Theme 2 pre theme post

The first text I read was Dialectic of Enlightenment of Adorno and Horkheimer. They mainly discuss enlightenment. Humans have always tried to explain their worlds and its phenomena within it even if their knowledge and logic ability didn’t managed to reach the truth. In that case they used myths to get an explanation of the world. According to Adorno and Horkheimer myths also contributed to record and narrate. When humans didn’t had a good explanation to a phenomena they tried to find one which often come from the magical world or were explained through an act of God/s. The Enlightenment is when we managed to demystify these myths with rational explanations through as an example calculations and experimentation. This could benefit from the usage of Dialectic thinking. Dialectic is a system of reasoning that uses logical arguments to get a conclusion. I think this is a system that in many ways made the Enlightenment possible. 

A way of thinking that might have shown the way for Enlightenment was the Nominalism. Nominalism says that the names of things doesn’t signify a universal object. In other words some stones have nothing more in common than that they all are called “stone”. In a Nominalist view if we decide that we signify the name stone to a certain object all other stones that differ from the one signified with “stone” wouldn’t be a stones. This means that we always have to re-evaluate what we see. Which means that we can’t apply myths to explain it. 

The second text to this seminar was The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity written by Benjami. In the beginning of his essay he present two concepts: superstructure and substructure in the capitalist order of production. These two concepts represent different parts of the production. The superstructure is the structures that connects and controls what is produced, it governs the production. Subsystem is where the actual production takes place, which doesn’t see the whole icture of the production that is seen from the superstructure point of view.

Benjami further analyses how we percept objects in this world and that it is both natural and historical determined. He means that if we for example are going to create art for some that are familiar with the art history we have to keep that in mind because they will percept with the history in mind. However perception also comes naturally for some certain things. Benjamin takes up some significanly formall hallmarks from the late Roman times as an example of historically determined perceptions. 

In this concept Benjami is talking about the aura of certain objects. Aura is, according to Benjami, how we experience the things. For natural things it is usually how we see and feel them with our senses. What comes to art objects the aura doesn’t need to be the same as the aura of the things it is picture. As an example we can easily take a photograph from an angle that you as a human can never experience. In this way the aura of natural objects and art objects representing the same thing can be different. But the aura is bound to the object but sometimes we have to separate the natural objects auras from art objects representing the same thing. Another thing Benjami says is that the aura of art is dependent on the time and tradition and when producing art for consumption he claims that is the removal of aura from the art. 

Finally Benjami says that culture have revolutionary potentials. He says that art uses politics has the potential. It can mediate ideas to the mass specially when reproduced. Another example he shows us is that film can be present social criticism which in term can light a sparkle for revolution. According to Adorno and Horkheimer this regard isn’t of the same power because they see the art as more of an entertainment nature. Even if I have to agree with both sources. Art can be both revolutionary and made for entertainment and I think we all today see art as an space where we can express opinions and at the same time many of us consume art for pure entertainment.