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The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction




It is the most often read of Benjamin's texts and although it is commonly referred to as "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", a better translation of the title would be "The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility".


KEY CONCEPTS



Aura

Walter Benjamin used the term "aura" to refer to the feeling of awe created by unique or remarkable objects such as Works Of Art or relics of the past. According to Benjamin older cultures can generate auras around particular objects of veneration, while Capitalist culture has the opposite effect, causing the decay of the aura due to the proliferation of Mass Production and Reproduction technologies. For Benjamin, this was an ambiguous historical development, a force for democratizing both access to cultural objects and a critical attitude toward them, but also harboring the potential elimination of reflection and imagination.


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