Anguish and Hope in the Light of the Loss of the Aura of the Work of Art

On the Aesthetic Debate between Benjamin and Adorno

Abstract

The loss of aura in modern art, diagnosed in Benjamin’s well-known essay The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility, corresponds to what that author observed in earlier studies as a defining feature of modern life; namely, the impoverishment of collective experience as it is gradually replaced by purely individual experience. Although Benjamin tends to lament the loss of aura in art, he also deposits there his hope for an art committed to the idea of a radical transformation of society; one that assumes that technological change creates the conditions needed to imbue works of art with new forms and meanings in a politically progressive perspective.
Upon examining the debate between Benjamin and Adorno on issues of art, one might say that what is for Benjamin an encouraging vision is for Adorno one full of negatives and pessimism; but such a view does not justify dichotomizing these two thinkers if we consider that the “Janus’ face” of Benjamin’s thought –its oscillation between negative and positive values, between anguish and hope– finds its continuation in Adorno’s insistence on the non-identical; i.e., a negative dialectics as “ontology of false condition” (Adorno).