Uploaded January 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
An overview of Walter Benjamin's essay "The work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility," with an emphasis on Benjamin's concept of the "aura" of a work of art.
Part 1: youtu.be/W1w3ot3JZno
Part 2: youtu.be/zT7ZIaHzj_M
Part 3: youtu.be/DRnw84Lj_w4
Corrections: At 10:50 I say that Benjamin is "celebrating the loss of the aura." I would probably prefer to soften my language here and acknowledge Benjamin's "ambivalence" toward the withering of the aura, which seems to be the most common way that Benjamin scholars will refer to his attitude about the withering of the aura (and film as a medium) in this essay. This famous ambivalence is indicative of Benjamin's "dialectical" thinking--a mode of reasoning/thinking that emphasizes the mutuality of two opposing forces, like the two opposing sides of a coin that must exist for the coin itself to exist. Dialectical thinking is at the heart of the "Work of Art" essay, and it finds its most potent expression in the very first paragraph regarding Marx's prediction that capitalism will contain the conditions necessary for its own abolition.
An overview of Walter Benjamin's essay "The work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility," with an emphasis on Benjamin's concept of the "aura" of a work of art.
Part 1: youtu.be/W1w3ot3JZno
Part 2: youtu.be/zT7ZIaHzj_M
Part 3: youtu.be/DRnw84Lj_w4
Corrections: At 10:50 I say that Benjamin is "celebrating the loss of the aura." I would probably prefer to soften my language here and acknowledge Benjamin's "ambivalence" toward the withering of the aura, which seems to be the most common way that Benjamin scholars will refer to his attitude about the withering of the aura (and film as a medium) in this essay. This famous ambivalence is indicative of Benjamin's "dialectical" thinking--a mode of reasoning/thinking that emphasizes the mutuality of two opposing forces, like the two opposing sides of a coin that must exist for the coin itself to exist. Dialectical thinking is at the heart of the "Work of Art" essay, and it finds its most potent expression in the very first paragraph regarding Marx's prediction that capitalism will contain the conditions necessary for its own abolition.
