Abstract:
Analyzing the role played by the question of technology in Walter Benjamin's thought, this article delves into the transformation of aesthetic values in modernity. The technologies of reproduction and recording invented during the 19th and 20th centuries, such as photography and cinema, led to a reformulation of the relationship between art, technology, and history, which Benjamin examined in various ways. However, we do not find in his texts a philosophy of technology with well-defined principles. Therefore, this article aims at establishing a constellation of themes emerging from his texts, that allows us to clarify the way technology promotes the transformation and creation of aesthetic values. These values are here understood as axes around which the production and the critique of aesthetic phenomena occur. Photography, as a turning point that was incisively studied by the author, is the leading thread in the different readings of his work. The historicity of perception; the political dimension of art; its relation with memory; the element of play: these are the four axes around which a clarification and, whenever possible, an expansion, of Benjamin's ideas are discussed.
Keywords:
Technology; History; Politics; Memory; Play