Walter Benjamin or: The Commodity as Phantasmagoria

Walter Benjamin or: The Commodity as Phantasmagoria Author(s): Gyorgy Markus Source: New German Critique, No. 83, Special Issue on Walter Benjamin, (Spring - Summer, 2001), pp. 3-42 Published by: New German Critique Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/827788 Accessed: 11/04/2008 17:40 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ngc. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

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WalterBenjamin or The Commodityas Phantasmagoria GyorgyMarkus "The artworkas commodity"-such a title would seem to designatean approachto art that is particularlywell suited to theories within the Marxisttraditionas it is broadlyconceived. In fact, however, it was not until the early 1930s that elaboratecommodityanalyses of art began to appearin this tradition.It was primarilyBrecht and Adomo who tried to show that the commodity'sform not only affects its potentialrecipients and fundamentallyinfluences its content, but also determinesthe fate of art undercapitalism.For these writers,what was importantwere the conditionsof modem capitalismunderwhich works of art appeared as marketablegoods of a specific type. Marx's own views concerningart, however,were deeply embeddedin the humanistaestheticsof GermanIdealism.Marxregardedthe progressive commodificationof all productsof humanactivities as constituting an aspect of capitalist production,which made it "hostile to art and poetry" in general.1 The commodity form of aesthetic productivity proper, however, appearedto be an externally imposed, aggravating, and restrictingconditionthat necessarilyremainsalien to the products' own logic and norms. Actually this conditionis alreadyimplied by the centralnotion of "socially necessarylabortime."In the Marxiananalysis of commodity,"socially necessarylabortime"determinesthe objective value of a commodity. Since it can only be applied to products which are socially reproducible,it has no meaningfor genuineworks of 1.

Marx-Engels,Werke26.1 (Berlin:Dietz) 257.

3

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art as strictly individualand irreplaceableobjects of human creativity (characteristicsMarx accepts as self-evident).The artworkas universal humanvalue can thus have no economicvalue in the propersense, only an irrational,both economicallyand aestheticallyaccidental,price. And this means that the "laws" of capitalistcommodityproductioncannot explain the historicalevolutionof modem art, beyondpositing the general conflictbetweenthese two. In fact, beginning from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts

of 1844, Marx's oeuvre tends to treat artisticproductionas the prototype of unalienatedhumanactivity.2Thus he evokes in the Grundrisse musical compositionas the existing example of "genuinelyfree laboring."3 Then, in the manuscriptof 1865 (the so-called "seventhchapter of the Capital"),he contraststhe paid scribblerto the authenticpoet, who produceshis work "like the silkwormproducessilk, as the active affirmation[Betdtigung]of his own nature."4This is the other reason why genuinely artistic(and scientific) activities can never come to the situationof "realsubsumptionundercapital."As he repeatedlystressed, they can be "formally"subsumedunder capitalistrelations of production only to a limiteddegree.5 In History and Class-Consciousness Georg Lukacs departs from the

Marxiananalysis of commodityas the elementaryand universalform of social wealth undercapitalistconditionsto develop the theory of reification. Lukacs purportsto demonstratethat "in the structureof commodity-relationone can discover the model of all forms of objectivity as well as that of the correspondingto them forms of subjectivity in capitalist society."6 Accordingly, the form of commodity is able "to penetrateand to remold in its own image every life-expressionof this society."7Aside fromthe directexperiencesof the commercializationof arts, especially palpablein the new, mass media, it was the Lukacsian 2. This point has been underlinedin the late writingsof Lukacsand by Emst Fischer, and has been convincingly arguedby R. H. Jauss, "The Idealist Embarrassment: Observationson MarxistAesthetics,"New LiteraryHistory7 (1975-76):esp. 199. 3.

Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Okonomie ([1856-1857] Berlin:

Dietz, 1953) 505. 4.

Marx, Resultate des unmittelbaren Produktionsprozesses ([1865] Frankfurt/

Main:Neue Kritik,1969) 70. 5. Cf. Marx-Engels,Werke26.1: 385-86 andMarx,Resultate70, 73-74ff. 6.

Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics,

trans.RodneyLivingstone(Cambridge:MIT, 1997) 257. 7. Lukacs259.

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theory of reification that constituted the general starting point of attempts to utilize the basic categories of the Marxian commodity-analysis in the realm of aesthetics. Lukacs himself, however, did not take this step. Following Marx, he actually regarded "authentic" art as an exemption from and a countervailing factor to the universal process of reification. Though in History and Class-Consciousness problems of art occupy a rather marginal place, Lukacs's whole conception of praxis as subject-object identity is not only essentially modeled upon artistic activity; he also explicitly treats art as the living example of the possibility of a non-reified relation to reality. It is, for him, "the creation of a concrete totality due to a conception of the form, which is directed at the concrete content of its material substratum."8Lukacs bases his critique of the "aestheticism" of Schiller and the young Schelling not on the denial of the defetishizing power of art, but on the argument that the aesthetic attitude necessarily remains both derivative and contemplative. Aestheticism is merely an ideal relation of the isolated subject to reality; alternatively the aesthetic must be transformed into the constitutive principle of reality itself through a mythologizing, irrationalist ontology.9 Art therefore can only impose a form upon the antinomies of reification. It cannot provide a real, practical solution to them. 10 In his brilliant essay of 1932,11 Adomo draws the fundamental consequences from the Lukacsian theory of reification for the situation of the modem art: commodification is both the basic social precondition of its autonomy and the socioeconomic process which threatens irrevocable liquidation. He develops the aesthetic implications of this contradiction for contemporary production and reception of music. A year earlier and from a radically different orientation, Brecht employed elements of the Marxian analysis of commodity to characterize the contemporary situation of arts. Brecht used his own practical experiences with the filming of the Threepenny Opera and the ensuing legal process over author's rights as a "sociological experiment" to test the accepted ideas about the autonomy of art, spiritual values, and authorial independence through 8. Lukacs 317-18. The explanationof this "defetishizing"capacityof genuine art is based at this time on the (latercertainlyabandoned)idea thatartis primarilyconcerned with "man'sencounterwith nature"(411). 9. Lukacs320-21. 10. Lukacs341. 11. Theodor Adomo, "Zur gesellschaftlichen Lage der Musik," Zeitschriftfur Sozialforschung (1932).

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their confrontationwith the practiceof the productionof the artworkas commodity.12This experimentmademanifestthe purelyillusorycharacter of these ideas. It demonstratedthe "enormouspower"and "reshaping the determinationof the very structureof force of the commodity-form," the work of art by the "viewpointof its selling."13In its early phases, commodificationof art disruptsall directcontactsbetweenthe artistand his/herpublic14and createsthe conditionsfor the emergenceof a secularizedconceptionof autonomousart.Its laterdevelopment,especiallyin mass media, directlyunmasksthis idea as mere ideology. Brechtspecifically underlinesthat this holds true for every genre of literatureand art. "In reality, of course, it is the whole art which without any exception found itself in the new situation, ...

art as a whole becomes commodity

or it does not become it at all."15Due to this process,the traditionalconcept of a "workof art"loses its applicabilityin general. Brecht, however, does not regard this commodificationprocess as totally negative. By destroyingthe aestheticideology of authorialselfexpressionand empathicreceptionin the individualartwork,it at least negativelymakes way for a new conceptionand practiceof art as a collective "pedagogicaldiscipline."16Furthermore,especially within the sphereof commercializedmass culture,technologicaldevelopments(such as the techniqueof montage)have deeply influencedaestheticproduction in the "high genres"(such as the novel or drama)of allegedly autonomous art as well. Underthe economichusk of commodityincubatenew artisticmaterialsand techniques,which can be put to a progressiveuse, if Ein soziologisches Experiment" 12. See BertoltBrecht,"DerDreigroschenprozess. Suhrkamp,1967) 139-209. [1931], SchriftenzurLiteraturundKunst 1 (Frankfurt/Main: 167 and 181-82. 13. Brecht,"Dreigroschenprozess" 14. "Throughthe centuries-longhabituationof dealingwith the writtenworkon the marketof opinions and descriptions,throughthe fact that the concern with the written work has been removedfromthe writer,he receivedthe impressionthathis publisheror customer,the middle-man,will transmitwhat he wrote to everyone . . . '[W]ritingfor someone'becamesimply 'writing'.One,however,cannotsimplywritethe truth;one must write it preciselyfor someone,who can do somethingwith it." See Brecht,"FiinfSchwerigkeiten beim Schreiben der Wahrheit, " Schriften zur Literatur und Kunst 1: 229-30.

15. Brecht,"FiinfSchwerigkeiten"159. 16. Brecht, "FiinfSchwerigkeiten"158. Brecht's advocacy of a non-autonomous, political-educative,"operative"artin fact amountsto the conscious espousalof returning of "art"as useful andteachableskill in general."Itwould to the pre-moder understanding be muchmore useful not to comprehendthe concept'art'in a too narrowway. One could safely drew into the orbit of its definition such arts as the art of operating,lecturing, machine building, and flying." See Brecht, "Notizen iber realistische Schreibweise," Schriften zur Literatur und Kunst 2: 350.

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the re-functioning of the involved social apparatuses- and with them of the practice of art itself- become social reality. "[T]he recasting of spiritual values into commodities (works of art, contracts, legal processes are indeed commodities) is a progressive process and one can only approve it - presupposed that progress is understood as what advances forward, and not as the state of advancement, consequently that also the stage of commodity is regarded as capable of being overcome through furtheradvancement. The capitalist mode of production smashes to pieces the bourgeois ideology." Moreover, Brecht continues, "the technique, which is victorious here and which seems unable to deliver anything else but profit for some reptiles and thereby to promote barbarism,in the right hands will be able to do something completely different."17This commodity analysis of art allows Brecht, in opposition to Lukacs's condemnation of modernist art in general as a phenomenon of decadence characteristic of a class in decline, to selectively affirm definite tendencies of aesthetic modernism and, of course, to make use of them in his own literarypractice.18 17. Brecht,"Notizen,"SchriftenzurLiteraturundKunst 1: 201-04. 18. On this well-knownaspectof the Lukacs-Brechtdebatesee Heinz Briiggemann, Erweiterungder marxistischenLiter"AspekteeinermarxistischenPrtoduktionsasthetik," aturtheoriedurch Bestimmungihrer Grenzen,ed. Heinz Schlaffer (Stuttgart:Metzler, 1974). One point, however,needs to be madeagainstBriiggemann'sratherone-sidedrepresentationof this dispute (in general characteristicof much of the relevant literature). Brecht'sspiritedandadmirabledefenseof the "standpointof production,"of artisticinnovation with its never avoidablerisk of failure,is the demandof a privilege for the exceptional "producer"needing appropriateconditionsof work - a privilege deservedby, and based upon, the trustin his unconditionalcommitment.What concernsthe rights of the individualin general,Brecht'sdenial of them in the coming, new social orderis radical. "We approachthe epoch of mass-politics.Whatsoundscomical in the case of the individual ('I do not give myself the freedomof thought'),does not sound so in the case of the masses. The masses do not thinkindividuallyfree... The massesof ourepoch,directedby common interests,constantlyreorganisingthemselvesin accordwith them and nevertheless functioningin unison, these masses are moved by quite determinedlaws of thought which are not generalisationsof individualthinking.. . The kind of freedom,which the laws of competitionforce uponthe capitalists,will not be preservedby thoughtin the next stage of developmentbeyondcapitalism.But an otherkindof freedom"(Brecht,Schriften zur Literaturund Kunst 1: 178-79). One must, however, also add that similarideas and sentimentscan be foundat this time in the writingsof the majorityof leftist intellectuals, not only with Lukacsof the 1920s, but in the much lateressays of Benjaminas well. "In orderto endowthe collectivitywith humanefeatures,the individualmustbe able to endure inhumaneones. Humannessmustbe sacrificedat the level of individualexistence,in order to make an appearanceat the level of collective existence." Benjamin, Gesammelte conSuhrkamp,1972) 1102.An illiberalanti-individualism Schriften2.3 (Frankfurt/Main: stituteda premise,which in a subterraneous way was often sharedby the representativesof the rightandthe left - a pointwhich perhapscan offer some lessons for the present,too.

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The later writings of WalterBenjaminseem to echo and supplement the views of Brechtdiscussedabove. This is particularlytrue in the two essays thatmade him a cult-figuresof the left in the 1960s:"TheAuthor as Producer"and "TheWorkof Art in the Age of Its MechanicalReproduction." Even today their main ideas largely determine the general image of Benjaminas theorist:first, the inevitable demise of autonomous, "auratic"art due to the developmentof technologies of mass reproductionqualitativelyalteringthe natureof a work of art. Secondly, into a laboratoryof there is the "politicizationof art,"its transformation instructionand organizationinseparablefroman innovatoryartistictechnique as the requisiteradicalanswerto the dissolutionof aestheticaura. Lastly, Benjaminaffirmedthe critical, emancipatorypotential of mass culture,particularlyfilm. This potentialwas conferredby the progressive technology and techniquesof production.Benjamin,reconstructed along these lines, is often regardedas trying "to outbid Brecht in radicalism."19In comparisonto Brecht, Benjamin'sviews are supposedto lead to a "fetishizationof technology"20as an autonomouslydeveloping, in itself progressive,force. This is certainlya strangechargeagainst a thinkerwho saw in the idolatryof technologyand in the faith in an irresistibleprogressspurredon by the growingmasteryover naturethe "technocraticfeatures later encounteredin fascism."21But it is no of the post-auratic,emanstrangerthanBenjamin'sown characterization it with a particular"utilizcipatory transformationof art endowing abilty" [Verwertbarkeit], with a "revolutionary use-value" [Gebrauchswert]22 - given the fact that he simultaneously thought of the

emancipatedworld as one in which "the liberationof things from the compulsionto be useful"23becomes reality, since labor will then proceed accordingto "the model of children'splay," being directednot at the productionof values,butat makingan "improvednature."24 Such criticismsare thereforenot baseless.It is easy to indicatea whole series of formulationsin the writingsof Benjaminthatmake them perti19.

Rolf Tiedemann, Studien zur Philosophie Walter Benjamins (Frankfurt/Main:

Suhrkamp,1973) 112. 20. John Frow,Marxismand LiteraryHistory(Oxford:Blackwell, 1986) 108. For an elaborateevaluationalongthese lines see Briiggemann. 21. Benjamin,"Uberden Begriffder Geschichte,"GS 1.2: 699. 22. Benjamin,"DerAutorals Produzent,"GS2.2: 693 and695. 23. 24.

Benjamin, Passagen-Werk, GS 5.1: 277. Benjamin, Passagen- Werk 456.

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nent.25 These formulations, however, constitute only one of the extreme poles26 of that "no-man's land" that Benjamin determinedly conquered for himself and the isolation he so hated and half-heartedly attempted again and again to overcome. The boundaries of this "no-man's land"27 were drawn by his relations to the three references of his intellectual life: Brecht, Adomo, and Gershom Sholem. His (very one-sided) solidarity with Brecht cannot and should not conceal the fact that their endeavors and ends were, even in the essays mentioned, fundamentally different. For Brecht the autonomy of art is and always has been an ideological illusion hiding only its subservience to the interests of capital. Socioeconomic changes, directly involving the position of the intellectual in 25. The designationof technicalrevolutionsas those loci of rupturein the development of arts which predate,and direct,the changes both in the form and contentof artworks. Cf. "Erwiderungan Oscar Schmitz,"GS 2.2: 752-53; technical progress as the foundationof the author'spoliticalprogress.Cf. "DerAutorals Produzent"693. The posfromobservationsconsibility of predictingthe developmentaltrendsof "superstructure" cerning the changes in the conditions of culturalproduction,primarilyin the ways of reproductionof worksof culture,andon the analogywith the Marxianprognosesin regard of the futureevolutionof the economicbase of capitalism.See "Das Kunstwerkim Zeitalter seiner technischenReproduzierbarkeit (Zweite Fassung),"GS 1.2: 473ff. Hereafter in the notes. referredto as "Kunstwerk" 26. "To act always, in all the most importantmatters,radically,neverconsistently"; "to decide not once for all, but in each moment-butto decide."Benjamin,"Letterto Gershom Scholem (29.5.1926)," Briefe 1, eds. Scholem and Adorno (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp,1978) 425. All three of his critic-friendsare, in their sharplyopposed objections and advises, right againsthim: his writings ambiguouslyjuxtapose, often without theoreticalmediationandresolution,contradictoryimpulses.They are also fundamentally wrong: they miss the theoreticalproject and conception, which underlie this practical standof welcoming seemingly irreconcilableextremes.At the most immediatelevel this standcorrespondsto Benjamin'sconvictionthatthe meaningof a concept/conceptionis to be foundnot in what all the subsumablephenomenaidenticallyshare, but in the extremes it is able to encompass.And if the fundamentalundecidedambiguityof Benjamin'soeuvre is located in a problematicadmixtureof Messianismand Marxism,then this also should be seen on the backgroundof his life-long striving:throughits radicalprofanization both to overcomeand to "save"the mythical.For an interpretationalong these lines see WalterMenninghaus,Schwellenkunde.WalterBenjaminsPassage des Mythos(Frankfurt/Main:Suhrkamp,1986). 27. I borrowedthis expressionfromIrvingWohlfahrt,"No-Man's-Land: On Walter Diacritics8.2 (1978).The antagonisticimpulsesgovBenjamin's'DestructiveCharacter'," erningBenjamin'soeuvreandthe fragileunityof an underlyingprojectwere firstoutlined in the path-breakingessay by Habermasthat actually initiated,after the various earlier of Benjamin,a deeperreceptionandunderstandattemptsat the one-sided"appropriation" oderrettendeKritik,"ZurAktuing of his work.See JtirgenHabermas,"Bewusstmachende alitdt WalterBenjamin,ed. SiegfriedUnseld (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp,1972). On the boundariesandlimits of Benjamin's"no-man'sland,"see also the enlighteningpaperof S. Radn6ti,"Benjamin'sDialecticof Art andSociety,"PhilosophicalForum 15.1-2 (1983).

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the cultural apparatuses, belie its lie. Literary and sociological "experiments" should directly demonstrate these facts to create a critical-political consciousness that lays bare all phrases of creative freedom and eternal cultural values. The only freedom offered in this society is the freedom of expropriation of surplus value. For Benjamin, on the other hand, the aura, which expresses and substantiates the autonomous existence of the artwork in the period of classical capitalism, is not a consciously created, misleading ideological facade. It is the historically-socially imposed relation of the recipient to the work of art. It is an objective feature of the "collective experience" of art which in this period guides the production of its works, the way they are structured. The collective experience of art equally determines the typical comprehension of works of the more remote past, created under different conditions of production and reception.28 It defines not what a work means, but the manner in which it can mean something for the contemporary public, because the meaning of a work is not some fixed quality inhering in it, but is inseparable from the (historically changing) ways of its reception, and, more generally, from its pre- and post-history.29 The dissolution of aura, associated with the new technical possibilities of mass reproduction, is seen in the context (and as a symptom) of profound changes in the collective apperception of reality in general,30 themselves expressing altered ways of life and new modes of habituation to the world. And the illumination of these connections aims at the awakening of consciousness from the dream-like compulsion of its "natural"way of perceiving the world and endowing it with meaning, a way which is only the unintentional expression of a petrified and reified form of life. It aims to enable consciousness to decipher its images and in this way to set free that "weak Messianistic power" 28. "A medievalimage of the Madonnawas indeednot yet 'authentic'[echt] at the time of its making;it became 'authentic'in the course of the succeeding centuriesand most strikinglyso duringthe last one"(Benjamin,"Kunstwerk" 476). 29. "Forsomeone who is concernedwith the works [of art]from the standpointof historicaldialectic,they integrateboththeirpre- andtheirpost-history- a post-historydue to which also theirpre-historybecomescomprehensibleas being drawninto a continuous change.The works teach this personhow theirfunctioncan outlive theircreator,leaving is a partof the effectwhich behindhis intentions;how theirreceptionby his contemporaries the work of arthas uponus today;andhow this effect restsnot solely upon the encounter with the workin question,but also uponthathistorywhich allowedit to come down to our own age."See Benjamin,"EduardFuchs,derSammlerundderHistoriker,"GS2.2: 467. 30. Cf. Benjamin,"Kunstwerk" (ZweiteFassung)503.

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the utopianpotentialwhich is dormanteven in the most depravedforms of experiencingas collectiveunconsciousmeaning-creating activity. Seen in this broaderand, to my mind, more appropriatecontext, the "Artwork"essay appearsdirectlyrelatedto the task that stood at the centre of Benjamin'sphilosophicalinterestssince the beginningof his literary activity:the creationof a new conceptionand theoryof experience.31 Throughall the changesin the comprehensionandrealizationof this task, some fundamentalcontinuitiesremainedin his approach.On the one hand, it always entaileda programof regaining"the fullness of the conagainstits narrowKancept of experienceof the earlierphilosophers"32 tian understanding,based upon the subject-object paradigm and tendentiallyreducingit to scientificobservation,that is, to "theminimum of meaning."33Furthermore, Benjaminconceivedthis reductiveconception of experienceas a "singularlytemporal"and "temporallyrestricted" one.34 That is, Benjamininsistedupon the radicalhistoricityof experience, includingthe organizationof sense-perceptionitself.35"Duringlong stretchesof historicaltime, with alterationsin the entiremode of existence of humancollectivity,changestake place also in the mode of senseperception.The way and mannerof the organizationof humansense-perception- the mediumin which it unfolds- is not only naturally,but also socially conditioned."36Benjaminfound the key to and model of this changingorganizationand mode of experiencingultimatelyin language. "Everyexpressionof humanspirituallife can be conceived as a kind of language,and this conceptionimplies, in the mannerof a true method, 31. Cf. Benjamin,"Erfahrung"(1913) and "Uberdas Programmder kommenden Philosophie"(1918), GS2.1: 54-56 and 157-71. 32. Benjamin,"Uberdie Wahrnehmung" (1917), GS6: 35. 33. Benjamin,"Uberdas Programm"159. Benjaminhere defines his own task as providing"underthe typics of Kantianthoughtthe epistemologicalfoundingof a higher conceptof experience"which would render"notonly mechanicalbut also religiousexperience logically possible"(160 and 164). 34. Benjamin,"Uberdas Programm"158. 35. It is at this point thatBenjamin,originallymotivatedprimarilyby metaphysicalreligious considerations,finds an unexpectedcoincidence between his own views and those of Lukacs concerninghistory as the sequence of alterationsin the principles of object-constitutionand the correspondingto them forms of subject-relation.In History and Class Consciousness,writes Benjaminin a letter to Scholem, much predatingany generaltheoreticalintereston his side in Marxism,"Lukacscomes, on the groundof political considerations,to such propositionsin epistemologywhich are- at least partiallyand perhapsnot in such a far-reachingway as I originallysupposed- eitherwell familiarto me or confirmmy views." 16 Sept.1924,Briefe 1: 355. 36. Benjamin,"Kunstwerk" (ZweiteFassung)478.

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new ways of posing the questions everywhere."37 Experience rests upon a mimetic capacity: the ability to produce and apprehend similarities. Human experience is organized around "non-sensuous" similarities and correspondences, the apprehension of which is made possible by language alone.38 Language, however, is not to be identified with a system of signifiers arbitrarilyrelated - as means of communication - to some signified, externally associated content. This represents only one aspect of language. One can communicate what is meant through language, because the way it is meant is directly and unintentionally expressed, physiognomically revealed in language as the medium of communication.39 Similarly, to understand the intentions of an interlocutor it is not sufficient to comprehend to what his or her words and sentences refer. It is also necessary to grasp the pragmatic force of the utterances, which may be directly expressed solely in countenance, tone of the voice, or the manner of speaking. And great historical changes concern primarily not what is experienced and meant, but the way they are experienced and meant: the ways the world is perceived and the modalities of meaning socially accepted as appropriatefor its characterization. But what is directly ("magically") revealed in language cannot be formulated and stated through it. For the contemporaries their way of experiencing meaning is "natural" and takes on the appearance of an ahistorical "ever-same." And although the ruinous remnants of other pasts, not least in their works of art, are at our disposal, their truth is deposited first of all in those insignificant details which jar our habitual sensitivity.40 They are usually assimilated to our own way of perception 37. Benjamin, "Uber Sprache tiberhauptund iber die Sprache des Menschen" (1916), GS 2.1: 140. Hereafterreferredto in the notes as "UberSprache." 38. Cf. Tiedemann,Dialektikim Stillstand(Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp,1983) 18. ConcerningBenjamin's conception of language, see Menninghaus,WalterBenjamins Theorieder Sprachmagie(Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp,1980). 39. Cf. Benjamin,"UberSprache"141-43;Die Aufgabedes Ubersetzers(1921), GS 4.1: 14-15;Benjamin,"Lehrevom Ahnlichen"(1933), GS2.1: 208-09ff. 40. "The 'insignificant'... is the inconspicuous,or even the shocking(the two are not in contradiction)which survives the times in the genuine works and constitutesthe point, in which the contentbreaksthroughfor the trueinvestigator"(Benjamin,"Strenge Kunstwissenschaft(ErsteFassung),"GS 3: 366). And:"Theappreciationor apology seeks to cover up the revolutionarymomentsin the courseof history.It has the establishmentof continuityat heart.It pays attentiononly to those elementsof the workwhich alreadyhave been incorporatedinto its after-effect.It misses those points at which the transmission breaksdown, thus it misses what is ruggedandjagged in it, what offers a footholdto the personwho intendsto get beyondapology."(Benjamin,Passagen-Werk,GS 5.1: 592).

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and receptivity.To free the historicalenergies of the present,its promise of a radicallyotherfuturehiddenunderthe spell of the "ever-same," one needs to "resurrect"the past - not any past, but that which, as its "origin,"41discloses an affinity with our way of creating and apprehendingmeaning.In this way, what is the most naturalto us appearsin an unfamiliar garb as strange, and what is alien discloses itself as equally "natural."This laborof recollectiondemands,however, not the descriptionand explanationof the past, of what has been, the continuous sequence of dead facts in their totality causally conditioningthe present,but the "blastingout"of a past from the continuumof homogeneous time. Out of its fragmentaryremnantsis constructeda "dialectical image"which makes it able to be literallyre-experiencedand brings it to sensuouspresence[Anschaulichkeit] again.42 "I have nothingto say. Only to show. I will not steal anythingvaluable, nor appropriatesome ingenious formulations.But the trivia, the debris;not to draw up their inventory,but to allow them to come into their own in the only way possible:by using them."43Benjaminhad an idiosyncraticmethod of "literarymontage,"of the archaeologyof the debris.This seeminglyviolentjuxtapositionof fragmentstor from their contexts containedisolated poetic images and literarymodes of expression (of Baudelaire,Hugo, Blanqui, Nietzsche, and so forth) together with objects and facts of past social history(arcades,panoramas,department stores, middle-classinterieurs,and so on). Both share some typical ways of conduct and experience(of the flaneur, the collector, the gambler,the prostitute,etc.). All this is not, as Adoro suggested,44a nor is it a "poetizamisguidedattemptto makephilosophy"surrealistic," tion of causal analysis,"a developmentof an aestheticizedMarxismin symbolist form.45It is connectedwith the fundamentaltheoreticalpremises and the ultimatepracticalends of his thought:to endow the past with "a higher degree of actualitythan it could have possessed in the moment of its existence," for it is the ability to dialecticallypenetrate 41. On Benjamin's concept of "origin"see Tiedemann,Studienzur Philosophie WalterBenjamins76-84 and Kurz,"Benjamin:Kritischgelesen,"PhilosophischeRundschau 23.3-4 (1976): 179-80. 42. Cf. firstof all Benjamin,"Uberden Begriffder Geschichte,"GS 1.2: 693ff. 43. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 574. The first formulationof this thought had a differentending in Benjamin'smanuscript:"I will not describe,but exhibit them" (Passagen-Werk,GS 5.2: 1030). 44. Cf. Adomo, Uber WalterBenjamin(Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp,1970) 26. 45. EugeneLunn,MarxismandModernity(Berkeley:U of CaliforniaP, 1982) 220.

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and to bring to sensuous presence [Vergegenwdrtigung] its past which constitutes"thetest of truthof contemporary action."46 Benjamin's theoretical turn to Marxism, which significantly postdatedhis practicalsolidaritywith communistpolitics, was motivatedby the recognitionthat the historicallychangingways of collective experience and meaning-creationare inseparablefrom changes in the economic life-activities, manifestedin the material-practicallivelihood of humancommunities.To exhibit not only the "formalsignatureof a historicaltype of perception,"but also "to show the social transformations which found their expressionin these changes of perception"47became his self-chosen task. In the underlying continuity of his theoretical projectit meant for him an attempt"to combinethe accomplishmentof Marxist method with heightened sensuous emergence of presence [Anschaulichkeit]."48 Benjaminwas well aware of the eccentricity of this position within the Marxisttradition,of its deviationnot only from simplistic economic determinism,but from ideology-critiqueas well. "Marx describes the causal connectionbetween economy and culture. Whatmattershere is the relationof expression.Not the economic genesis of culture,but the expressionof the economy in culture-thismust be described.In other words, what is attemptedhere is the comprehension of the economic process as a sensuouslypresentableprimal phenomenon [anschauliches Urphdnomenon] from which proceed all the mani-

Otherwise: festations... of the nineteenthcentury."49 The questionis the following: if the substructureto a certainextent in respectof the materialof thoughtand determinesthe superstructure experience,but this determinationis not that of the simple reflection [Abspiegeln],how is it then-quiteindependentlyof the questionabout As its expression.The superits originatingcause-tobe characterized? The economicconditions, structureis the expressionof the substructure. in which society exists, find theirexpressionin the superstructure; just as in sleepingthe full stomach,thoughit may causally'condition"the contentof dreams,finds in them not its reflection,but its expression. The collectivityexpressesfirst of all its conditionsof life. They find in awakening.50 theirexpressionin the dream,andtheirinterpretation 46. Benjamin,Passagen-Werk,GS 5.2: 1026-27. 47. Benjamin,"Kunstwerk" (ZweiteFassung)478-79; cf. also his critiqueof Wolfflin in "EduardFuchs,"GS 2.2: 480. 48. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 575. 49. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 573-74. 50. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 495-96.

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The cursoryand inadequateoutline of Benjamin'sviews is necessaryto understandthe way he applies "commodityanalysis"(of a sort) to the interpretationof culturalphenomena.It was, as he repeatedlyunderlined, the concept of the commodity that should have constitutedthe theoreticalfulcrumof both the great interconnectedand equally unfinished projects of his late intellectualcareer aimed at the disclosure of the origin of moderity: the Arcades-Workand the book on Baudelaire.51In spite of the fact that these projects remainedin torso, the main characteristicsof Benjamin'sapproachcan be reconstructed. Its most characteristicfeature is undoubtedlya negative one: Benjamin's relativelack of attentionto commodityas a specific type of the organizationand integrationof processes of productionand exchange which increasinglydraws into its orbitmany branchesof culturalactivity and impactsall of them. He does make a numberof acute observations relatedto this topic. He points, for example,to changes in literary genres and styles which follow upon the fact that the rivalry among poets now takes the form of competitionon an open market.52He surveys the process of emancipationof forms of reproductionfrom art throughtheir commodification,and its multifariousimpact both upon artistic developmentand upon the expansion of goods for sale.53 But clearly it is not through,nor due to, such observationsthatthe conceptof commodityacquiresin his lateprojectsa centraltheoreticalsignificance. It is, as Benjamin's own statements also underline, the Marxian the-

ory of commodityfetishism which is consistentlyinvokedby him as the conceptualcentre of his own endeavors- although,one must add, in a rather specific understanding:as a theory about the depraved-reified form of collective experienceunder conditionsof modernitydetermining also the alternativepossibilities of contemporaryart. "Capitalism 51. In a letterto Scholem(20 May 1935) abouttheArcades-Project,Benjaminindicates thatits centerwill be constitutedby the overarchingconceptof the fetishcharacterof commodity.(See Benjamin,Briefe 2: 654). The same point is made in a letter (20 Mar. 1939) to GretelAdomo (GS 5.2: 1172). Similarly,the concluding,thirdpartof the Baudelaire-book,which should have presentedits "philosophicalfoundation,"was intendedto make manifest "the commodityas the fulfilmentof the allegoricalviewpoint of Baudelaire"(Benjamin,"Letterto Horkheimer"[16 Apr. 1938] and "Letterto Adomo" [9 Dec. 1938], Briefe 2: 752 and 791-93). Lastly,he designatesthe fetish characterof commodity as the ultimate "point of convergence"of these two projects (Benjamin, "Letter to Horkheimer,"GS 5.2: 1166). 52. Cf. esp. Benjamin,GS 5.1: 422-24. 53. Cf. Benjamin,GS 5.1: 48, 59, 824-46 and especially his remarkableessays on the historyof photography(GS 2.1: 368-85 and GS 3: 495-507).

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was a naturalphenomenonwith which a new, dream-ladensleep came over Europe, and with it the reactivatingof mythical forces."54Benjamin's "physiognomicmaterialism,"reveals not only the "origin"of modernity;it simultaneouslyintends also to defamiliarizethis way of apprehendingrealityas a "phantasmagoria" by invokingits early-transimanifestations that are now tory presentonly in ruins, whose strangeness strikes us. At the same time it aims, precisely through such distancing,to bring our own way of perceivingthe world to reflexive, but sensuous,presence, to make the veil, which our collective dreamimages impose upon it, directlyopen to the waking gaze. This veil not only conceals reality, but its very distortionsalso vaguely outline the possibilities of another,desired futureas well. "One can say there are two directionsin this book: one which goes fromthe past to the present, and representsthe arcadesetc. as precursors,and the other,which goes from the present to the past, in orderto let the revolutionarycompletion of these 'precursors'explodein the present.. ."55 The very essence of commodity production envelops everything encompassedby it with kaleidoscopicallychangingcompulsive images [Zwangsvorstellungen]: things as commoditiesacquirethe characterof wish-symbols.A productof laboris a commodityif it's actualutility, its use-value, constitutesonly the externalshell of its generic essence: universal exchangeability,exchange value. To live in a world which appearsas the enormouscollection of (real or potential)commodities means to endow objectswith significationsthat have nothingto do with their useful properties.Such a world confers meanings that, while no longer transcendentbut inner-worldlyand in fact fabricated(through display, fashion, and advertisement),again become reified. Commodities actuallyrepresstheir own making,their origin in humanlabor and construction.This endows the things of everydaywith an illusory glitter, an aureole: a weak remnantof the sacred.The world of commodity is not so much that of an impoverishedrationality,but rathera world of re-enchantmentwhich overlays everythingwith a spell promisingprofane enjoyment,but what it offers for enjoymentis the alienationof the individualfrom his/her own productand from other individuals,a contemplative empathy with the aesthetic luster of exchange value. This lure of novelty is primarilyresponsiblefor the continuousmaintenance 54. 55.

Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 494. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.2: 1032.

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of this phantasmagoricattraction.56"Newness is a quality not dependent upon the use-value of commodity.It is the source of the illusion that belongs inalienablyto the image producedby the collective unconscious. It is the quintessenceof false consciousness,of which fashion is the tireless agent."57It is the exterality and arbitrarinessof the imposed, sensuouslyevoked meaningsthat allow their incessantchange. This flux of significations ultimately mobilizes archaic, unconscious wish-images that reveal their hidden essence in the "ever-same":the foundationof the world of commodityin the sheer meaninglessnessof its ultimatesource,abstractlabor,work reducedto simple physicaleffort devoid of qualitativedifferencesand independentof all ends. "Thepoint consists not in the fact that 'again and again the same' happens,and, of course,even less is here the eternalreturnmeant.The point is ratherthat the physiognomyof the world precisely in what is the newest does not change at all, thatthis newest in all its partsremainsalways the same. This constitutesthe eternityof hell."58And: "Thething first exercises its effect in alienatingpeople from one anotheras commodity.It exercises it throughits price. The empathyinto the exchange value of the commodity, into its identicalsubstratum- this constitutesthe decisive point. (The absolute qualitativeidentity of time taken by the labor that produces exchange value - this is the gray backgroundagainst which the gaudycolors of sensationstandout in relief.)"59 The antinomyof novelty and the ever-same,which in its most elementary form manifests itself in the conjunctionof incessantly changing 56. "[T]henew creationsandformsof life whichwereprimarilyconditionedby comIt shouldbe demonstrated that modityproduction... enterthe universeof a phantasmagoria. it is not first in theoreticalelaboration,in ideological transpositionthat these creations become 'glorified'[verklirt],but alreadyin theirimmediatepresence,in a sensuousway. (Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.2: 1256). They manifestthemselvesas phantasmagories" "These images are images of wish and in them the collectivitystrives simultaneouslyto overcomeandto glorifyboththe immaturityof socialproductandthe lack of a social order of production"(Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 46-47). "Theworldexhibitionsglorify the exchangevalue of commodities.They createa frameworkwithinwhich theiruse-value into whichpeople enterto let recedesinto the background.They open up a phantasmagoria themselvesto be distracted.The entertainment industrymakesit easierforthem,since it lifts themto the level of commodity.Theyyield to its manipulations by enjoyingtheiralienation fromthemselvesand fromthe others"(Benjamin,Passagen-Werk,GS 5.1: 50-51). "Actually, one can hardlyconceivethe 'consumption'of the exchangevalue as anythingelse but empathywith it"(Benjamin,"Letterto Adomo"[9 Dec. 1938],Briefe2: 799). 57. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS5.1: 55. 58. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.2: 676. 59. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 488.

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fashion and mass production, constitutes the essence of the experience of the fetishistic world of moderity.60 "The aspect of primal history in the past - and this is both consequence and precondition of technology - is no longer, as it once was, disguised by the tradition of the church and family. The old prehistoric shudder surrounds already the environing world of our parents, since we no longer are bound to it by tradition. The technical sign-worlds [Merkwelten] are dissolved more rapidly, the mythic in them comes to light more rapidly and crassly, a completely different sign-world must be set up and opposed to them more rapidly."61 The practical relation of the individual to his surroundingsis less and less characterized by competence based on the habitual handling of, and caring for, the stable objects of a familiar milieu at which he is at home - his relation to the "technical sign-world" is increasingly dominated by taste.62 The very structureof contemporary experience acquires aestheticized features. Benjamin designates it with one of the favorite terms of aesthetic moderism: Erlebnis. In view of the fact that the objects of this world have lost their constant meaning fixed by tradition, "authentic" experience become privatized, transformed into an incommunicable inward event. With the disintegration of the traditional organization of experience, of the social cadres of memory, it acquires a shock-like instantaneity.63 This instant, however, due to the direct coincidence of 60. "The dialectic of commodityproductionin high capitalism:the novelty of the product acquires-asstimulatorof demand-significanceunknowntill now. At the same time the 'ever-again-the-same'appearsin an obvious mannerin mass production"(Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 417). " ... [T]heantinomybetweenthe new andthe eversame ... producesthe illusionwith which the fetish characterof commodityoverlaysthe genuinecategoriesof history"(Letterto Horkheimer[3 Aug. 1938], GS 5.2: 1166). 61. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 576. 62. "Theconsumer... is usuallynot knowledgeablewhen he appearsas a buyer," while "theimportanceof his taste increases- both for him and for the manufacturer.For the consumerit has the value of a moreor less elaboratemaskingof his lack of expertness. is a fresh stimulusto consumption"(Benjamin,"MethodenIts value to the manufacturer fragment,"GS 1.3: 1167-68)."Habitsconstitutethe armatureof collectively sharedexperiencethey aredisintegratedby the subjectiveexperienceof the moment"(GS 5.1: 430). 63. In fact, Erfahrung,experienceorganizedand articulatedthroughcollectively shared,traditionallyfixed meanings bifurcatesunder the conditionsof modernity:into Erlebnis, ineffablyprivatized,subjectivelyempathicexperience,and information,which is unrestrictedlycommunicableand verifiable,but remainscompletelyunrelatedto, and unintegrableinto, personallife. In this way the dualisticstructureof moder culture,its antinomisticdivision into the arts and the sciences directly expresses the structureof everydayexperience.Cf. firstof all Benjamin,"DerErzahler,"GS 2.2: 438-65; and Benjamin, "Ubereinige Motivebei Baudelaire,"GS 1.2:607-55.

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present,consciousimpressionswith past, subconsciousdesiresis invested with an empathiccoloring.(Here Benjamin'stheory of the shock again clearly parallels the Nietzschean and post-Nietzscheantheories of the of aestheticperception.) explosiveinstantaneity[Plotzlichkeit] It is, of course,rich in ironythatBenjaminfinds the centralcategories of German aesthetics (beautiful illusion, taste, Erlebnis, Plotzlichkeit) directly realized in the depravedworld, the "hell"of commodities.But this is also what is meantby the programof disclosing "the expression of the economy in culture,"economyunderstoodnot as a complex,manifold, and mediated objective form of social-institutionalorganization, but as a "sensuouslypresentableprimal phenomenon":the way their world is lived by the historicallysituatedindividualsin, and through, their material-practicalactivities. For culture, the very conception of which is of recentorigin,connectedwith the triumphof commodityproduction,64is precisely what replaces genuine, effective, communitybuilding traditionin the world of modernity.Or to put it differently: "culture"is a historicallyspecific way of integratingpast and present works of art, science, and so forth into a traditionwhich by its very characterrobs them of genuineeffectivity:of the ability to guide colleceffect."65For as "culturalobjects," tive action,to have a "transformative such works are nothingbut the "sedimentationof memorablethings and events thatneverbrokethe surfaceof humanconsciousnessbecausethey never were truly, that is politically,experienced."66 Benjamin'scritique is primarilydirectednot againstthe ideological identificationof culture with the "sum of privileges"of the rulers,nor against its actual dependence upon the "monopolyof cultivation"of a minority,67though, of course, he is well awareof both these facts. It is directedagainstculture as such, understoodas the particularmannerproductsof "mental"labor 64. Cf. Benjamin,GS 5.1: 584; and GS 5.2: 1256. At times Benjaminstates this point in a sharper,more shocking(andrathermore questionable)way: "Theformationof the concept of cultureseems to belong to an early stage of Fascism"(Benjamin,"Pariser Brief I" [1936], GS3: 485). 65. Benjamin,"PariserBrief' 489. 66. Benjamin,"EduardFuchs"477. Cf. also: "To the notion of 'saving'... From whatwill the phenomenabe saved?Not only, andnot so muchfromthe disreputeandcontemptinto which they have fallen,butratherfromthe catastrophicway they arevery often presentedin a certainmannerof theirtransmission,in their 'appreciationas heritage'. . . Thereis a transmissionwhich is the catastrophe" (Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 591.) 67. "Itwould be absurdto conceive the formsof existence of a classless society on an analogywith the image of a humanityof culture[Kulturmenschheit]" (Benjamin,Passagen-Werk583).

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acquire nowadays social acknowledgmentand significance, an objectively imposed relationto these works which conditionsboth their creation and theirreceptiveunderstanding, andwhich the conceptof culture makes For the only explicit.68 Benjamin, centralityof the concept of for the culture of commodity analyzing modernitydoes not mean just the commodification of "spiritualvalues." It rather concentratingupon concernsthe transformationof productsof artistic,intellectualetc labor into spiritualvalues, the "spiritualization" of exchangevalue. Cultureis the phantasmagoria,as it were, of a second order in which "the bourgeoisie enjoys its own false consciousness."69 Culture is a reified-reifyingrelation to, and conception of, those humanaccomplishmentsthat fall into its sphere:it transformsthem into availableobjects, into valuable"goods"that (at least ideally) constitute the possession of the whole humankind.70Their claim to universality follows frombeing posited not as everyday,materialgoods, but as spiritual values; culturemeans to conceive them as "ideal objects":unique, self-enclosed, independent,seamlessly coherent totalities of meaning. Like the reified-fetishisticexperiencesof everydaylife, culturalexperience also acquires its fetishistic characterbecause it conceals and/or mystifies the way these meaningsare made and can be re-made."As a sum-totalof all those formations[Gebilde]which are consideredindependent,if not from the process of productionin which they originate, then from that process in which they endure,the conceptof culturecarries a fetishistic trait. It appearsin a reified form."71When Benjamin underlinesthat every documentof cultureis at the same time a document of barbarism,since it suppresseswhat its existence owes to the drudgeryof the anonymousmany,72he means not only the soulless, physical labor of those who - excluded from culture - produce the 68. In this respectit is characteristicthat in his review of the work of the Frankfurt School (Ein deutschesInstitutfreierForschung [1938]), referringto Marcuse'sfamous paperabout"affirmativeculture,"Benjaminemphasizesonly the negative aspect of this concept (Benjamin,GS 3: 525-26). His pronouncedlydistancedattitudeto the acknowledged "masterpieces"of culturalhistoryalso belongsto this context:as thoroughlyassimilated to, and foundationalto the constitutionof, "culture,"these works cannotbe in the presentmade into the objectof genuine,effective experience.Beyondthat,it is, of course, also truethatin general"permanenceandobsolescencemean... little to him: for he does not understandthis historyas a legitimatecriticalauthority."See Radn6ti163. 69. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 55. 70. Cf. Benjamin,GS 2.2: 477; GS3: 525; GS5.1: 584 etc. 71. Benjamin,"EduardFuchs"477. 72. Benjamin,"Uberden Begriff"696.

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materialconditionswhich make the "creativeeffort of great geniuses" possible, but also the equally anonymouslabor of the recipients and transmittersof "culturalgoods"who keep theirmeaningnot simply preserved, but open and capableof actualization.In the conceptionof culture, "the awarenessis lost that these goods owe to a continuoussocial labor not only their origin, but also their transmissionin which, moreover, they are furtherworked upon, that is, become changed."73The emphasis upon the exceptional"creativity"of artisticproductionas an irrationalprocess fundamentallyopposed to all kinds of "fabrication" pertainsto the notion of "culture."This emphasis actually fulfills the functionof fixing the recipientin a purelypassive attitude,makinghim/ her the ideal consumerof spiritual"goods."74 The transformationof works of art into "culturalvalues" therefore implies a correspondenceunder conditions of modernitybetween the fundamentalstructuralfeaturesof the everydayexperienceof the commodity-worldand the sui generis aestheticexperience.This parallelism is also institutionallyorganizedand imposed. The practiceof art criticism, and more generally the press, creates a genuine market of cultural goods in which they compete with each other.75 Industrial exhibitions and departmentstores representthe "secret schema of construction"of the museum.76In general what is meant today by aesthetic attitude and experience representsthe "spiritualization"of the experienceof commodity.First of all, the integrationof the work of art into the context of traditionas a unique "culturaltreasure,"imposing upon its public the attitudeof an empathicand contemplativesurrender, 73. Benjamin,Passagen-Werk,GS 5.2: 1255. One of Benjamin'smain objections againstthe usualpracticeof ideology critiquefollows fromthis standpointof the creativity of receptionandhistoricalopennessof meaning.Ideologycritique,exclusively emphasizing the connectionbetweenthe aestheticsignificationof a workandthe social structureof its time of origin, makes the structurerelevantto the decipheringof its meaning fixed, given once for all. "Intruthits aspectshouldchangewith the differentepochswhich direct theirglance backupon the work"(Benjamin,"PariserBrief II"[1936], GS 2.2: 500). 74. Cf. Benjamin,"PariserBrief I"493. 75. Cf. Benjamin,Passagen-Werk,GS 5.1: 56, 422-423. 76. Cf. Benjamin,Passagen-Werk239 and 522; but see also the characterizationof museums as violently intensified int6rieurs.It should, however, be strongly underlined that these parallelismsdo not involve with Benjamin the suppositionof some causal dependenceof the formsof culturalorganizationupon those of economic ones, or a temporalantecedenceof these later.In fact the actualhistoricalrelationbetweenthe two may well be the inversed:"Thecontemplativeattitudewhich is educatedon the work of art,is slowly transformedinto a more covetous one in respect of the stock of commodities" (Benjamin,Passagen-Werk,GS5.1: 521).

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the literally meant "reception"of its pre-existent,unchangeableand inexhaustiblemeaning-content,transformsthe sensuous aureole of the commodityinto the aesthetic aura of the work: spiritualelevation creates the awareness of distance.77 "What is properly aura? . . . [t]he

unique phenomenon of distance, however close it may be."78 "The essentially distant object is the unapproachable one . . . The closeness

one may attainto its materialaspect does not impairthe distancewhich it retainsin the aspectof its appearance."79 At the same time aestheticaura- being not only a spatial,but equally a temporalphenomenonof experience- implies also the returnof the basic antinomybetween the "new"and the "ever-same"in the realm of both the aesthetic.Aura knits together"uniquenessand permanence,"80 objectively and subjectively.The aura as a characteristicpertainingto the work itself is identical with its "authenticity."Authenticity,however, meanspreciselythe empiricalsingularityof the art-object,its existence "here and now" but only insofar as this uniquenessbears witness (in oppositionto forgeries)to its belongingto a traditionposited as universallyvalid, that is, as enduringforever."Theauthenticityof a thing is the sum-totalof all that is transmissible[Tradierbares]in it from the time of its origin,rangingfromits materialdurationto its historicaltestimony ... The uniquenessof the work of art is identicalwith its embedThis contradictoryenmeshmentof dedness in the contextof tradition."81 temporalsingularityand permanenceconstitutesa basic phenomenological traitof the subjectiveaesthetic-auratic experience:the experienceof an instantaneousgripping illuminationin which time itself seems to come to a standstill,the paradoxof the "fulfilledpresent"as the unity of momentarinessand eternity.Lastly, the contradictorytemporalstructure of the everyday experienceof commodityis equally expressed in the opposedtendenciesof moder artisticactivity:in the compulsionto ever more radical innovation,on the one hand, and the tendency toward instantaneous"musealisation"(e.g., creation of works from the very beginningintendedfor exhibitionin museum),on the otherhand.82 literaturethat the It has often been arguedin the interpretative-critical 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

Cf. Benjamin,Passagen-Werk,GS 5.2: 1255. (ErsteFassung),GS 1.2:440. Benjamin,"Kunstwerk" Benjamin,"DasKunstwerk"(ZweiteFassung),GS 1.2:480. Benjamin,"DasKunstwerk"(ZweiteFassung),GS 1.2:479. Benjamin,"DasKunstwerk"(ZweiteFassung),GS 1.2:477 and479. Cf. Benjamin,Passagen-Werk,GS5.1: 55-56 and514.

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connectionBenjaminestablishesbetweenhis own projectand the Marxian theory of commodity, or even more narrowly:with Marx's theory of fetishism, is at best tenuous,and is largely based on misunderstanding. In his critical reactionto the first expose of the Arcades-Projectfrom 1935,83 Adoro objects to two large problem-complexes.On the one hand,he criticizedwhat he regardedas the hypostasisof collective consciousness, or the unconsciousnessinto a supraindividualsubject and the allied equation of the archaic elements in dream-imageswith the truth of utopia (throughreferenceto the classless characterof "primitive" societies). Both the appropriatenessof these remarksin respect of the first expose itself and their pertinenceto the whole of the ArcadesProject (especially to its later elaboration)are a matterof debate into which I cannot enter here. Suffice to say, Benjamin to some degree acknowledged the legitimacy of these critical observations:passages directly giving rise to them disappearedfrom the later expose of the project(1939) and also, so it seems, from his later notes to the work as well. On the otherhand,a very good case can be made for the essential continuityof the Arcades-Projectfrom the time of the inceptionof its idea and for the centralityin it of the notion of collective dream-images andtheirutopianpotential.84 Adorno's second main objection,however, is directlyrelevantto our discussion. He chargesthat Benjaminin an illegitimateway "psychologizes" the Marxianconceptionof commodityfetishismby transposingit into consciousness, owing to which it loses its "dialectical power." Notes Adoro, "[t]hefetish characterof commodityis not a fact of consciousness at all, but dialectical in the eminent sense that it produces consciousness."85From this he draws then some basic methodological conclusions concerningthe notion of "dialecticalimage" as an objective constellationwhich is the self-representation of the social situation, and thereforecannothave some separatesocial "effect."86 In general it is difficult to disentanglein Adoro's objections genuinely appositecriticismfromargumentsbaseduponthe unconsciousmisrepresentationof the basic intentionsof Benjamin'sproject,on a silent substitutionof Adoro's own premisesin the place of his. Leavingaside 83. Cf. Adomo, "Letterto Benjamin"(2 Aug. 1935),BenjaminBriefe 2: 671-83. 84. This point was most convincinglyarguedby SusanBuck-Morss,TheDialectics of Seeing (Cambridge:MIT, 1985) esp. 279-86. 85. Adomo, "Letterto Benjamin,"(2 Aug. 1935) 672. 86. Adomo, "Letterto Benjamin,"(2 Aug. 1935) 678.

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the point that Adoro's categoricalformulation(fetishism not being a fact of consciousnessat all) is, as a case of Marx-interpretation, at least as questionableas Benjamin'suse of these ideas, the charge of "psychologism" (in its more empathic and nastier formulation:"falling under the spell of bourgeois psychology"87)is at some level rather absurd.Benjamin'sfundamentalconcernis to bringto presencethe way experience is historicallyconstitutedunder the conditions of capitalist modernity.He uses the Marxiantheoryof fetishismfor this purpose:to disclose basic commonaltiesin the perceptionand the lived, directinterpretationof the world as expressionsof the way individualsare socially insertedinto it by the very characterof their materialpractice- commonalties which underthese conditionsremain"unconscious,"but can be transformedinto community-formingpowers. This whole enterprise is "psychologizing"if one regards the notion of "experience"as a (solely) psychological concept - but it certainly does not operate (at least not at this level of the generality of intent) with psychological principlesof explanation.And in fact it would seem that Adorno questions the meaningfulnessof such a project in principle. His formulations suggest that for him the only legitimate way of analyzing contemporarysociety is in terms of a dualistic relation between the objective, reified social structure,on the one hand, and (as its correlate and effect) the alienated,completelyatomizedindividualsubject,on the other.88Whateverthe meritsor demeritsof such a position, it implies a complete rejection of what Benjamin attemptsto do, and this hardly representsa propitiousbasis for criticalunderstanding. On the other hand, Adorno's charge concerningthe misapprehension and misuse of the Marxianconceptionof fetishism,is, in some respects, legitimateand well founded.Marxconsistentlyunderlinedthe "objectivity" of fetishisticphenomena.At the most elementallevel this meantthat within the frameworkof a functioningcapitalisteconomy fetishisticrepresentationscorrectly orient the isolated individualin his/her economic 87. Adomo, "Letterto Benjamin,"(2 Aug. 1935) 672. 88. ". .. [W]hois the subjectof the dream?In the nineteenthcenturycertainlyonly the individual;. . . [T]he objectivesurplusvalue realises itself precisely in the individual subjectsand againstthem. Collective consciousnesswas inventedonly in orderto divert attentionfromthe trueobjectivityandits correlate,ie. alienatedsubjectivity.It is up to us to polarise and to dissolve in a dialecticalmannerthis 'consciousness'between society andthe individual,insteadof galvanisingit as the image-correlateof the commodity-character."Adomo, "Letterto Benjamin"(2 Aug. 1935) 674-75.

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activities, so that they are pragmaticallyeffective. Precisely for this reason they are also constantlyconfirmedand reinforcedby the life-experiences these individualsgain in the overall process of reproduction,to the possibility of which these representationsthemselves contribute. "dream-image,"and "wishBenjamin's notions of "phantasmagoria," reconcilable with these ideas of Marx, for whom seem symbol"hardly was quite narrowlycircumscribedby the contentof such representations the requirementsof their pragmaticefficacy and economic functionality. In fact Benjamin'sviews point to a conceptualizationof commodity which was repeatedlyand resolutely rejected by Marx: to its (among as objectifiedsocial sign.89 others:Hegelian)understanding There are, however, much more fundamentaltheoreticaloppositions involved in this divergence of views indicatedby Adoro. Marx and Benjaminshare a dialecticalunderstandingof alienationand reification as historicalprocesses which have not only a "negative"significance, but in all the humandevastationthey cause, also simultaneouslycreate the positive conditionsfor a futureemancipation.They also both agree that not only are fetishistic everydayrepresentationsobjectively conditioned by the characterof the life-practicesin capitalistsociety, but also acknowledge their sociohistorical effectivity. They understand,however, both these pointsin completelydifferentways. Marx's theory was primarilythat of the historicalprocess, centering on the problem of reproduction,which allowed him to reconcile the viewpoints of continuityand discontinuityin history.It first of all aimed at dissolving the appearanceof the thing-like fixity of social relations, arrangementsand institutionsthat for the isolatedindividualare defacto pre-given realities to which he can only adapt.He tried to demonstrate how these relations are producedand reproducedfrom day to day in the combined social activity of historicallysituatedindividuals,who in this process themselves constantlyrecreatethe "external"conditionsof their own activity.90Fetishistic representationswere socially effective for him because he regarded them as functional to this process of 89. It shouldbe noticed,however,thatBenjaminin his notes to the Arcades-Project excerptsone of the places from Capital,in which Marxcriticizesthis conceptionof commodity. See Benjamin,GS 5.2: 805. 90. This constitutedalso the most generalpremiseof the Lukacsiantheoryof reification:"Historyconsistspreciselyin the degradationof every kindof fixationinto an illusion: History is nothing but the history of the unceasing transformation of the forms of objectivity that shape the existence of men" (Lukacs 372).

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reproduction.As practicalinterpretationsof environingreality in terms of which actions are understoodand motivations formed, they insert individualsin a definite way into this system of relations- in a way that contributedto its historicalemergenceand continuesto contribute to its maintenance.Any idea of their potentiallyemancipatoryrole or utopiancontentwas completelyalien to his thought,at least in the later period of his theoretizing.91His dialectics located the potential of its revolutionaryovercoming,createdby capitalism,decidedly elsewhere. Partly in "objective"conditions:The incessant extension of economic reproductionsimultaneouslymakes the conditionsof its own possibility increasinglyinsecure.Partly,and not less importantly,he located it on the "subjective"side: in the fact that in the course of this development the direct producersacquirein their everydayworking and life-activities such (not merely technical,but broadlysocial) needs, attitudes,and abilities that can only be satisfied and exercised under fundamentally different social conditions,whose establishmentthey also make possible. It is this accelerated"accumulation"of forces of productionand intercourse- which ultimatelyare "nothingmore than the development of individualcapacities"92and the evolution of which constitutes the axis of continuityin history- thatconfersupon the world epoch of capitalist alienationa "progressive"character,and makes it a watershedin the historyof humanprogress. Thus Benjamin's devastatingcritique of the concept of progress,9 though directly addressed to German Social Democracy, necessarily implicatessome of the basic premises of Marx's own theory too. The motives.of this criticismare inseparablefromthe peculiaritiesof his own intellectualdevelopment,fromthe rootsof his thoughtin the traditionsof 91. In this respectit may be worthwhileto recallMarx'sattitudeto the relatedquestion of the effectivityof "historicalmyths."Marxwas no less awarethanBenjaminof the greatrole, evoking"thespiritof the past"has played,especiallyin epochsof revolutionary crisis. He, however, unambiguouslyrestrictedthis role to the political revolutionsof the past. The coming social revolutionscannotdrawtheirmotivationand enthusiasm("their poetry")from world-historicalreminiscences-thiswould only obscurethe consciousness of their uniquetask. They must be orientedtowardthe future.They "shouldlet the dead bury their dead"(Marx-Engels,Werke8: 115-16). For Benjamin,on the otherhand, the image of the workingclass as "theredeemerof futuregenerations"actuallyundercutsthe sourcesof its strength."Sucha schoolingmadeit to unlearnboth its hatredand its will to sacrifice.For both of these are nourishedby the image of enslavedancestors,and not by the ideal of liberatedgrandchildren." (Benjamin,"Uberden Begriff,"GS 1.2: 700.) 92. Marx-Engels,Werke3: 67-68. 93. Cf. primarilyBenjamin,"Uberden Begriff' 697-701.

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Jewish Messianismand GermanRomanticism.But there are also much less idiosyncraticand personalreasonswhich Benjaminhimself formulatedwith exemplaryclarity:"Theexperienceof our generation:thatcapitalism will not die a naturaldeath."94In this respect it is irrelevant whetherMarxhimself did or did not assumethe historical"inevitability" of socialistrevolution.He certainlydid supposethatits conditionsmature "naturally"(that is, as the result of the immanentnecessity of the ecoin the courseof capitalistdevelopment. nomicprocessof reproduction) A whole generationof theoristswho lived throughthe failureof German (and more generally Western)revolutionand the rise of fascism experiencedthe untenabilityof this presupposition.Since they accepted as evident empiricalfact (and the experiencesof the early 1930s only seemed to confirm this view) the presence of a general, objective-economic crisis of the capitalistsystem, the problemappearedto them primarily as that of a "deficit of radical motivation"on the side of the revolutionarysubject, the proletariat."WesternMarxism"of the 1930s and the early 1940s representeda series of attemptsto find a theoretical orientationas to how this gap between the "objective"and "subjective" conditions can be closed. It was dominatedby a search for new sources of revolutionarymotivation.Gramsci,who perceived the problem largely in political-organizationalterms, found the answer in the myth of the "organic intellectual."Lukacs invoked the idea of the emancipatorypotential of the great cultural tradition,first of all the defetishizing capacity of "realist"art. In spite of all the differences in their views, especially concerningtheir respectivejudgmentupon aesthetic modernism,in its most generaldirectionsuch a solution was not alien to Adorno,either. Only he recognizedthat this is not a solution at all: under contemporaryconditions works of high culture lack mass social effectivity, and he drew from this fact the inevitablypessimistic conclusions for the historicalpresent.Benjaminclearly recognized the latter problem as well. It motivatedhim to search for those forms of everydaymass experienceupon whose foundationsa countercultureof revolutionarywill and commitmentcould be built. In this generalintention, Benjaminis closer to Marxthanmost of his contemporaries. But these sought for life-experiences Benjamin could identify no longer with those "positive"collective traitsthat the workingclass - as both the subjectand the object of the "civilizingprogress"of capitalism 94.

Benjamin, Passagen- Werk, GS 5.2: 819.

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- inevitably acquiresin its course. For from the vantage point of later historicalexperiencesthese civil accretionsappearas just those characteristics, which integrate the proletariatinto capitalist society. The uniqueness of Benjamin's project lay in the fact that he thought he could uncover an emancipatorypotentialin those forms of experience, which in the whole Marxisttraditionhave been regarded- as illusory of its real nature- precisely as "integrative."95 Benmisrepresentations jamin transposedan argumentativemove central to ideology-critique from the level of high culturalcreationsto that of everydayexperience. High ideologies, it was usually argued,as "idealizations"of capitalist society, also create a distance to its empiricalreality and thereforein their very "affirmative"charactercontainalso a momentof negation,a utopian potential as well. Benjaminapplies this idea to the fetishistic consciousness of the everyday.But while in the case of cultural-ideological formationstheircriticalpotentialwas seen as the functionof the consciously undertakeneffort at the totalization,universalization,and rationalizationof the de facto relations,endowingthem with normative validity, the fetishistic images and experiencesof the everydayhave for Benjamin the same capacity, due to their dream-like "irrationality," internalincoherence,and fragmentation,which transposeswhat are in fact normativeexpectationinto brutefacts. This shift involved also a basic changein the very meaningof dialectics. For Benjaminit no longermeanta theoryof the contradictorytendencies of a historical process, which in the very reproductionof its structuringcharacteristicsnecessarilyeliminatesor underminesthe conditions that alone make this reproductionpossible. For him it became a theory of ambiguity,of the "frozen unrest"of a historical moment96 that in its essence is only emptily repeated in all its kaleidoscopic 95. Adomo, I think,quite legitimatelypoints to the fact that these experiencesare certainlynot class-specific:". . . [I]n the dreamingcollective thereremainno differences betweenthe classes"(Letterto Benjamin,[2 Aug. 1935], Werke2: 675). Benjaminrigidly upholds the idea of the workingclass as the sole revolutionaryagent. From a Marxist standpointthis is perhapsthe most orthodoxfeatureof his thought.The contentof his theory, however, points towarda more heterogeneousconceptionof revolutionaryaction. Wheneverhe invokes its image, it is not the organizedproletariat,but the amorphousand spontaneousurbancrowdthatappearsin his writings. 96. "Ambiguityis the figurativeappearanceof the dialectics,the law of dialecticsat the standstill"(Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 55). This ambiguityunderliesBenjamin's whole conceptionof history:it is the past whose mythicpoweris to be destroyed, the past that is "one single catastrophe,"which is at the same time the sole legitimate groundof hope for a redemptivefuture.

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change - as long as it is not blasted apart.Ultimately the theories of Marx and Benjaminoperatewith irreconcilableconceptions of historical time. Benjaminunderstoodthe specificity of this latteras a "historical index" which pertain to each "time of the now" [Jetztzeit] establishing its figurativeaffinity with particularmoments of the past that only become "legible,"that is, capableof being re-evokedas experience in the present.97Marx, on the other hand, meant primarilythe irreversibilityof long-term historical change, in which discontinuous social metamorphosesare superimposedstructuresupon an underlying accumulativematerialcontinuity. These considerationsdo not aim at answering the sterile questions whether Benjaminwas a "genuine"Marxist,were his views a supplementation,a correctiverevision, or some unassimilable,alien addition to the "orthodox/original"meaning (as some invariable datum) of Marx's theory? These questions not only rest on untenablehermeneutic presuppositions,but are of no real consequence.From the 1950s on Benjamin's views were received (not exclusively, but predominantly) within the context of a Marxisttradition,and they became, at least for understandingthe cultureand art of modernity,an integralconstituent of its (in any case highly heterogeneous)corpus. (Though, of course, even this process has not been unambiguous.In several cases Benjamin was the stepping stone on a path leading far away from Marx.) The contact and contrast with Marx (and primarily with the views expressed in his late economic works)98that we drew here served only one purpose:to bring into a clearer focus the fundamentaltheoretical intentionand attitudeof Benjaminas it is particularlyembodied in his conceptionof a "dialecticsof ambiguity." This dialectics demandsand hopes to find the historically"positive," the potentiallyradicalmotivatingforce for transcendingthe hell of the present in those socially "negative" forms of experience, which as deceptive illusions in theirdirecteffect bind the individualsto its conditions since they endow them with the false radianceof seemingly ever new pleasureandbeauty: 97.

Cf. Benjamin, Passagen Werk, GS 5.1: 576-78.

98. In anycase sucha comparisonalonedoes notanswerthebroaderquestionconcerning Benjamin'srelationto, andconnectionwith,thewholeof theMarxisttradition,quitecomplex (andcontradictory) alreadyin the thirties.Beyonda numberof his explicitreferencesto ideasfromearlywritingsof Marx,one shouldconsiderBenjamin'srelationandindebtedness to Bloch,Korsch,andKautsky.Theselater,of course,shouldnotbe overemphasized.

30

The Commodity as Phantasmagoria It is very easy to establish,accordingto definite viewpoints, for any given epoch, in respectof its various"spheres,"binarydivisions of the kind that posit on one side what is "fruitful,""forward-looking," "vital,""positive,"while the futile, backward,defunct parts of this epoch all fall on the otherside. Even the contoursof this positive side will not emergeclearlybut only if they are profiledagainstthe negative one. On the other hand, however, every negation has its value only as the backgroundfor the outlinesof the vital, the positive. It is thereforeof decisive importanceto applyagainto this, distinctlyseparatednegativeparta new division of the kind that,with a shift of the point of view (butnot of the standardsofjudging!) revealseven in it a positive element,differentfromthe one previouslyindicated.99

Conversion [Umschlag], in which "the positive in the negative and the negative in the positive coincide,"100 constitutes for Benjamin the supreme principle of dialectics. Therefore he consistently strives to uncover the conversion and coincidence of the "utopian"and the "cynical," of the "threatening"and "alluring" elements in the fetishistic experiences of the commodity world.101 These experiences, and precisely in those aspects through which they as phantasmagorias - mask reality, at the same time divulge an unconscious drive that in principle transcends the present, a utopian wish as the potential source of radical energies. Thus fashion, on the one hand, prescribesthe ritualby which the fetish commoditywills to be worshiped ... It standsin oppositionto the organic.It procuresthe living body for the inorganicworld. It affirmsthe rights of the corpse over the living. Its vital nerve is the fetishismthatunderliesthe sex appeal of the inorganic.The cult of the commoditytakesit into its service.102 It also serves recognizable class interests: fashion is "the camouflage of well-defined concerns of the ruling class."103 At the same time, Benjamin equally underlines "the eccentric, revolutionary and surrealist possibilities of fashion," its "extraordinaryanticipations," its "precise contact 99. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 573. 100. Benjamin,"EinJakobinervon heute [1930],"GS 3: 265. 101. Cf. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 51 and96. 102. Benjamin,Passagen WerkGS 5.1: 51. Cf. "Fashionopens up here a space of dialectical conversionbetween woman and commodity-betweenpleasure and the dead body"(111). It is the mediumthat"luressexualityin the worldof the inorganic"(118). On Benjamin'stheoryof fashion,see Buck-Morss,esp. 97-101. 103. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 121.

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in it. Simiwith the things to come":104 "the motif of redemption"105 larlywith advertisements:false allureand economicfunctionalitycohabit in them with their"beinga simile for the everydaylife of the utopia."106 Of course, as long as these practices evoke only unconscious dreamimages projectedon the objects of the commodityworld in privatized subjectiveexperience,images, the collective characterof which appears only in their compulsive-obsessivenature,they functionsolely by masking and transfiguringthe catastrophicpresent.In their unconsciousness they merely channel utopian energies to the service of its hell. Only "wakingup" from the dreamcan set their radicalmotivationalpotential free: they have to be raisedto consciousnessby transformingtheir mute commonness,communalityinto a matterof collectiveexperience. This dialectics of ambiguity - a dialectics at standstill - finds its

clearest elaborationin the centralconcept of Benjamin'saesthetics:the notion of aura. At one place he explicates its meaning by almost directly reproducingthe Marxiandefinition of fetishism: "The experience of aura thus rests on the transferenceof a form of response at home in human society to the relation of the inanimateor nature to man."In a sense only this explainsthe unity of those two "definitions," which primafacie have nothingin common and which are merelyjuxtaposed by Benjamin:the experienceof the aura as the endowmentof the thing "withthe abilityto returnthe glance,"107on the one hand,and its being "the unique manifestationof a distancehowever close it may be," on the other hand.108For both of these are experientialmanifestations of the same fetishistic "personificationof things" (Marx). The unapproachabilitycreatedby the auraticdistancingof the object transfers the inviolabilityof personalspaceuponthe inanimate. As I tried to indicate,the auratizationof the work of art which in its secularizedform underliesthe autonomyof art in modernity109is for 104. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 116 and 112. 105. Benjamin,"Zentralpark," GS 1.2:677. 106. Benjamin,Passagen-Werk,GS 5.1: 236. 107. "Ubereinige Motivebei Baudelaire,"GS 1.2: 646. 108. "Kunstwerk"(ZweiteFassung)480. 109. Benjaminexplicitly equatesthe auraof artwith "the illusion of its autonomy" ("Kunstwerk"486). Underconditionsof modernityit replacesthe embeddednessof premoder art in cultic ritual with its contextualintegrationinto the alienatedtraditionof "culture."It thereforeretainsin a secularisedformthe "theologicalfoundation"of art,its associationwith, andserviceto, the illusionof mythicpowersgoverningthe fate of human 441). beings ("Kunstwerk"

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Benjamin the "spiritualization"of the fetishism of commodity, "an intensificationof the universalfetishisticdeception."110 With a distanc"elevation" it art from the context of ing separates everydaylife, and norfixes in its the attitude of matively recipient passive, privatized absorption,therebymakes aestheticexperiencean isolatedinstantin life, lacking effectivity, or potentially"political"(that is, community-creating and orienting) significance. The progressivedisappearanceof the aura-aprocess initiatedby changes in the conditionsof reproductionof works of art-isthereforea preconditionof its refunctioning,of its regaining a sociallyactive,butnow demystifying,possiblyemancipatoryrole. But: "The decline of auraand the witheringaway-underconditionsof a defensive position in the class-struggle-ofthe fantasyimage of a better natureare the same. Therewiththe decline of auraand the decline of potency are ultimatelythe same."ll The auraticexperienceof the work of art (and of definite naturalobjects or phenomena)contains-andprecisely in its very reifying characterby which it withdrawsits object from the context and reach of human action - also an anticipatoryredemptiveaspect, the completeloss of which would signal the exhaustion of a fundamentalsourceof radicalimpulses.The auraticexperience offers for a fleeting instance the purely subjective fulfillment of the promiseof a "nature"that no longer is the resistantobject of our efforts at its utilizationand exploitation,but encountersus in an uninforcedway with "favor"[the KantianGunstder Natur]. In this experiencethe rigid division between subject and object is dissolved in a reciprocal, mimetic-communicative relationbetweenhumanbeings and theirworld, a world, the things of which became "liberatedfrom the compulsionto be useful."This, of course,constitutesone of the most fundamentaland constantelementsin Benjamin'sidea of an emancipatedfuture.The aura of the work of art is a historicallycreatedand socially imposed(second order) phantasmagoria-but phantasmagoriasare both (as compulsiveobsessive ideas) the very opposite, and at the same time the depraved exercises of creativesocial imagination.This is also why Benjamindid not accept without qualificationAdoro's suggestion that unambiguously identifiedaurawith reification:"[A]ll reificationis forgetting. .. Is not the aura always the trace of the forgottenhumanelement in the 110. Schweppenhauser,"Die Vorschule der profanenErleuchtung,"in Benjamin, UberHaschisch (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp,1972)22. 111.

Benjamin, Passagen Werk, GS 5.1: 457.

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thing. .. ?" Adomo specifies this human element (in accord with the

Marxian-Lukacsian conceptionof reification)as "the momentof human labor."112Benjaminresponds:"If it were the case thatin auraone genuinely had to deal with a 'forgottenhuman element', then nevertheless not necessarily with that which is present in labor . . . There must be a

humanelementin thingswhich is not broughtaboutby labor."113 Thus the decay of the aurawhich Benjaminregisters as an ongoing process is itself ambiguous:it designates an emancipatorypossibility connectedwith the radicalrefunctioningof art and a danger,the disappearance not only of the privatized,empathic, autonomous,aesthetic experience, but also of the ability to imagine and experience fulfillment, the gift of happiness.The traceless vanishing of the aura would mean just this latter. No doubt, under contemporaryconditions the "exhibitionof aura"is "the affair of fifth rankpoets,"ll4 and such an "aestheticism"is serviceable to Fascism.115But genuine art, not in complicity with the horrorsof the present,has its task in making precisely what in privatizedexperienceunconsciouslyevokes the impression of auraticity into the consciously recognizable and examinable object of a potentiallycollective experience.At places Benjamin calls of aurainto the "trace"[Spur]: this taskthe transformation Traceand aura.The traceis the manifestationof a closeness however distancedit may be. The aurais the manifestationof a distancehowever close it may be. In the tracewe enter into the possession of the thing, in the aurathe thing overpowersus.116 112. Letterto Benjamin(29 Feb. 1940) in Adomo, Uber WalterBenjamin159-60. 113. Benjamin,Letterto Adomo (7 May 1940),Briefe 2: 849. An unpublishedpaper by AndrewMacNamaradrewmy attentionto the significanceof this exchange. 114. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 475. 115. Benjamin,"PariserBrief I," GS 3: 487-89. 116. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS5.1: 560. In a surprisingly one-sidedandratherhostile essay, JaussarguesthatBenjaminhas neverrealizedthe insightexpressedin this quote: he ultimatelycouldnotovercomea nostalgicrelationto the auraandthereforea negativeattitude to the developmentof post-romantic,non-autonomousart. See Jauss, Studienzum Epochenwandelder dsthetischenModerne(Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp,1989) 189-215.This is certainlya reversalof the usualcriticismof Benjamin,but overallit is perhapsless convincingthanthe morecommonchargeoverestimatingthe potentialof post-auratic,"technically progressive"art.UltimatelyJauss'scriticismfollows fromthe factthathe (so it seems) rejects,alongwith Benjamin'sMessianismandcatastrophicconceptionof the historyof the He acceptsas unproblematic present,any principallycriticalattitudeto contemporaneity. and both in the aestheticaland social sense - the success of the "basicintention"of postromanticart:"tohumanizethroughbeautythe materialismof industrialdevelopment"(195).

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This is how Benjamin interpretsthe achievement of Baudelaire:an artistic accomplishmentthat makes him - a poet who has "imposeda taboo upon the future"and whose poetic attitudeis "at least in appearance thoroughly'untimely"'- a "secret agent" of dissatisfactionwith the dominationof his own class, whose dreamis the sister of Blanqui's revolutionaryaction.1l7 This achievement lies, not in the conscious intentionsor in the "message"of his poetry,but what they allow to be broughtinto the realm of full, genuine experience.Baudelaire,writes Benjamin,"has given the weight of a collective experience"to private, subjectiveexperiences.He paid for it the price: "the destructionof the aura" of his own oeuvre.1l8 The "destructiverage" of his poetry is directed "not least against the fetishistic notion of art."119But he destroyedthe aurabecause he transformedthe profanebasis of its production into the form-givingprincipleof his own poetry.He transposed the way fetishistic private experiences of the commodity world are structuredinto the poetic device of meaning-creation,into the "technical" scaffolding of his work. "It was the undertakingof Baudelaireto makemanifeston the commoditythe auraspecific to it."120 This is the way Benjaminunderstandsthe restitutionby Baudelaireof an aesthetic form that his contemporariesregardedas irretrievablyoutdated, which nevertheless constituted "the guiding principle of his imagination"and "the armatureof his poetry": allegory.121 Jolting between image and meaning, lacking any "naturalmediation,"122and with its fragmentationand destructionof the familiarcontext of significations that habituationconfers upon things, Baudelairianallegory fills these "hollowedout ciphers"with subjectivelyimposed sense.123These allegories by purely poetic means (and quite unintentionally)recreate the structureof experience which is objectively and unconsciously 117. 118.

Benjamin,GS 1.2: 657 and 677; GS 1.3: 1161;and GS 1.2: 604. Benjamin,"Ubereinige Motive,"GS 1.2:653.

119.

Benjamin, Passagen Werk, GS 5.1: 399.

120.

GS 1.2:471. Benjamin,"Zentralpark,"

121. 122.

Benjamin, Passagen Werk, GS 5.1: 465 and 408. Benjamin, Passagen Werk, GS 5.1: 466.

123. "Everyintimacywith the things is alien to the allegoricalintention.To touch them means to it: to violate them. To apprehend[erkennen]them means to it: to see throughthem. Where it reigns, habit cannotbe formedat all. It barelyhas taken up the thing, it alreadycasts away the situation.They grow for it out of date more rapidlythana new cut for the milliner.To grow out of date, however,means:to become alien" (Benjamin,Passagen-Werk,GS 5.1: 423). Cf. also GS 5.1: 582.

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imposed upon the subject of the world of commodity, to be "veiled," "glorified," and "sentimentalized" by its aureole. The objective environingworld of man ever more ruthlesslytakes on the expressionof the commodity.At the same time the advertisement aims at blurringover the commodity-characterof the things. The deceptive glorificationof the world of commodityis opposed by its disfiguringtranspositioninto the allegorical.The commoditytries to look itself in the face.124 Benjamin continutes by stating that "allegories stand for what the commodity makes out of the experiences that people of this century have."125 He also mentions that "[t]he commodity-form comes to light as the social content of Baudelaire's allegorical form of apprehension [Anschauungsform]."126 This characterization is, however, still too general. It does not sufficiently capture what is so striking and individual in Baudelaire's use of allegories. To bring out this specificity Benjamin repeatedly compares them with allegories of the Baroque. "Baroque allegory sees the corpse only from the outside. Baudelaire presents it from the inside."127 And: "The key figure of early allegory is the corpse. The key figure of later [i.e., Baudelairean - G. M.] allegory is the 'souvenir' [Andenken]:"128 The souveniris the secularizedrelic. The souveniris the complement of subjectiveexperience.In it is sedimentedthe increasingself-alienationof man, who takes stock of his past as deadpossession.Allegory in the nineteenthcenturyhas vacatedthe externalworld, in orderto settle into the internalworld.The relic comes fromthe corpse,the souvenir fromthe defunctcollective experiencewhich calls itself, euphemistically,lived experience.129 Baudelaire's allegories do not so much endow events of the world and external life with some alien-transcendent meaning that strips away from 124. Benjamin,"Zentralpark," GS 1.2:671. 125. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 413. 126. Benjamin, Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 422. Cf. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 438-39 aboutthefailure of Baudelaire"to trace back the experience of commodity to the allegorical,"since it is more "difficultto dissolve the illusion of 'value' than that of the 'meaning."' 127. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 415. 128. Benjamin,"Zentralpark," GS 1.2: 689. 129. Benjamin,"Zentralpark," GS 1.2: 681.

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them all their immanentsense and innervitality. His allegoric intention finds ratherits expressionin the often brutaltranspositionof the most intimate,inwardsubjectivestates, moods, and also of elevated thoughts into not merely prosaic, but frequentlysordid, anorganicobjects and happeningsof the everyday.The "hollowingout of the inner life"130is the ultimateachievementof his poetry.The allegoric-aesthetictransformationwhich allows "commodityto look itself in the face," i.e., to raise to the level of conscious recognitionthe unconscious structureof its experience,discloses behindthe seeminglyfree play of subjectivemeanings the compulsivefragmentationof the subjectof experience.And this transformsthe reconciling,pseudo-aesthetichalo of commodityinto the impulse of a destructiverage, even if this latterremainsundirectedand objectless."Baudelaire'sallegorybears- in oppositionto the Baroquethe traces of the rage which was necessaryto breakthroughthis world, to lay its harmoniousformationsin ruins."131 "The destructiveimpulse of Baudelaireis nowhere interestedin the abolition of what comes to its way. This finds expression in allegory, and this constitutes its regressive tendency. On the other hand, however, allegory - precisely in its destructivefervor- is concernedwith the dispersalof the illusion thatproceedsfrom every 'given order,'be it of art or life, the transfiguringorderof the totalityor of the organic,all that which makes it appearbearable.And this is the progressivetendency of allegory:132 Theuniquesignificanceof Baudelaireconsistsin beingthefirstwho in the manandfixedhim with mostimpeccableway apprehended self-alienated a thing-likesolidity [ding-festgemacht],in the doublemeaningof this word:establishedhis identityandarmedhimagainstthereifiedworld.133

The case of Baudelairedemonstrateshow works of art,which are seemingly "untimely"and thoroughlyapoliticalin the common sense of this 130. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 440. 131. Benjamin,"Zentralpark," GS 1.2:671. 132. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 417. 133. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 405. I have attemptedhereto follow through of Baudelaire'spoetry,and, of only a single threadin Benjamin'scomplex interpretation course,I merelytriedto give a summaryaccountof his views on the role of allegoryin it. For an approachto the same topic, indebted,but in its basic thrustpolemicallyopposedto thatof Benjamin,see Jauss,StudienzumEpochenwandelder dsthetischenModerne 16688. For a "defense"of BenjaminagainstJauss,see Paulde Man,TheResistanceto Theory (Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP) 65-70.

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word, can neverthelessretain a critical potentialeven under the alienated conditions of culturalmodernity."Thereis a place in every true work of art at which the person, who places himself into it, is touched by a freshness like the wind of a coming dawn."134But this still requiresthe ability and the interestto "settle in" at this "place of the new" in the work of art (a place which can only be disclosed by the labor of critical commentary).Benjamin has no illusions about the spreadof such capacities: At no pointof time,be it everso utopian,willonewinoverthemasses for a higherart,butalwaysonly foran artthatis nearerto them... Themassesin generaldemandfromtheworkof artsomethingwarming.Hereis thefireof hatredwaitingto be ignited.Itsheat,however, bites or scorches,it does not offerthat"comfortof the heart"that qualifiesartforuse. Whereaskitschis nothingmorebutartwiththe use. characterof a hundredpercent,absoluteand instantaneous Thereby,however,kitschand art standin the canonizedformsof opposedto eachother.Whatconexpressiondirectly,irreconcilably cerns,however,the emerging,living forms,they containin themselvessomethingwarming, useful,ultimatelysomething blissful,they take dialecticallythe 'kitsch'into themselves,in this way bringing themselvesnearto themasses,andnevertheless theyareableto overcomekitschiness. Nowadaysperhapsonlyfilmis upto thistask...135 Benjamin discusses the "progressive"possibilities opened up by the "emerging,living" forms of mass culture,connectedwith the new techniques of mechanicalreproduction,especially film. Film takes a strategic and systematicfunctionin his laterwritings.Only with its help can he provide some kind of answer and solution to the practical problem which it faces: thatof the "motivationaldeficit." In some respectsBenjamin'sanalysisof the film, presentedin its most elaborateform in the "Artwork"essay,136runsparallelto his discussion of the emancipatorypossibilitiesof "higher"art, most fully exemplified by the Baudelaire-fileof the Arcades-Project.For he is again almost exclusively concernedwith the way materiallyconditionedand historically specific modes of experiencingare, or can be, transformedinto the 134. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 593. 135. Benjamin,Passagen Werk,GS 5.1: 499-500. 136. Many of the formulationsand ideas concerningfilm in the "Artwork"essay were, however, taken directly over by him from his earlier (1931) paper, "Kleine Geschichteder Photographie."

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meaning-creatingdevices, the technical factureof the works that raise these ways of spontaneousexperienceto the level of conscious recognition which liberatestheirradicalpotentialand which now, in the case of the film, possesses also a directlycommunal,or at least "massed"character.The great accomplishmentof the film (and the photography)consists for Benjamin in the conquest of the "optical unconscious"(an achievementhe compareswith the discovery of the instinctualunconscious by psychoanalysis)and thus in the openingup of a "new region of consciousness."137He means by this not only the enrichmentof the field of perceptionby these new media, their ability to radicallyextend (both spatially and temporarily)the limits of visibility. He at least ascribes an equal importanceto the fact that film constantlyinterrupts the ingrainedprocessesof association,replacesintimaciesby the illumination of details.138And this refers not merely to the perceptionof the externalworld of objects, but to the unconsciousmechanismsof selfapprehensionas well, both in respect of the maintenanceof "normal" self-identity,139and in that of the empathicidentificationwith others. Given Benjamin's strongly anti-individualisticimage of the emancipated future,it is easy to understandthat the expected overcomingof "uniquenessand permanence"by the accentuationof what is "repeatable" and "transitory"in experiences140(togetherwith the leveling of the distinctionsbetween authorand recipientin a new, generalizedcultural"literacy")hadfor him a radical,transcendingsignificance. Nevertheless,and in spite of this close analogyin the strategyof analysis and argumentation,there is a fundamental theoretical break between the Arcades-Projectand the writings directly associated with it, on the one hand,and Benjamin'sessays dealingwith the problemsof the new mass media of "mechanicalreproduction,"on the other hand. These latterwritingshave nothingto do with the idea of a "dialecticsof ambiguity,"with the conversionof the negative into the positive, that constitutes the theoreticaland methodologicalpremise of the former group of works. They operatewith the conceptionof an accumulative change in the technical conditions of artistic productionto which an 137. Cf. Benjamin,"Erwiderungan Oscar Schmitz"[1927], GS 2.2: 752; "Kleine GS2.1: 371 and"Kunstwerk" GeschichtederPhotographie," (ZweiteFassung),GS 1.2:500. 138. Cf. Benjamin,GS 1.2: 503 and GS2.1: 379. 139. "In the film one does not recognizes one's own carriage,on the gramophone one's own voice." (Benjamin,"FranzKafka"[1934], GS2.2: 436). 140. See Benjamin,GS2.1: 378-79 and GS 1.2:479.

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unambiguously"positive"function,or at least potential,is ascribed,the unfolding of which is then arrested,or perhapsonly retarded,by their superimposedconditions of employment.141This is just that explanatory scheme of "orthodox"Marxism which has been elsewhere radically rejectedby Benjaminwith referenceto the historicalexperiences of his generation.This represents,I think, the fundamental,unresolved theoreticalperplexityof his late oeuvre (which is inadequatelysignaled by the frequentlyencounteredcharge of "technologicaldeterminism"). Fundamental,because it is directlyrelatedto the solution of that practical task with which he was above all concerned.And the theoretical break in question directly manifests itself in a numberof sharplypronounced shifts of conceptualizationor emphasis when one compares these two, by and large simultaneouslyexecuted, groups of writings with each other. Here belongs the often made observationthat in the "Artwork"essay (but also in such earlierpieces as the essay on the history of photography)the "decayof aura"has an unequivocallyprogressive significance-allthe historicallyretrogressivetendencies, to which Benjaminrefersin these contexts(be they the artificiallybuilt up cult of movie stars or the "aesthetizationof politics" by Fascism), are connected with the socially-economicallydictatedefforts at the conservation or recreationof aura. The idea of the ambiguityand "danger"of the process of its decay is completelyabsentin these works. Even more significant is perhapsthe fact that the notion of commodityfetishismthe focal point in Benjamin'sanalysis of the "origins"of modernityand a concept that is particularlypertinentwhen it comes to the phenomena of mass culture-isintroducedinto these writings,if at all, then only as a marginalandexternalconsideration. There remains the question whether this changed, more "orthodox" conceptualizationachieves its end: whetherit providesa coherentargumentationfor the existence of an untappedpotentialassociatedwith the new media. This is at best doubtful,alreadyon the basis of the internal evidence of the texts themselves. Ultimately one has to say that even if one fully accepts Benjamin'sanalysis- the connectionbetween the changing structureof experience and a motivation for emancipatory change (a connection which is never explicitly asserted by him, 141. "Atpresentthe internationalbourgeoiscinemacould not find a consistentideological scheme. This is one of the causes of its crisis. For the conspiringof the technique of film with the milieu thatconstitutesits most directreproof,is not compatiblewith the glorificationof the bourgeois"(Benjamin,"Erwiderungan 0. Schmitz,"GS 2.2: 753).

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but certainly strongly suggested by the whole argumentativethrust of the "Artwork"essay) remainsextremelytenuous.The stance of a "distractedexpertiseand examination,"the fosteringof which is, according to him, the main accomplishmentof the technologically progressive forms of mass culture,may well have a value for the attitudinal"enervation of the masses" to the conditions of a constantly and rapidly changing life world, but it is a world apartboth from the notion of a "critical consciousness" in Marx and from that of a "revolting consciousness" in the spirit of the anarchisttradition.And Benjaminhimself states this with complete clarity:"As long as film-capitalsets the tenor, one can ascribe to contemporaryfilm no revolutionarymerit other than of facilitatinga revolutionarycritiqueof the traditionalideas concerningart."142"Radioand film transformnot only the functionof the professionalperformer,but equallythe functionof those who represent themselves before these equipmentsof recording,as do those who govern ... This resultsin a new selection, a selection before the equipHowment, from which the star and the dictatoremergevictorious."143 ever, these interspersedcautionaryremarksare, as it were, overridden and cancelled out by the relentlessdirectionalpower of an argumentation thatintendsandpromisesto deliverso muchmore. Benjamin'sprojectthus ends in a doubleechec: even the abandonment of his most originaland hard-wontheoreticalinsights does not advance the achievementof the practicalends of his theory.One could even query whetherthis task itself has not been renderedsenseless by his own initial diagnosis:the masses look in art for somethingwarmingand ultimately blissful. For once the motivatingforce of the "idealof the happygrandchildren"(and with it, of the prefigurative,directlyutopianfunctionof art)is denied,what could artthen offer the masses thatwould be able to competewith the lusterand pseudo-aestheticsatisfactionof the phantasmagoriaof commodity?One could comprehendfromthis perspectivehis most dubiousand troublingproposal:that of the direct"politicizationof the aesthetic"(without,of course, claimingto explain therebyits genesis) as a desperateand failed attemptto close these glaring theoretical and practicalgaps in his project.Ultimatelyhis critic-friends,these jealously fighting, self-appointedmentors,agreedon only one point, which turnedout to be propheticallyright:the internalambiguitiesof the idea of 142. 143.

(ZweiteFassung),492. Benjamin,"Kunstwerk" Benjamin,"Kunstwerk"(ZweiteFassung),491-92.

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profaneilluminationand this-wordly,revolutionarysalvationresultedin an oeuvrethatrepresentsa torsoof unresolvedcontradictions.144 We "unhappygrandchildren" cannot simply accept this evaluationof his committedcontemporaries.From our viewpoint as latecomers,Benjamin was clear-sightedenough to explicate the theological motivation behind the idea of a final humanemancipation,once and for all solving the antinomiesbesetting the whole of history. He thereby gave a dramatic poignancyto a failurethathe shared with the whole Pleiad of the brilliantrepresentativesof western Marxismof the thirties and forties. They all attemptedto find in culture,and particularlyin art, a motivating power enabling to solve the great social and political problems of the age. In this way they resurrected,under much changed historical conditions, those expectationsand hopes in the context of which the very notion of culture was originally formed in the Enlightenment. Their sharedfailuredemonstratedhow incapable"culture"is for such a task. It is not their answers,but primarilytheir questionswhich constitute the legacy for our - much less desperatethan their own, but also muchmoremuddled- times. The continuous fascinationwith Benjamin's writings may partly be due to a personalcharismawhich permeateshis oeuvre:a strangecombination of receptivity with an idiosyncraticoriginality, of an almost narcissisticallysensitive defense of individualitywith the lure of community, and the deep moral earnestnessof thinkingthat is always motivated by a search for answers to the sufferings of anonymousothers. Beyond its rich, but negative lessons and personalmagnetism,this oeuvre offers somethingmore, and more positive, to the present:his idea of a dialectic of ambiguity. "Criticaltheoryof society"has undergoneso manytransformations and has been embodiedin such a numberof diverseand partlyopposedtheoreticalprojectsthat it becomes questionablewhetherone can still ascribe a coherentmeaningto this term.If thereremainssomethingwhich nevertheless unifies and perpetuatesthis traditiontoday, it is the generalidea thatone has to find in contemporary social realityitself- and not in some system of atemporalnorms and values - the foundationand the principles of its own critique and the potentialof its transcending.In this 144. I emphasizehere the "structural" difficulties and gaps of Benjamin's theory, since they seem more symptomatic(at least for the particularends of this discussion)than the meritoricalobjectionsone can raiseagainstsome of the substantivepresuppositionsof his theoreticalconstruction;

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respect, the conception of a "dialectic of ambiguity" suggests an approachmore fertile than the idea which envisages the realizationof this programalong the scheme of the "struggleof the (objective and subjective) forces of progress with those of reaction."Benjamin discloses the deep ambiguitiesof culturalmodernity:in its constitution (the confluenceof the most archaicand the most moder, of the unconscious and the conscious, and atomizationas a new bond between individuals) and in its potentialhistoricalfunction(the unity of its cynicalapologetic or regressiveand its utopian,transcendingaspects). Even if these potentialscan only be "discovered"in light of and throughsocial practicesbeyond the culturalsphere,Benjamin'sideas still retaina suggestive power that survives the collapse of his more concretehistorical diagnosesandhope.145 145. These concludingremarksareindebtedto my wife, MariaMarkus,andto David Roberts.I would like also to thankProfessorRobertsfor correctingthe defective English in my manuscript.