“Politicizing Art”: Benjamin’s Redemptive Critique of Technology in the Age of Fascism

Abstract

Benjamin’s essay on “The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction” is a meditative exercise on the relationship of art and technology and its profound impact on the history of human perception In this paper I argue, as opposed to the widely held belief, that Benjamin’s interest in the art of reproduction is not purely animated by the development of technology for its own sake, but is prompted by the given political urgency of the time in 1936 to prevent its regression or mediation into a politics of ritual.  What can Benjamin teach us about the constellation of language, politics, destruction, and tradition? If fascism, by rendering the political sphere into the aesthetical realm, is using aesthetics for its own political end, then the political necessity of the time makes it imperative for the arts to be organized at a political level. The function of art is crucial both to the preservation and the destruction of society.  One must also ask what the instrumental power of art and technology as expressed in the fascist appropriation of culture as a means of political propaganda can achieve? Between the aestheticisation of politics and politicisation of aesthetics, the concept that mediates is that of usefulness. Benjamin always endeavours to show his affinity for the discarded and useless productions of art, and it is not surprising that he finds them “useful,” especially at the time of extreme danger, when life itself cannot be salvaged unless a useful opposition is mounted against the increasing threat to life by fascist forces. The technological redemption does not lie in its usage, in its functional aspect, but in its discarded and unrecognised potentials, in its uselessness.