Walter Benjamin

An introduction to the work, key ideas and influence of Walter Benjamin. The discussion is centred around benjamin’s famous essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in which Benjamin addresses the nature of the work of art and aesthetic experience, and the importance of ‘new’ technologies such as photography, cinema and sound recordings, which he argued offered possibilities for either the accommodation of fascism or the resistance to it. Benjamin’s other key works, which ranged across and have influenced many disciplines-and his ideas about commodity culture, history, time and memoey, language, writing and identity will also be considered.