Walter Benjamin and Art

Description

Walter Benjamin's most famous and influential essay remains The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Walter Benjamin and the Work of Art is the first book to provide a broad and dedicated analysis of this canonical work and its effect upon core contemporary concerns in the visual arts, aesthetics and the history of philosophy. The book is structured around three distinct areas: the extension of Benjamin's work; the question of historical connection; the importance of the essay in the development of criticism of both the visual arts and literature. Contributors to the volume include major Benjamin commentators, whose work has very much defined the reception of the essay, and leading philosophers, historians and aesthetician, whose approaches open up new areas of interest and relevance. Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction • Andrew Benjamin 1 Reception in Distraction • Howard Eiland 2 The Timing of Elective Affinity: Walter Benjamin’s Strong Aesthetics • Joanna Hodge 3 Materialist Mutations of the Bilderverbot • Rebecca Comay 4 Is There an Answer to the Aestheticizing of the Political? • Peter Fenves 5 Benjamin or Heidegger: Aesthetics and Politics in an Age of Technology • Beatrice Hanssen 6 The Work of Art in the Age of Ontological Speculation: Walter Benjamin Revisited • Arne Melberg 7 The Mimetic Bond: Benjamin and the Question of Technology • Fabrizio Desideri 8 Aura, Still • Robert Kaufman 9 Walter Benjamin and the Tectonic Unconscious • Detlef Mertins 10 Aura, Face, Photography: Re-reading Benjamin Today • Dlarmuid Costello 11 Benjamin on Art and Reproducibility: The Case of Music • Rajeev S. Patke 12 The Work of Art in the Age of its Electronic Mutability • Krzysztof Ziarek 13 Rehearsing Revolution and Life: The Embodiment of Benjamin’s Artwork Essay at the End of the Age of Mechanical Reproduction • Saul Ostrow Notes Contributors Index