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1

Walter Benjamin and Surrealism.

100%
Maron M.
Kwartalnik Filmowy
|
2008
|
issue 64
18-24
EN
The author discusses the way in which Walter Benjamin attempted to incorporate surrealism in his diagnosis of modernity. He was inspired by the basic premises of the surrealist outlook, as well as methodology applied in surrealist works (film, photography, Louis Aragon's 'Le Paysan de Paris'). Benjamin and the surrealist share the same approach to material reality of the world on the one hand, and deep, subconscious meanings on the other. Psychoanalysis had significant influence on his work and the surrealists'. It was from psychoanalysis that Benjamin developed his concept of shock, and the surrealists developed their idea of higher reality. Both theories were influential in the context of film. The concept of shock, especially shock as a quality of montage, found their use in the Arcades Project, the work in which Benjamin formulated his historiosophic postulate of awakening, which was to become a method of historical epistemology.
2

THE TOWNS OF WALTER BENJAMIN (Miasta Waltera Benjamina)

100%
Szerszen T.
Konteksty - Polska Sztuka Ludowa
|
2008
|
vol. 62
|
issue 3-4(282-283)
40-46
EN
Throughout his whole life Walter Benjamin created mini-portraits of towns, synthetic 'images of thought', sometimes no larger than the text on a postcard. They mark the places in which the life of the author of 'Le Livre des passages' merges, as closely as possible, with writing and the text. This is the place where that which is theoretical and that which is experienced are already inseparable and undistinguishable. Benjamin's images of cities are never a journalistic 'capturing of life': following the example of the poet Stefan George, he introduced the concept of 'denkbilder', which contains tension between the past and the present, between recollection and experience. Benjamin believed in the cabalistic power of the word. Just as Proust treated names, so he conceived the names of towns as symbols: Berlin, Jerusalem, Marseilles, Moscow, Naples, New York, Paris, Riga, San Indignant...
3

MICKEY MOUSE, PSYCHOPATH AND OTHER WORLDS: A REMARK ON ONE SIMILE OF BENJAMIN

80%
Fulka J.
Slovak Review. A Review of World Literature Research
|
2007
|
vol. 16
|
issue 1
65-72
EN
One of the moments that connect S. Freud with W. Benjamin is, apart from the interest in mental and material archeology, the directivity to a volatile moment constituting the 'lyrical' basis of both Freud's scientific rhetoric, and Benjamin's literary fragments and the philosophy of time. An analogy to the temporality in psychoanalysis we can find also in 'The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproduction', where, however, elusiveness is connected to another element of psychoanalysis: to the interest in a neglected detail. The apperception of the unperceivable details is, however, better than a theory or techniques of therapy enabled by means of a new kind of art: film, operating on psychotization of consciousness. The archeology of this theme can be realized on the example of Mickey Mouse as a cinematic representative of the modern philosophy of detail; it appears ultimately also in Benjamin's considerations on film, where it is, moreover, caught in a certain historical-utopian perspective. His logic of detail as a logic of the operation of the universe is, at the same time, put into an analogy to Fourier and Blanqui. It can be shown that the phantasmagoric parallel worlds occurring both in the notions of Freud's patients, and in the visions of the utopists in the 19th century, were conceptualized by means of the media by Benjamin.
4

WALTER BENJAMIN'S NOTION OF DEATH AND PHOTOGRAPHY

80%
Soulages F.
Slovak Review. A Review of World Literature Research
|
2007
|
vol. 16
|
issue 1
55-64
EN
The text is conceived as a tribute to Walter Benjamin as one of the founders of theory of photography, whose thought was moving on the borders of science and essayistic writing. The author shows that Benjamin, who noticed the connection of photography with death in his 'Brief History of Photography', is one of the first to bring forward fixation that can be considered the fundamental for the art of photography. In this way, he created a theoretical base of new mimetic aesthetics for this kind of art. Benjamin's over-interpretation of the art of photography, however, in the sense of anticipation ability, also shows its affinity to the magic evoking an effect of fascination in the recipient. Thus Benjamin entered the ground of anthropology in his reflection, and also of psychoanalysis, since as one of the first at all he considered the function of unconsciousness in photography, the function that turned out to be crucial in creation of theories of photography.
5

A life at the foot of a castle mountain. The life, truth and narration in Water Benjamin's writings on Franz Kafka

80%
Lipszyc A.
Teksty Drugie (Second Texts)
|
2007
|
issue 5(107)
202-213
EN
Subject to analysis is the theological vision ascribed by Walter Benjamin to Franz Kafka, in particular, Benjamin's concept of a 'life at the foot of a castle mountain' and the messianic potential inscribed in such a life. To this end, the author discusses a number of categories, such as narration, parable, gesture, as well as distortion, recurrence and a 'life turned into the Scripture'. He identifies the Benjamin/Kafka theology as an extreme case of Gnosticism without a gnosis; his argument is that in his interpretation of Kafka, Benjamin played or trifled with the idea of salvation though a narrative.
6

WALTER BENJAMIN, THE PHILOSOPHER OF URBANISM

80%
Marcelli M.
Slovak Review. A Review of World Literature Research
|
2007
|
vol. 16
|
issue 1
23-26
EN
The contribution focuses on two significant motifs of Benjamin's philosophy of urbanism, developed especially in connection with his considerations of the 19th century Paris: the city scene and the world of notions of urbanism, unified into metaphysics. It turns out that Benjamin as a 'city-thinker' can be considered a follower of F. Nietzsche, and his follower, on the other hand, can be considered M. Foucault. All three of them stage for their philosophical utterances urban environments (Benjamin particularly as a thinker of luxury and urban 'landscape'), for which the arrangement not resulting in the general philosophical notions but in the intentions of 'metaphysics of locality' turning the city back to itself, is characteristic. The author shows how it is possible to follow this Benjaminian metaphysics of locality graphically in the example of his description of Paris panoramas of the 19th century
7

Aura Reconsidered. Benjamin and Contemporary Visual Culture

80%
Koepnick L.
Kwartalnik Filmowy
|
2008
|
issue 64
25-44
EN
The author argues that Benjamin's concepts concerning the auratic and postauratic art (as expressed in his essay about the artwork in the era of mechanical reproduction) cannot be uncritically applied to the contemporary, postmodern culture. The reality depcited by Benjamin in the 30s seems to be radically different from the one we experienced at the end of XX century. Postmodern culture, with its centrality of visual experiences and virtual gazes, with the multiple and heterogeneous forms of spectatorship and its positions, with the despatialized and detemporalized viewing subject has to be analyzed from a new perspective. He points out, that Benjamins thesis concerning aestheticization of politics and its connection to fascism lost the actuality in the post-fordist society and its cultural environment. Using the theories by Theodor Adorno, Patrice Petro and Miriam Hansen, and analyzing the project 'Wrapped Reichstag' by Christo, the author criticizes some points of Benjamin's thoughts. In the same time he tries to answer the question what can be redeemed of Benjamin (and Adorno) for our own times and how we can envision his role under the postmodern conditions.
8

BENJAMIN AND THE NON-EUROPEAN

70%
Bzoch A.
Slovak Review. A Review of World Literature Research
|
2007
|
vol. 16
|
issue 1
80-86
EN
The author asks: was W. Benjamin an intellectual connected exclusively with European, or Jewish traditions of thought, or was he also a pioneer of cultural difference, gaining relevance, above all, today, in the epoch of globalization of culture? From the amount of Benjamin's examples of non-European art, possibly marginal remarks spread throughout his theoretical and critical work since 1920s till his death, it can be shown, that the construction of his extensive and ambivalent theory of culture (including the notions incorporated in the essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproduction'), was permanently determined by his subliminal interest in geographically distant civilizations. Benjamin considered them an important means of critical self-experience, and questioning of Eurocentrism. The author shows that Benjamin's way of thinking corresponds to the post-colonial discourse not only in the meta-theoretical way, but particularly by means of understanding of the concreteness of non-European cultures. But, at the same time, he exalts the fact that the approximation of the non-European in Benjamin deals both with 'material semi-exoticism', and his notion of individual and collective cultural memory.
9

WALTER BENJAMIN AND THE QUESTION OF IMAGE MEDIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES

70%
Gerat I.
Slovak Review. A Review of World Literature Research
|
2007
|
vol. 16
|
issue 1
37-43
EN
The author illuminates some application possibilities of the early Benjamin's observations on language and its mediatorical abilities. He creates a connection between the theory of mediation, which follows from the late work 'The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproduction', and the examination of the Middle Ages fine art. He deals with the questions, which are implied by the theme of mediation in the context of the Middle Ages visual art in general. The central thesis of the contribution is that also in the context of the later Benjamin's media theory some theological motives subside. They build the basis for his early considerations on language, but at the same time they are also the mental fundament of the Middle Ages fine arts expressions in general. The central category, which at the same time expresses an obstacle to a perfect mediation of contents, can be, in concord with Benjamin's occasional formulation within his media theory, viewed as the so-called 'looking away', well-known also from the considerations on mediation in the art of the Middle Ages.
10

POSTMODERN DREAM KITSCH AND IMAGE POLICY

61%
Raulet G.
Slovak Review. A Review of World Literature Research
|
2007
|
vol. 16
|
issue 1
13-22
EN
The contribution poses a question how we should dialectically handle the abundance of images, which we are presently flooded with, and implicates philosophical answers in the background of the image theory from Benjamin's essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproduction'. Here the central role is played by Benjamin's historical troubleshooting of the relation of image and space, which we meet with also in many fragments of his 'Passages', and also his theory of the awakening from image intoxication. Notions like destruction of the aura, phantasmagorical image, or shock assume a key meaning. However, also other derived notions enter into the field of consideration, which supplement the gesture of 'positive barbarism', as for example 'practice', 'memoire involontaire' (M. Proust), or 'Eingedenken'. The author considers plausibility of these critical concepts and notions in view of post-modern art that he qualifies, analogically according to Benjamin, as 'dream kitsch'. In post-modernism where indiscernibleness of reality and fiction predominates, the urgent need for introducing a proportionality of the fictional into reality comes forth, which would lead to the creation of 'history poetics', built on the basis of the theory of metamorphoses, the modern germ of which we find in Benjamin already.
11

WALTER BENJAMIN AND THE DEPTH OF HISTORICITY (BENJAMIN AND THE VIENNESE SCHOOL OF ART HISTORY)

61%
Bakos J.
Slovak Review. A Review of World Literature Research
|
2007
|
vol. 16
|
issue 1
27-36
EN
The first half of the study shows the depth of the kinship between the problem understanding of art historicity in W. Benjamin and a significant representative of the Viennese school of art history, A. Riegl; the key notion here is 'Kunstwollen', a notion adopted from Riegl, which in the time perspective includes the dynamics of historical metamorphoses of art depending on its perception (which is, apart from social determination, other explicit postulate i.a. also in Benjamin's essay on the reproducibility of the work of art). At the same time, since 1925, it is possible, within Benjamin's reading of Riegl, to disclose also moments of over-interpretation (for example introducing the notion of a crisis, or a decline into the concept of developmentality). The deepening of art historicity in Benjamin heads, in the following parts of the author's study, further - similarly as in M. Dvorak - to radicalization in the sense of transformations of his essence. At the same time, the notion on the history-formation of art corresponds with the opinions of Benedetto Croce, and his Viennese followers, Julius von Schlosser and Hans Sedlmeyr. It is possible, from the perspective of the Vienna school, to consider also Benjamin's key notion of 'aura', to which to a large extent Riegl's notion of 'Alterswert' corresponds, whereas the background of Benjaminian art history as a history of a loss of the aura creates Hegelian prophecy about the end of art. The depth of historicity, which is shown in Benjamin's perception of the art metamorphoses in the course of time, is at the same time a sign of a historical pluralism, adopted from the Vienna school.
12

AESTETICS OF VIBRATION AND WALTER BENJAMIN

61%
Zajac P.
Slovak Review. A Review of World Literature Research
|
2007
|
vol. 16
|
issue 1
49-54
EN
The author of the study shows that Walter Benjamin can be considered, on the basis of the analysis of his key notion 'Jetztzeit', a significant theoretician of the aesthetics of the sublime. Thanks to the exposition of the moment of fear in the 20th century, it became a legitimate counterpart to the 'aesthetics of cruelty', the Avant-Gardes lead into. Even though Benjamin never defined the aesthetic programme of the sublime explicitly his essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' as well as the correspondence with Adorno from the end of the 1930s bring evidence about his specific paradoxical perception of the sublime as a fear of its lost. The experience with several forms of mechanically reproduced fine art in the 20th century at the same time shows, that it is not necessarily to be reserved the utopian moment of uniqueness, suspended in Benjamin's notion of aura, merely for the so-called auratic art insomuch that it can also be present in the forms of mechanical reproduction of art.
13

LAUGHING BENJAMIN AND MELANCHOLY BAKHTIN: PROBLEMS OF AN UNELECTIVE AFFINITY

61%
Beasley-Murray T.
Slovak Review. A Review of World Literature Research
|
2007
|
vol. 16
|
issue 1
73-79
EN
The author of the study shows some of the ways in which the thought of Benjamin can be brought alongside that of Bachtin. He impugns the ossified conceptions of both thinkers and tries to compare their thinking through their temperaments. He examines two crucial aspects of their thought - laughter and seriousness/melancholy - often emphasized by some strands of critical literature to the extent of emptying their thought of any substance. The apparent incommensurability between these two personalities (Bachtin the theorist of carnival laughter and Benjamin the melancholic) may be, according to the author, reconsidered to double effect. First, looking at unelective affinities might present both thinkers in a new transforming light; second, such a reillumination may save them from their depolitization at the hands of over-serious or over-jolly academics and reveal in them the potential for joyful but serious political action.
14

TYRANNY OF THE AURA

61%
Gerzova J.
Slovak Review. A Review of World Literature Research
|
2007
|
vol. 16
|
issue 1
44-48
EN
The authoress focuses on paintings by two contemporary artists, George Shaw and Gerhard Richter, and shows how in times, when the principle of technical reproduction predominates no longer, Benjamin's thesis on the existence, or disappearance of the aura can still be applied. Shaw's paintings, created according to the photographs, obsessively reproduce the atmosphere, which Benjamin credited to the so-called auratic art. At the same time, the contribution reveals a semantic shift in Shaw's perception of the aura, caused by a filter of technique, at which the archetypal connection of photography with memory occurs. On the other hand, G. Richter in his technique of painting according to photography proceeds conceptually since 1960s: his paintings reproduce not the atmosphere of the photography and the following feeling of nostalgia but they attempt to make reproducible that, which produces the nostalgia
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