Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility" in Selected Writings, vol. 4, 1938-1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006), p. 269.
The colonial period of U.S. history contains a variety of interesting lessons. One of these pertains to the concept of a "virtuoso." The virtuoso was primarily characterized by curiosity. Rather than being overly specialized, the virtuoso explored a wide range of interests. The study of nature, art, literature, and theology all would have been pursuits common to this stereotype. This blog aspires to take this early category and use it as a point of departure for exploration and reflection.
Saturday, October 22, 2016
Benjamin - Fascism, Property, Relations, and Aestheticization of Political Life
"Fascism attempts to organize the newly proletarianized masses while leaving intact the property relations which they strove to abolish. It sees its salvation in granting expression to the masses - but on no account granting them rights. The masses have a right to changed property relations; fascism seeks to give them expression in keeping those relations unchanged. The logical outcome of fascism is an aestheticizing of political life. The violation of the masses, whom fascism, with its Führer cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into serving the production of ritual values."
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