Critique of the Publishing Industry 355

39. The Newspaper 359

40. Karl Kraus 361

41. Reflections

on Radio 391

42. Theater and Radio 393

43. Conversation with Ernst Schoen

397

44. Two Types of Popularity: Fundamental Reflections on a Radio

Play 403

45.

On the Minute 407

Index 411

ILLUSTRATIONS

Paul Klee, Abstract Watercolor 196

Max Ernst, frontispiece to Paul Eluard, Repetitions 199 Walter Benjamin, "A Glimpse into the World of Children's

Books," page

Die literarische Welt 203

Walter Benjamin, "Chambermaids' Romances of the Past

Century," page

Das illustrierte Blatt 207

Antoine Joseph Wiertz, Thoughts and Visions of a Severed

I-Iead 210

Wang Yuanqi, Landscape in the Styles of Ni Zan and Huang

Gongwang

212
Illustration from Aesop's Fables, second edition 228

Moral sayings from the book by Jesus Sirach 229

Illustration from Johann Peter Lyser, The Book of Tales for

Daughters and Sons

of the Educated Classes 230

Cover of The Magical Red Umbrella 232

Illustration fr0111 Adelmar von Perlstein 244

Frontispiece to Lady Lucie Guilford, the Princess of Vengeance,

Known as the Hyena of Paris 245

Illustration from O. G. Derwicz, Antonetta Czerna 246 Illustration depicting the notorious Black Knight 247 David Octavius Hill, Newhaven Fishwife (photo) 277 Karl Dauthendey, Karl Dauthendey with His Fiancee (photo) 278

Anonymous, The Philosopher Schelling (photo) 280

David Octavius Hill, Robert Bryson (photo) 284

August Sander, Pastry Cook (photo) 288

August Sander, Parliamentary Representative (photo) 289

Germaine

Krull, Display Window (photo) 291

Germaine Krull,

Storefront (photo) 292

A NOTE ON THE TEXTS

The following editions of works by Walter Benjamin are to throughout this volume: Gesammelte Schriften, 7 vols., with supplements, ed. Rolf

Tiedemann,

Hermann Schweppenhauser, et a1. (Frankfurt:

Suhrkamp,

1972-1989).

Selected Writings> 4 vols., ed. Michael W. Jennings et a1. (Cam bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1996-2003).

The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1999).

The texts included in this volume are for the most part drawn from the four volumes of Benjamin's

Selected Writings; we have modified a few of

the translations published there in the course of our work on the section in trod uctions.

The editors

of the present volume are grateful not just to Benjamin's accomplished translators, but in particular to

Howard Eiland for the ed

iting work that went into the Selected Writings. Our research assistants Annie Bourneuf and Ingrid Christian have made invaluable contributions to the textual apparatus, and Charles Butcosk and Lisa Lee provided ex pert help with the acquisition of materials for the illustrations.

The Work of Art in the Age of

Its Technological Reproducibility,

and Other Writings on Media

EDITORS' INTRODUCTION

Although Walter Benjamin had written short texts on painting and the graphic arts during his student years, it was not until the 1920s that he became intensely engaged with a broad range of modern media. These eluded new technologies that produced changes in, and served as virtual or actual prostheses for, human perception; instruments of mass commu nication such as the newspaper and the radio; new techniques of display related to urban commodity capitalism; and artistic media such as paint ing, photography, and film.

Born in Berlin in 1892, Benjamin had grown

up in a city deeply marked by the rampant growth of German industry in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Modern technologies were pervasive in the

German

capital-arguably more so there than in any other European metropolis of the era. Germany had been united as a nation only in

1871, and the period that immediately followed (known in German as

the Grunderjahre, or foundational years) was characterized by a remark able economic boom that reshaped the face of Berlin. The early years of Benjamin's career as a writer) which began while he was still in high school, were given over not to an exploration of the experience of the modern city, but to a reevaluation of the philosophy and literature of

German Romanticism and to the development

of a theory of criticism rooted in that very Romanticism. In studies of Friedrich Schlegel's criti cism, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's prose, and Baroque mourning plays, Benjamin developed a highly original theory of literature based on concepts and practices derived from the works themselves.

The rhythms of Benjamin's practice

and theory of criticism in the years

1912-1924 interweave two movements. On the one hand, his

criticism calls for the demolition or demystification of the unified, auton omous work of art. In a typically striking formulation, Benjamin calls this process of demolition or demystification the "mortification of the work";1 scholars today, using a term from a seminal 1918 speech by the

German sociologist

Max Weber, might speak of its "disenchantment."2

1

2 EDITORS' INTRODUCTION

Benjaminian criticism attempts to reduce the seemingly coherent, inte grally meaningful work to the status of "ruin," "torso)" or "mask)" to name but a few key figures of his criticism.

On the other hand, his theory

also strives for a productive moment: the isolation and redemption of shards of an "immanent state of perfection" that had been shattered and denatured-made meaningless-in the course of history.3 In an impor tant essay on Goethe's novel Elective Af(il1ities j

Benjamin defines the ob

ject of criticism as the discovery of the "truth content') of the work of art.

The dense intertwining

of brilliant immanent criticism and broad-gauged cultural theory in these works has ensured them a special status in the history of literary theory. In the course of the 1920s, Benjamin turned his gaze from the German literary and philosophical tradition to a series of problems in contem porary culture. A key stage in this process was his involvement with art ists of the European and Soviet avant-gardes who had gathered in Berlin in the early part of the decade. Crucially, this involvement with avant garde artists, architects, and filmmakers overlapped with Benjamin)s brief affiliation with the university in Frankfurt as he unsuccessfully at tempted to have his study of the Baroque mourning play accepted as a I-Iabilitationsschrift that would qualify him for a teaching position in a German university. Also during this period, in 1923 he was forming friendships with the architect, cultural critic, and film theorist Siegfried

Kracauer (1889-1.966), the philosopher

Theodor Adorno (1903-1969),

and the chemist Gretel Karplus (1902-1993, later Gretel Adorno); and in 1924 he began a long relationship with the Latvian journalist and theater director Asja Lacis (1891-1979), who encouraged Benjamin to undertake a serious study of Marxism and to whom his epochal 1928 book One-Way Street was dedicated. In late 1922 and early 1923 a new group of international avant-garde artists came together in Berlin and launched the publication of a journal called G:t an abbreviation of the

German word

quotesdbs_dbs27.pdfusesText_33

[PDF] Blouse de chirurgie

[PDF] Blouse encolure en V arrondie, manches courtes kimono femme - Anciens Et Réunions

[PDF] Blouse encolure trapeze, manches kimono femme - Anciens Et Réunions

[PDF] Blouse manches kimono femme - Anciens Et Réunions

[PDF] Blouse manches longues femme - MATERIEL-MEDICAL-3000 - Anciens Et Réunions

[PDF] Blouse médecin homme - MATERIEL-MEDICAL-3000 - Anciens Et Réunions

[PDF] Blouse Mixte Col Tailleur en V Caspienne - Anciens Et Réunions

[PDF] Blouse Mixte Col Tailleur en V Sargasse - MATERIEL-MEDICAL-3000 - Anciens Et Réunions

[PDF] Blouses blanches de laboratoire Premium White Lab Coats - Anciens Et Réunions

[PDF] Blouses Poly Coton - Sortir Ensemble

[PDF] Blouson - Anciens Et Réunions

[PDF] Blouson airbag motocycliste - Anciens Et Réunions

[PDF] Blouson Ambulancier

[PDF] BLOUSON AVIATEUR - Anciens Et Réunions

[PDF] BLOUSON AVIATEUR COMBAT - Anciens Et Réunions