A week has passed, a theme come to an end, the
topic of this week is Critical media studies, two reading texts required which
are Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Technical
Reproductivity" (1936) and Adorno och Horkheimer’s Dialectic
of Enlightenment (1944). I spent a hard time like before to read and tried to understand what
are they talking about. However, I think, the contents of this week are more
interesting than the last week and I also met many new concepts for
example Enlightenment and Nominalism from Adorno and Horkheimer, superstructure and substructure from Benjamin especially aura he mentioned that give me a deep impression.
After the
lecture and seminar, I have a new understanding of those concepts, I think the
difficult part of this theme is the connection between Nominalism and Enlightenment,
nominalism try to explain that objects in the world are unique, example of us,
we all pupils from kth, we all be called human being, but we all different, we
all unique and reality. That make a big deviation with the philosophy in theme1
which explained that the world we observe is just the reflection or copies from
the real world. Enlightenment
somewhere similar with nominalism
since both of them are not abstracts. But Adorno and Horkheimer indicate the
danger of nominalism, once we are only observe the object without question it,
we will never know the true of it and nothing could be change. Cause our human
just questioning the objects we observed so we can create and break myth.
We also discussed
a lot about the myth in our small
group, I am very interested in this part for my personal. I think everyone know
the definition of myth from now, but how strange it, myth still exist in our
daily life even in today such a science oriented society. For what reason makes
the myth occupied an impregnable position in human being from the ancient to
now? As I think, human fear the unknown things or somewhat out of their perception
range, but the myth give a special definition to them in a just perfect range
that people can accepted it so that they can continue their normal lives. The true
of things sometimes does not matter for our, we prefer to classify it as myth
rather than accept it and the myth just provide such a sanctuary. For most of
people, they just need a simple rule to follow in order to live within their
life. I am not defended with myth, just what I think.
The aura we also discussed in the end of our seminar, unfortunately
due to the time constraint, I did not get more supernumerary knowledge from the
teacher. I hope I can get more information from your posts cause you guys are
my second teacher J.
It feels like that the seminar and lecture could give you a new appreciation of the texts and that they ignited an interest in this topic that will last also outside of class. The discussion in your group sounds very interesting. Reading about your contemplations on myth is incentive – you definitely have a point there! It would be interesting to know, which mythologies are already so enrooted in the nowadays culture that we don't even recognize them at myths anymore. Good job with your reflections!
ReplyDeleteI like your take on Enlightenment contra Nominalism, and I think you got the definition of Myth down pretty well in you prior-to-theme post. Nice to see that your discussion seem to have differed quite a bit from my own seminar! As for the Aura. What I got from it was something like this;
ReplyDeleteA piece of art is only relevant to the context in the time of when it was made.
The same aura in objects can't be mechanically reproduced in art.
To be honest I think you got that down pretty well in you first post as well.
Keep it up!
interesting discussion on myth. i personally cannot imagine the day that this world has no myth. but is't because of myth that we human want to find things out and produce new knowledge. but yes we do live without solving all the myth and sometimes we put it into 'faith' instead eg. god.
ReplyDeletefor 'aura' of art work is the uniqueness or specialness of art that reproduction do not have. the "here and now" value of the object. even though reproduction reduces aura but it produces 'exhibition value' which is bringing art to mass that everyone can appreciate it.
nice work :)
It looks like you spend a lot of time to understand and think about Nominalism and Enlightnment. I can see that you made good progress from reading the text and answering the questions to finally understand what those two terms are about and how they relate to each other. I really like your paragraph about myth. As you said it is very interesting that we still need myth to more or less take the fear from the unknown. In my opinion there will always be the need of creating new myth or even hanging on to existing ones because we will never know all about the world.
ReplyDeleteI like your essay very much because it contains many of your own ideas,I also have difficulty to understand the"Nominalism"and "Englitenment".Of course you did well to explain the "Nominalism"by explaining that veryone in KTH is unique.Impressive and Interesting.I agree with you that myth can make us continue our normal life.It like a controller sometimes.
ReplyDeleteOoh, I like your thoughts about myth. In a way maybe science has become a little like myth for a lot of people today? We do kind of just trust that it works, and I know I'm not above begging my computer to do what I want when it's misbehaving... What you said about people fearing unknown things must still be true today, and would perhaps be the reason some people don't believe in vaccines, for example. Maybe it's because, as I said, science has become sort of myth-light today.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your text. Good explanation an summary. I was also interested in the concept of aura. I formulated it something like this: For a work of art to be authentic, the prerequisite is the “aura”. Benjamin discusses how authenticity will be affected by the new ways of reproduction. Even the best copy of an artwork will still have the absence of time and space: “The presence of the original”. By reproducing a work of art, it is taken out of its environment (time and space) and it will thereby lack its “aura”.
You wrote “adorno and Horkheimer indicate the danger of nominalism, once we are only observe the object without question it...” I agree and I think that they saw the importance of realism, contrary to nominalism.
I did not quite understand what you meant with “Cause our human just questioning the objects we observed so we can create and break myth”
What has breaking myth to do with nominalism?