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Ariella Azoulay
emerges from the visual. Most of his writings, including those that
do not deal directly with visuality, retain traces of gazes, images
and material objects.1 Yet, almost all of Benjamin's textswere pub
or
lished in the absence of those imagestowhich he implicitly
What
incomplete.
Iwould
like do
reading of Benjamin
bility."2My claim is that the aura of the work of art, the loss of
which Benjamin apparently laments in this text,was actually a pro
duced authorial effect. Once we understand this, we can in fact
Qui Parie, Vol. 16, No. 2 Spring/Summer 2007
74
ARIELLA AZOUL AY
between
we
the aesthetic and the political. The proposed existence of these two
distinct traditions of transmission also sheds new lightone particu
larlyenigmatic text, "Critique ofViolence/'3 The reintegration of the
visual into his texts makes visible some of Benjamin's "mistakes"4
will
deconstruct
Biblical
in his essays. I
the grain and
and
the
ers (spectators) to lookfor the visual, to look at the visual, and then
to go back and forth between the visual and the textual. We can
startwith one example.
In the supplement for the XVII thesis of his
on
essay
history, Benjamin examines the locomotive, about which
Marx
a concept,
phe, his gaze falls upon on an emergency handle, and what he sees
in that handle is a potential to make "the continuum of history
/' 395).
explode" ("
Concrete objects or images, therefore, are left as traces in
it
tions for the transmission of Benjamin's texts. In the meantime,
rests upon contemporary readers to follow the textual traces of this
lostvisual archive and to pay close attention to the pictures that have
ultimately lefttheirmarks there; they must be made
integral to the
?
practice of reading Benjamin. After all, these pictures speak
75
76
ARIELLA AZOULAY
?
fromwithin the texts, and they are numerous.
though not verbally
However to discuss images is not necessarily to talk about art.
Art ingeneral as well as works of art inparticular play only a minor
?
"TheWork
role in Benjamin's writings. Even the titleof his essay
?
ismisleading, as itgives the
of Art in theAge of Reproducibility"
a
impression that the "work of art" is stable category with a self-evi
dent meaning, and thatworks of art existed, as such at least before
the modern era. Benjamin invokes many different kinds of objects,
sion of these objects and images "extends far beyond the realm of
art" ("WA," 104). Throughout the essay, Benjamin defines thework
of art through negation. He points to a certain lack inmodern artis
tic production, a lack that generated out of technical reproduction:
unblemished
the "here and now" as the authenticity of thework, and loss of the
"here and now" signifies thework's loss of authenticity. Benjamin's
essay has been the subject of many interpretations,which, despite
their differences share a basic assumption: that before the age of
in tradi
reproduction, works of art were "embedded
tion" and enjoyed a certain, singular, and irreproducible status as
lost with the
hallowed objects, and that this special aura was
mechanical
advance
so it
technology ("WA," 105). Benjamin,
a loss that is
to mourn the loss of that aura ?
of modern
seems, appears
brought about through the emergence
reproduction of the work of art.
ismourning
what he assumes
to mourn
repro
Benjamin started exploring the question of mechanical
duction in the early thirties, and his first reflections on the subject
appear in his 1931 essay "Short History of Photography." Many of
the ideas presented there were later incorporated into the various
versions of thework of art essay. In the early thirties, it is important
to note, the work of art still lacked a clear, commonly accepted
institutional identity and definition, as is implied by some of his
descriptions. The main institutions that dealt with the display of art
in the 1930s ?
the museum, the salon, and the great exhibitions ?
placed
side-by-side a variety of types of objects and images:
venue
preserved.9 Prior to that period, art institutions had not yet sanctified
77
78
ARIELLA AZOULAY
not always
littlewas done
in
aura
Benjamin
describes as existing prior to the modern age.
On July25, 1938, after completing at least two versions of his
texton thework of art together with "Short History of Photography,"
Benjamin
discussed
accurate
not describe
work of art essay with this inmind, it is clear that itshistorical nar
rative is not a diachronic one that depicts the loss of a certain object
?
?
that had a prior existence, and is
i.e., an auratic work of art
now being threatened either by a modernist or a fascist conception
of art. Benjamin's narrative is instead synchronie, describing an
arena where two modes of transmission and use actually compete
or
are not only objects (whose
struggle with one another. At stake
are
values
determined within the sphere of art) but political rela
tions and practices that permeate the entire the social sphere.
When Benjamin wrote his essay, the aura ?
that is, the sanc
?
an
was
art
tification of the work of
unintended, unrecognized,
and unspoken effect of new practices of display and preservation
work of art; and the story of its loss serves as the pivot for the
account of the progressive history of art. This axis of loss that
Benjamin chooses to pursue enables him to isolate a certain form
?
of practice ?
"manual art"
and to turn it into not only a point
of departure, but the source and genesis fromwhich all other forms
But through a careful reading, we can recognize that
two different axes of
Benjamin blurs the distinction between
ensue.
as
if itwere
Such a
tures from different times and places, but italso constitutes an alto
gether other tradition that allows for the transmissibility of objects.
This other tradition of transmission, which might be conceived or
reconstructed through Benjamin's writings, does not correspond
becomes
79
80
ARIELLA AZOULAY
were not
reproduced objects
necessarily
as
since
of
the
work
works of art,
art,
Benjamin himself states, was
a relatively new category. These reproduced objects could easily be
tools, instruments, images, or texts.Manual and mechanical means
were used to reproduce objects that could not have remained unaf
?
that is, a
fected, that needed to undergo some sort of process
in
transmission
of
that
would
have
resulted
their
process
change.
dition of their own. The
What
the so-called
in different spheres of
or
art).
(religion, moral, politics
They are rival tradi
movement
in
from one to the other
tions,
competition, and the
enables transmission as a new beginning:12 "Each epoch possesses
a new possibility which cannot be transmissible by heritage, one
with
found
social action
in the
is proper to it, to interpret the prophecies contained
art of previous periods."13 However, inorder to preserve itsmonop
oly, the tradition of the irreproducible cannot tolerate the other tra
which
dition.
valuable
be
without
necessarily being there.14
experienced
this
expresses
Benjamin
vividly through a remark by Paul Val?ry,
which he added to the last version of the "Work of Art" essay in
1939: "Justas water, gas, and electricity are brought intoour hous
es from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort,
so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will
81
82
ARIELLA AZOULAY
but the
that implied and produced a denial of the loss. This was precisely
the role of the new art museum and art gallery that mushroomed
cepts "useless for the purposes of fascism" ("WA," 102). If,as Ihave
just argued, Benjamin believed that art and power shared common
was trying to
able-for-any-other-thing. Benjamin believed fascism
source
re-institute ritual and the unique
of authority as a response
to the new conditions of reproducibility. However, what is in fact
is destruction directed
that
and
in principle.
object's presence for its image, which is replaceable
The first removes the image or the object from any of itsdiscursive
milieus and insistson separating image from text.The second seeks
83
84
ARIELLA AZOULAY
beads
The Revolutionary
This model
er essay,
Strike
as mute
spectators watching
that this loss of the ability to
1931, and in a more urgent way at the end of the 1940s, was not
a certain kind of image that would
depict the war differently. He
was
a
certain
transmission thatwould not
for
of
practice
looking
sanctify what it transmitted. In his observation of images, in his
own writings, Benjamin experi
reading of others' text, and in his
mented with different practices of transmission that would meet
gate back and forthbetween the skeleton of the texts and the mate
rials of which they are made. Thus, reading becomes an endless
work of theoretical reconstruction, which collapses every time its
?
results are projected back onto Benjamin's examples
those
that pervade his texts. In a way,
"episodes"
to rewrite Benjamin's
texts, narrating them
once again, and transmitting them in a way thatwould always be
open to new reconstructions.
Let us take as an example thesis IX from Benjamin's "Theses
material
and visual
readers are
induced
text and
image, retrieving
traces of Benjamin's
gaze,
?
with regardto thepaintingby PaulKlee.The
looking specifically
and
between
when we
"we" designates,
85
86
ARIELLA AZOULAY
emphasis
added).
ply say that those who have a destructive character take part in the
web of relationships that comprise tradition. There have always
been such characters within tradition, and there always will be.
Their destructive actions have no validity or meaning for a tradition
unless they are made fromwithin that tradition. But in the context
of my discussion of the "Work of Art" essay, we can say that those
with a destructive character are those who have lefttradition and
room. And only one activity: clearing away" ("DC," 541). In the
"Work of Art" essay, Benjamin reinstates for the destructive char
acter, actually for himself, an alternative tradition which does not
when
alone:
untouchable
The Photographic
87
88
ARIELLA AZOULAY
own words:
"What makes
the first
only a person and a machine, but also the photographer and the
a third, the
photographed person, and these two are then joined by
spectator, we may conclude
by saying that the image of the
can never be
fully appropriated by any of the partners;
italways lies between and is shared among them.
In his "Work of Art" essay, Benjamin discusses the work of
French photographer Eug?ne Atget. Atget's corpus consists of thou
encounter
it is pho
scene, too, is deserted;
tographed for the purpose of establishing evidence. With Atget,
in the historical trial"
photographic records begin to be evidence
few
lines
that
Those
("WA," 108).
Benjamin wrote about Atget
became
What
What
of crimes. A
crime
which
evidence
Eug?ne Atget, "La Villette, fillepublique faisant le quart, 19e. Avril 1921."
Courtesy: TheMuseum ofModem Art/Licensedby SCALA /ArtResource, NY.
89
90
ARIELLA AZOULAY
of thebody of images.
insteadto theperiphery
are a
Among the thousands of photographs of the city, there
few frames inwhich some actual figures appear. These evidentiary
?
prostitutes, tramps,
photographs candidly show city dwellers
?
who were banned from the city streets, and
and vagabonds
whose
banishment
could
be understood
as what
city streets into the scene of a crime. In two photos dating from the
see several filles publiques
("pub
beginning of the 1920s, we can
lic girls"); thewomen are not shown in the street itselfbut periph
on which new urban
erally, at the doors of houses. Their bodies,
were being written, were removed from the city's pub
regulations
building walls.
In the photographs,
thewomen
brothel? Yet they also extend, almost slide, a bit from out the front
woman
is standing on the doorstep
leaning forward
on
a
at
chair
the entrance to
somewhat, while the other is sitting
door. One
the house, and her elbow is slightly inserted back through the open
door (or so itseems, given the angle of view Atget has chosen) per
haps in order to leave an opening for negotiation with the police
in each version.
I have chosen
to read
Arcades.
written
stamp them with the shaming sign "whore" and to ban them from
the public space. Going back and forth between the regulations
text and the images in Atget's corpus,
into Benjamin's
copied
between Benjamin's description of Atget's photographs and the
photographs
themselves, we
can understand
Revolutionary
Let me
Violence
"Critique of Violence"
and show
understand a key and often misunderstood point. This text has been
at the center of several important interpretations, the most famous
91
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ARIELLA AZOULAY
specificallyagainstmythicalviolence,which ispreciselythevio
between
I have
reconstructed
from his
later
between
itwas
also due
to negotiation.
Korah
leaves behind
him a
and
"her" story did not really stay alive, as we learn that she too disap
into the earth or merged with it by becoming a stone.
peared
Divine violence, which does not shed blood according to Benja
the image of the bodies from a hypo
min, might have concealed
theticalbiblical photographer's
visual field,but the imageof the
disaster was
and swallowed
(Num 16:32).
. . . "[A]nd
the next day all the community of the Israelites raised complaints
against Moses and Aaron" (Num 17:6). The scene was even record
ed by the Biblical cameraman, or author, who might have been
present at the site of the disaster and who captured well the sounds
of horror: "[A]nd all Israel thatwere round about them fled at the
cry of them" (Num 16: 34, emphasis added). Niobe was punished
she dared to challenge
their absolute
by the gods because
supremacy, upon which their rule of law was based. Korah was
punished because he dared to challenged the privileges of power
had
sons, whom God
granted to Moses, Aaron and Aaron's
as
cases
servants.
In
his
execution
of
both
the
appointed
principal
the punishment
in public
writes toward the very end of his essay, where itseems that all our
effort to differentiate both forms of violence are doomed to fail:
93
94
ARIELLA AZOULAY
achieve
atonement
for them, for there wrath gone out from the Lord; the
is
begun" (Num 16:46). Thus, expiatory power was given to
plague
Moses and Aaron as a means of stopping not only divine violence
but of stopping revolutionary power as well. This expiatory power
stayed invisible to men, specifically to those men who rebelled
against the death sentence inflicted upon Korah and his company.
it is not so much that they could not see it,but that they
Maybe
?
refused to recognize itforwhat itwas
expiatory power.
It is important for Benjamin to distinguish between the use of
unalloyed violence and the determinate affirmation that unalloyed
violence was
indeed in use in a particular case. This distinction
allows one to suppose or claim that the use of unalloyed
is not solely identifiedwith one kind of violence. Having
violence
said this,
can suggest that the "as such," in the second sentence ?
"for
?
as
not
be
will
such"
divine,
only mythic violence,
recognizable
we
in the previous
refers to the use of unalloyed violence mentioned
I therefore suggest that the phrase means, "Only mythic
violence, not divine, will be recognizable as unalloyed violence/'
Thus, both mythic violence and divine violence can make use of
sentence.
means
towards an end
atory power,
which remains
invisible to men
in the case
of divine violence.
itGod
or God's
essays on
in
2 Walter Benjamin,"The
Work ofArt intheAge ofMechanical Reproducibility,"
3
1935-1938
Selected Writings Volume 3
(Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2002). Hereafter cited as "WA."
1913-1926
Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings Volume 1
The Belknap
Press of
(Cambridge, MA:
The
95
96
ARIELLA AZOULAY
as "CV."
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996). Hereafter cited
See my discussion of Benjamin's "mistakes" inAriella Azoulay, Once Upon
a Time:
Press,
FollowingBenjamin(inHebrew) (TelAviv:Bar llanUniversity
Photography
2006).
Walter
Walter
Volume
8
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
Showcase
Bertolt
Journals1934-1955(NY:Routledge,1996), 10.
Brecht,
Press, 2001 ).
It is important to note that, on the one hand, works of art are not the only type of
on the other hand, the other tradition,
object that the tradition transmits, and that,
too, transmitsworks of arts among other objects.
One can hardly miss here the affinitybetween Benjamin's thought and Arendt's con
cept of natality.
The excerpt is taken from a version of the essay on thework of art thatwas written
1991 ), 180.
in French. See Walter Benjamin, Ecrits Fran?ais (Paris: Gallimard,
The conquest of space has intensified in recent years, but even in Benjamin's time
colonization of space through optics and transport had reached impressive propor
tions.
In the 1980s, the largestwave of theworking through mourning of art occurred in
themuseological
space. Numerous exhibitions throughout theworld addressed the
subject. See, for example, Yves Alain Bois, Endgame (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1986), an exhibition and catalogue
MA:
From
Walter Benjamin,SelectedWritings
Volume3 - 1935-1938(Cambridge,
to the author.
belong
ForAtgefs photos of Paris see Eug?ne Atget, Paris (Paris: Hazan,
1992).
Ariella Azoulay, "The Loss of Critique and the Critique of Violence," Cardozo
Review
Law