The Disenchantment of Art: The Philosophy of Walter Benjamin

THE DISENCHANTMENT OF ART The Philosophy of Walter Benjamin

RAINER ROCJILITZ

Translated

!Jf:.i():af(r!.i·./}1:ilb�e

Todd

THE GUILFORD PRESS J\Tew York London

First published

in English in i 996 by The Guilford Press

A Division of Guilford Publications, Inc.

72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012

© 1996 The Guilford Press

Translation has been made poss ible in part by a generous gram from the French Ministry of Culture

Originally publish ed in French under rhe tide Le disenchantement de !'art:

La phi!oJophie de Walter Benjamin by Ed itions Gallimard © 1992 Editions Gallimard

All E ng lish lang uage r igh ts res erved No part of this book may he reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, mi cro filming , re c ord in g , or otherwise, without written

permission from rhe Publisher.

Primed in the United Stares of America This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Last digit is print num b er :

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

1

2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Roc·hlitz, Rainer.

(Desenchantemenr de I'arr.

English]

The disenchantment of arr: the p hilos op hy of Walter Benjamin I

by Rainer Rochlirz; translated by Jane Marie Todd.

p.

em.

Includes bibliographical references and inde x.

ISBN 0-89862-408-8

ISBN 0-89862-407-X (pbk.)

1. Benjamin, Walter , 1892-1940-Aesrherics.

Modern-20th century. B3209.B584R63

1996

111'.85'092--dc20

3. Arc-Philosophy.

2. Aes thetics ,

I. Tide.

96-26 CIP

*

Contents

1

I NTRODUCTION

11

CHAPTER I. PlliLOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

The Magic of Language 11 The Task-of the Coming Philosophy 20 Theory of Translation 23 Theory of Ideas 32 Language as Mimetic Factdty 42 CHAPTER II. THEORY OF ART

1.

47

AESTHETICS OF THE SUBLIME

Under the Sign of lf.o1derlin 49 The Romantic Model 52 A n Exemplary Piece of Criticism Theory of Tragic Drama 87 Theory of A llegory 99 2.

48

65

ART IN THE SERVICE OF POLITICS

114

The Strategist in the Battle of Literature 114 The Politics of Images 127 judaism and Social Criticism: Kraus and Kafka Destruction of the Aura: Photography and Film Em.ancipation fmm the Yoke of A rt 166 v

136 149

vi

C o nte nts

3. THE PRICE OF MODERNITY

180

Childhood and Memory 181 The End of the A rt of Storytelling 187 Lyric Poetry at the Apogee of Capitalism 194 i\1 odern A rt and the Sacrifice of the Aura 20 7 A llegory, Avant-Garde, Modernity 220 Cl!APTER III. HISTORY, POLITICS, ETHICS

The Epistemology of Paris Arcades Theology and Materialism 229 Benjamin's Politics 233 The Historian's Method 238 Ethics and Memory 251

226

226

CONCLUSION

259

NOTES

261

BIBLIOGRAPHY

277

INDEX

285

*

Introduction

I The author of The Origin of German Tragic Drama and A1·cades, of One-Way Street and "The Work of Art in the Age ofMechanical Reproduction," is one of the rare thinkers who matter in France, in Germany, in Italy, and, to a certain extent, in the United States as well; he has escaped the petty squabbling and outlived the dominant currents and fashions that have succeeded one another in Western philosophy for the last fifty years. This durability is grounded in the literarv qualities of his writings, i n his exceptional biography, tragically representative offhe .desfiny.of the Ger­ man-Jewish intelligentsia in the twentieth century, and, finally, in his acute sense of the theoretical issues of the era, whose conternporary character has not yet been belied. Among the authors who did nor live long enough to participate significantly in postwar debates, only Ludwig Wittgenstein has had a comparable destiny and remains, like Benjamin, a contemporary through and through. This book on Walter Benjamin is concerned above all with the conceptual underpinnings ofhis thought. Its ambition is both to u nderstand the internal logic of his thought and to evaluate his contribution to the disciplines he took on: philosophy of language, aesthetics, historiogrgphy. The biogra_phical asp�