Walter Benjamin and the Media E-Book

Jaeho Kang

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: TM - Theory and Media
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 367

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), one of the most original and perceptive thinkers of the twentieth century, offered a unique insight into the profound impact of the media on modern society. Jaeho Kang’s book offers a lucid introduction to Benjamin’s theory of the media and its continuing relevance today.

The book provides a systematic and close reading of Benjamin’s critical and provocative writings on the intersection between media - from print to electronic - and modern experience, with reference to the information industry, the urban spectacle, and the aesthetic politics. Bringing Benjamin’s thought into a critical constellation with contemporary media theorists such as Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard, the book helps students understand the implications of Benjamin’s work for media studies today and how they can apply his distinctive ideas to contemporary media culture.

Kang’s book leads to a fresh appreciation of Benjamin’s work and new insight into critical theoretical approaches to media. The book will be of particular interest to students and researchers not only in media and communication studies but also in cultural studies, film studies and social theory, who are seeking a readable overview of Benjamin’s rich yet complex writings.

Leseprobe

WALTER BENJAMIN AND THE MEDIA

Theory and the Media

John Armitage, Virilio and the Media

David Gunkel and Paul A. Taylor, Heidegger and the Media

Philip Howard, Castells and the Media

Jaeho Kang, Walter Benjamin and the Media

Paul A. Taylor, Žižek and the Media

Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, Kittler and the Media

WALTER BENJAMIN AND THE MEDIA

The Spectacle of Modernity

JAEHO KANG

polity

Copyright © Jaeho Kang 2014

The right of Jaeho Kang to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2014 by Polity Press

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-7084-3

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com

To Junghee Ryu and Kisoo Kang

CONTENTS

Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

1  Introducing Dr Benjamin

There and Then, Here and Now

Figuring Benjamin

Configuring Benjamin

2  The Crisis of Communication and the Information Industry

Introduction

Storytelling and the Crisis of the Novel

The Newspaper and the Information Industry

The Intellectuals in the Age of Mass Media

Conclusion

3  Radio and Mediated Storytelling

Introduction

Towards a Critical Sociology of the Audience

Radio Model

Some Motifs for Media Pedagogy

Conclusion

4  Art and Politics in the Age of their Technological Reproducibility

Introduction

Photographic Reproducibility

The Media Culture of Distraction

Media and Democracy

Conclusion

5  The Media City: Reading The Arcades Project

Introduction

Phantasmagorias of Modernity

Media Spectacle and Urban Space

Tactility of Media Critic

Conclusion

6  Conclusion: The Actuality of Benjamin’s Media Critique

Notes

Further Reading

Index

ABBREVIATIONS

SW

Selected Writings

, vols I–IV, eds. Marcus Bullock, Michael Jennings et al. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996–2003.

GS

Gesammelte Schriften

, vols I–VII, eds. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, with the collaboration of Theodor Adorno and Gershom Scholem. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974. Taschenbuch Ausgabe, 1991.

AP

The Arcades Project

, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. References to the ‘Arcades Project’ are given by Convolute number and page.

ABC

Theodor W. Adorno – Walter Benjamin: The Complete Correspondence 1928–1940

. ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Nicholas Walker. Cambridge: Polity, 1999.

BSC

The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem 1932–1940

, ed. Gershom Scholem, trans. Gary Smith and Andre Lefevre, ‘Introduction’ by Anson Rabinbach. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

C

The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin

, ed. and annotated by Gershom Scholem and Theodor Adorno, trans. Manfred Jacobson and Evelyn Jacobson, ‘Foreword’ by Gershom Scholem. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Media

Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media

, eds. Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty and Thomas Levin, trans. Edmund Jephcott, Rodney Livingstone, Howard Eiland, and Others. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.

OGTD

The Origin of German Tragic Drama

, trans. John Osbourne, ‘Introduction’ by George Steiner. London: Verso, 1985.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This is a small book, but there is a large number of people I would like to thank.

A great debt is owed to the students at the New School and at SOAS who have participated over the years in my classes on the critical theory of media. Their exhaustive curiosity and radical imagination have provoked this book to engage more with politics of contemporary media culture. I am also very grateful to my mentors and Doktorväter for their guidance, support and encouragement throughout: John Thompson, Nick Couldry, Axel Honneth, Gyuhwan Seo, the late David Frisby, the late Miriam Hansen, Elihu Katz, Daniel Dayan, Jeffrey Goldfarb, Andrew Arato and Patrick Baert. I hope that my debt to and respect for their insights are evident throughout this book. Thanks are also due to my friends and colleagues who made intellectual contributions to this work: Paolo Carpignano, Vinayak Chaturvedi, Lawrence Hamilton, Noah Isenberg, Troels Degn Johansson, Andreas Kalyvas, Sungdo Kim, Robert Kirkbride, Claus Krogholm, Shannon Mattern, Marcos Nobre, Dominic Pettman, Martin Roberts, José Rodrigo Rodriguez, Sanjay Ruparelia, Barry Salmon, Martin Saar, Nidhi Srinivas, Erik Steinskog, Sam Tobin, and McKenzie Wark. Bernadette Boyle deserves special mention for her help with meticulous proofreading in preparing the manuscript in every state. Parts of the chapters appeared in the following journals: Constellations, Theoria, and International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society. I thank them for the permission to use.

I would especially like to express my gratitude to Graeme Gilloch. Since we first met in a café near the University of Frankfurt in 2001, he has rigorously encouraged me to pursue the topical issues we discussed and helped elaborate my rough ideas at every stage of their development. Without his friendship, this book would not have been possible. I am deeply grateful to Jeesoon Hong for many years of understanding, patience and encouragement. I also wish to thank my sisters, Moonhee and Jinhee for their understanding and support especially over the past few years.

This book is dedicated to my parents, Junghee Ryu and Kisoo Kang, for their endless generosity, patience and understanding.

1

INTRODUCING DR BENJAMIN

THERE AND THEN, HERE AND NOW

Key Works

‘Curriculum Vitae (I)’ (1925)

‘Curriculum Vitae (VI): Dr Walter Benjamin’ (1940)

In September 1940, on the Franco-Spanish border, Walter Benjamin, aged just 48, committed suicide. At that time, the media world that we know today was only in embryonic form: few people had telephones; television was in its infancy as a technology; in terms of film, the age of the silent screen was fresh in the memory and the use of colour still something of a novelty; the printed word, of newspapers, magazines and journals still predominated, while radio had emerged as its main electronic rival. For his generation, the ‘wireless’ had an altogether different meaning. Some seventy years later, we live in a globalized world dominated by electronic communications of all kinds: mobile technologies, information and communication technologies (ICTs), satellite channels, instant global telecommunications, blogs, social networking sites, tweets, palm-held instant Internet access pads and pods. What, then, can Benjamin’s writings tell us about our own twenty-first-century world of ubiquitous digital media? What kind of challenges and questions might they pose for readers today, for whom instant communication across the globe, instant access to information, instant downloads, gaming graphics, 3D, HD, massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), live broadcast TV events from most distant parts of the world, and omnipresent advertising are such an integral part of everyday life that we scarcely notice them, let alone think about them?

In this book I want to argue that despite his living in a different media age, Benjamin’s writings are still fundamental to the task of critically analysing the global mediascape of the present. There are two main reasons for this: first and foremost, because what Benjamin was concerned with was the close relationship between the media and capitalist modernity; and secondly, because he foregrounded the intimate intersections of technological innovations and the transformation of human senses and experiences, links that have certainly intensified in the seventy years since his untimely death.

I first became interested in Benjamin’s writings about media as a post-graduate student. Several years later, rereading his central texts on this theme in the process of writing this book, I was struck by the enduring relevance of Benjamin’s analysis for our contemporary mediascape. For example, Benjamin was one of the few early thinkers who critically challenged conventional perceptions of media as mere technical devices to disseminate messages to a receiver. Moreover, I recognized the powerful sense of political engagement found in Benjamin’s media writings as he sought to explore their socio-economic and political circumstances and consequences. Although there are many debates around these issues, for me Benjamin’s insights show him to be indebted to his working within the historical materialist tradition of Karl Marx, and that he is a profound, often melancholic, critic of capitalist modernity and its catastrophic inhumanities, injustices and inequalities. Benjamin’s work was always geared to the possibilities of communication for human emancipation, not in some naive way that sees modern media as enabling tools – a kind of technological development – but rather as part of his abiding concern with regulating and harmonizing the complex and convoluted interplay between human beings, technology and nature.