Mapping Benjamin : the work of art in the digital age / edited by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Michael Marrinan.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich.

Marrinan, Michael.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Aesthetics, Modern.

Digital communications.

Mass media.

Technology and the arts.

Physical Description:

xvi, 349 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, [2003]

Summary:

Since its publication in 1936, Walter Benjamin's "Artwork" essay has become a canonical text about the status and place of the fine arts in modern mass culture. Benjamin was especially concerned with the ability of new technologies--notably film, sound recording, and photography--to reproduce works of art in great number. Benjamin could not have foreseen the explosion of imagery and media that has occurred during the past fifty years. Does Benjamin's famous essay still speak to this new situation? That is the question posed by the editors of this book to a wide range of leading scholars and thinkers across a spectrum of disciplines in the humanities. The essays gathered here do not hazard a univocal reply to that question; rather they offer a rich, wide-ranging critique of Benjamin's position that refracts and reflects contemporary thinking about the ethical, political, and aesthetic implications of life in the digital age.

Contents:

Aesthetics / Perception 1

Aura: The Unique Appearance of Distance / Dirk Baecker 9

History: Aesthetics of Media: What Is the Cost of Keeping Benjamin Current? / Norbert Bolz 24

Replication: There Are No Mass Media / Bernhard Siegert 30

Technology: Connecting Benjamin: The Aesthetic Approach to Technology / Karlheinz Barck 39

Apparatus / Montage 45

Aesthetics: History After Film / Peter Gilgen 53

Aura: Digitized Analogies / Richard Shiff 63

History: The Photomonteur Recycled: A Benjaminian Epilogue to Heartfield's 1991 Berlin Retrospective / Walter Moser 71

Technology: From Aura-Loss to Cyberspace: Further Thoughts on Walter Benjamin / Siegfried J. Schmidt 79

Aura / Technology 83

Authenticity: How to Make Mistakes on So Many Things at Once

And Become Famous for It / Antoine Hennion, Bruno Latour 91

Fetish: Between Goethe's and Spielberg's "Aura": On the Utility of a Nonoperational Concept / Jurgen Link 98

History: From Mechanical Reproduction to Electronic Representation / Roger Chartier 109

Presence: Aura Hysterica or the Lifted Gaze of the Object / Ursula Link-Heer 114

Authenticity / Replication 125

Apparatus: "The Cameraman and Machine Are Now One": Walter Benjamin's Frankenstein / Lindsay Waters 133

Presence: Concerning Two "Encounters" with Walter Benjamin: The Reproducibility of Art / Paul Zumthor 142

Ritual: Air From Other Planets Blowing: The Logic of Authenticity and the Prophet of the Aura / Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann 147

Technology: What Is Mechanical Reproduction? / Robert Hullot-Kentor 158

Critical Discourse / Representation 171

Absence: The Destruction of Representation: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay in the Present Age / Kerstin Behnke 179

Aura: Text-Critical Remarks et Alia / Klaus Weimar 188

Fetish / Ritual 195

Apparatus: Toward the Artwork Essay, Second Version / Henning Ritter 203

Aura: The Reverent Gaze: Toward the Cultic Function of the Artwork in the Premodern and the Postmodern Age / Horst Wenzel 211

History: Walter Benjamin In the Information Age? On the Limited Possibilities for a Defetishizing Critique of Culture / Pericles Lewis 221

Politics: Media Theory After Benjamin and Brecht: Neo-Marxist? / Niels Werber 230

History / Politics 239

Apparatus: Museums of the Present: Rimbaud Reads Benjamin / Joao Cezar De Castro Rocha 249

Aura: The End of Aura? / Stephen G. Nichols 256

Presence: A Commonplace in Walter Benjamin / Brian Neville, Bill Readings 269

Technology: If It Were Only for Real / Joshua Feinstein 274

Presence / Absence 281

Authenticity: The Flip Side / Maria Rosa Menocal 291

Fetish: Post-Benjaminian / Beatriz Sarlo 301

History: Pieta / Robert P. Harrison 310

Ritual: Confronting Benjamin / Stephen Bann 318.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [325]-336) and indexes.

ISBN:

0804744351

080474436X

OCLC:

52214507