Synopses & Reviews
Since its publication in 1936, Walter Benjamins “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 Benjamins 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 Benjamins position that refracts and reflects contemporary thinking about the ethical, political, and aesthetic implications of life in the digital age.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [325]-336) and indexes.
Synopsis
“Mapping Benjamin not only distinguishes itself in format, scope, and tone from the mass of Benjamin books published each year, it provides an up-to-date snapshot of the humanities. This lucidly written book uses Benjamin to chart the parameters of a force field of contemporary intellectual efforts, across disciplines and other divides.” —Eva Geulen,New York University
About the Author
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht is Albert Guérard Professor of Literature and Professor in the Departments of French and Italian, Comparative Literature, Modern Thought and Literature, and Spanish and Portuguese at Stanford University. Michael Marrinan is Associate Professor of Art History at Stanford University.
Table of Contents
The unique appearance of distance / Dirk Baecker -- Aesthetics of media: what is the cost of keeping Benjamin current? / Norbert Bolz -- There are no mass media / Bernhard Siegert -- Connecting Benjamin: the aesthetic approach to technology / Karlheinz Barck -- History after film / Peter Gilgen -- Digitized analogies / Richard Shiff -- The photomonteur recycled: a Benjaminiam epilogue to Heartfield's 1991 Berlin retrospective / Walter Moser -- From aura-loss to cyberspace: further thoughts on Walter Benjamin / Siegfried J. Schmidt -- How to make mistakes on so many things at once--and become famous for it / Antoine Hennion and Bruno Latour -- Between Goethe's and Spielburg's "aura": on the utility of a nonoperational concept / Jèurgen Link -- From mechanical reproduction to electronic representation / Roger Chartier -- Aura hysteria or the lifted gaze of the object / Ursula Link-Heer -- "The cameraman and machine are now one": Walter Benjamin's Frankenstein / Lindsay Waters -- Concerning two "encounters" with Walter Benjamin: the reproducibility of art / Paul Zumthor -- Air from other planets blowing: the logic of authenticity and the prophet of the aura / Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann -- What is mechanical reproduction? / Robert Hullot-Kentor -- The destruction of representation: Walter Benjamin's artwork essay in the present age / Kerstin Behnke -- Text-critical remarks et Alia / Klaus Weimar -- Toward the artwork essay, second version / Henning Ritter -- The reverent gaze: toward the cultic function of the artwork in the premodern and the postmodern age / Horst Wenzel -- Walter Benjamin in the information age? on the limited possibilities for a defetishing critique of culture / Pericles Lewis -- Media theory after Benjamin and Brecht: neo-Marxist? / Niels Werber -- Museums of the present: Rimbaud reads Benjamin / Joäao Câezar de Castro Rocha -- The end of aura? / Stephen G. Nichols -- A commonplace in Walter Benjamin / Brian Neville and Bill Readings -- If it were only for real -- Joshua Feinstein -- The flip side / Marâia Rosa Menocal -- Post-Benjamin / Beatriz Sarlo -- Pietâa / Robert P. Harrison -- Confronting Benjamin / Stephen Bann.