Aesthetic Redemption: Psychedelia, Film, and Walter Benjamin’S Sensory Revolution
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 6-2020 Aesthetic Redemption: Psychedelia, Film, and Walter Benjamin’s Sensory Revolution Alexander C. Redlins The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3858 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] AESTHETIC REDEMPTION: PSYCHEDELIA, FILM, AND WALTER BENJAMIN’S SENSORY REVOLUTION by ALEXANDER C. REDLINS A master’s thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Political Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, The City University of New York 2020 2020 ALEXANDER C. REDLINS All Rights Reserved ii Aesthetic Redemption: Psychedelia, Film, and Walter Benjamin’s Sensory Revolution by Alexander C. Redlins This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Political Science in satisfaction of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Arts. ___________ ______________________ Date Jack Jacobs Thesis Advisor ___________ ______________________ Date Alyson Cole Executive Officer THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Aesthetic Redemption: Psychedelia, Film, and Walter Benjamin’s Sensory Revolution by Alexander C. Redlins Advisor: Jack Jacobs This inquiry examines the ways in which the psychedelic nature of film, as posited by Walter Benjamin, has the potential to precipitate class consciousness and lead to humanity’s emancipation from anaesthetizing capitalist forces. We first explore Benjamin’s relationship to, and understanding of, Marxist thought with a particular focus on György Lukács’ theory of reification and Marx’s fetish character of the commodity which Benjamin ultimately believes lead to an erosion of the human sensorium and the destruction of human nature. As such, we explore Benjamin’s revolutionary aesthetic theory which seeks the reversal of these erosive capitalist forces and the redemption of the human sensory system. It is through this aesthetic redemption that Benjamin posits the transcendence of the capitalist mode of production. This inquiry explores what appears to be the source of Benjamin’s redemptive aesthetic theory – the psychedelic drug experience – and traces it to the apex of Benjaminian thought whereby the work of art, with a particular focus on artistic form, is viewed as the primary source for humanity’s redemption. Though largely overshadowed by Theodor Adorno’s theory of the culture industry, we conclude that Walter Benjamin’s revolutionary redemptive aesthetic theory is just as valid today as when it was produced in the first half of the twentieth century. That being said, the artistic form which revolutionary art must utilize in order to be endowed with the “correct” political tendency appears to be radically different today than it was at the moment of Benjamin’s untimely death in 1940 due to the incessant march of technology in the years since. The final section of this inquiry explores the modern artistic forms which, in the Benjaminian sense, revolutionary forces ought to utilize in order to drive back the continued degradation of the human sensorium and redeem humanity thereby opening the possibility for the transcendence of the capitalist mode of production. iv Table of Contents Table of Figures ................................................................................................................ vi Abbreviations ................................................................................................................... vii Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 1. Capitalism and Anaesthatization ............................................................................. 7 1.1 Benjamin’s Turn to Marxism ..............................................................................................7 1.2 Capitalism as Religion ...................................................................................................... 13 1.3 Religion as Opium ............................................................................................................. 16 2. An Aesthetic Theory of Intoxication ......................................................................... 25 2.1 Benjamin and the Beginning of a Theory of Aesthetic Revolution ............................. 25 2.2 Dreaming, Awakening, and Illumination ......................................................................... 32 3. Beyond Intoxicants – A General Aesthetic Theory ................................................ 38 3.1 Surrealism and Epic Theater ............................................................................................ 39 3.2 “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility” ............................ 47 3.3 Aesthetic Redemption Today ........................................................................................... 62 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 68 Appendix .......................................................................................................................... 72 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 84 v Table of Figures Figure 1. Opium Poppy ............................................................................................... 18 Figure 2. Aldous Huxley’s "Cerebral Reducing Valve". ........................................... 20 Figure 3. “Homological scaffolds of brain functional networks”. ........................... 34 Figure 4. Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory. .............................................. 40 Figure 5. Germaine Krull, Street Fair Slide ............................................................... 48 Figure 6. Dziga Vertov, still photo from Man with a Movie Camera. ....................... 53 Figure 7. Fly Agaric Mushroom .................................................................................. 72 Figure 8. Peyote Cactus “Buttons” ............................................................................ 74 vi Abbreviations The below abbreviations are used for in-text citations and footnotes. Full details about the works can be found in the bibliography. AP Benjamin, The Arcades Project. Also referenced as Passagenwerk AR Wolin, Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption Baudelaire Benjamin, On Some Motifs in Baudelaire. As opposed to: The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire which is listed as such. CR Benjamin, “Capitalism as Religion” LHP Benjamin, “Little History of Photography” OWS Benjamin, One-Way Street Paralipomena Benjamin, “Paralipomena to ‘On the Concept of History’” PPI Schweppenhäuser, “Propaedeutics of Profane Illumination” SW V1-V4 Benjamin, Selected Works: Volumes 1-4 WATR Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility” WB:CL Eiland and Jennings, Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life vii Introduction Walter Benjamin, the foremost literary critic of the 20th century, prominent aesthetician, and leading Marxist philosopher has been analyzed and critiqued immensely (with more than 3000 publications regarding his work1) since his suicide on the on the Spanish border, fleeing the Gestapo, in 1940.2 Born in Berlin in 1892 he lived a relatively comfortable life within the bourgeois social class which, though always cognizant of this privilege, would play an important role in his writings and politics. His early academic focus was largely confined to literary criticism and the philosophy of language, rooted in Jewish mysticism, with his dissertation on “The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism” and later his “failed” Habilitationsschrift on the Origin of the German Trauerspiel in 1925. The University of Frankfurt would urge Benjamin to withdraw his “disastrous” dissertation so that he might spare both himself and the university the embarrassment of a formal rejection of his “incomprehensible” work. Despite such harsh criticism, the faculty made few remarks on the work itself and aimed most of their complaints at what they saw as the “instability” of Benjamin’s mental state. Benjamin would regrettably withdraw his dissertation under the weight of such pressure. Despite his failure to habilitate, his Origin of the German Trauerspiel is now considered one of the greatest contributions to literary criticism ever composed.3 It is here, in the Origin of the German Trauerspiel, that Benjamin develops his method that Richard Wolin terms “redemptive criticism”4 which ultimately leads to a Benjaminian theory of aesthetic redemption as the title of Wolin’s book indicates. Redemption, for Benjamin at least, has a start in the Kabbalist tradition with the invocation of two myths: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. The Tree of Life governs the utopian realm before the fall from the grace of God and the Tree of Knowledge represents the exile, or separation, from the utopian (or good) realm.5 Thus, “for the Kabbalistic idea of redemption, origin is goal; that is the return to the condition of universal harmony represented by the tree of life….”6 This return to origin is