BENJAMIN ON ART HISTORY [Re: ADORNO ONE LAST TIME]

[Ralph Dumain]

Actually, the one aspect of Benjamin that does interest me is his literary
criticism.  Since I got no respnse to a question I posed to the Benjamin
seminar, I'll reproduce it here and see if I can get a response:

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Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1999 00:08:20 -0500
To: seminar-11@lists.village.virginia.edu
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain@igc.org>
Subject: WB ON HISTORY OF ART (& PHILOSOPHY)
 
I found this most interesting passage in Wolin, p. 83.  The citation comes
from the BRIEFE.  I wouldn't know whether the larger literary unit
(correspondence?) from which this passage is extracted exists in English
translation.  Perhaps someone would know, or could amplify Benjamin's
thoughts on this subject.  I'm interested in knowing where else Benjamin
explicates his approach to "intensive" examination amd comparison of unique
works.

Benjamin is interested in the unique work of art, of how an understanding
of its own character gets lost as the individual work of art gets absorbed
into historicizing, periodizing, taxonomic and pigeonholing schemes where
it is seen as just one example of a genre with overall average
characteristics, or as one step in the logical progression of art
historical trends.  Benjamin's comment questioning the assumed historical
unity and continuity of a genre reminds me of Kracauer's remarks on
historiography, and also reminds me of Jonathan Ree's remarks on
comprehending the history of philosophy.

Now the quote from WB:

"What concerns me is the idea of how works of art are related to historical
life.  What is certain to me is that there is no such thing as art history.
 Whereas in human life, for example, the concatenation of temporal events
do not proceed solely in a causal, intrinsic, and essential way--rather
without this concatenation in development, maturity, death, etc., human
life essentially could not exist--things are entirely different in the case
of works of art.  The attempt to situate the work of art in historical
development does not open perspectives which lead to its intrinsic being
.... Current investigations in the history of art lead only to the history
of form or content, for which works of art appear only as examples or
models, as it were; a history of the works of art themselves never comes
into question.  There is nothing which links them both extensively and
intensively.... The essential connection between works of art remains
intensive.  In this repsect works of art appear similar to philosophical
systems, in that the so-called 'history' of philosophy is either the
history of uninteresting dogmas or philosophers, or a history of problems,
in which case the interest in temporal extension is in danger of being lost
and passing over into a-temporal, intensive _intepretation_.  The specific
historicity of works of art is in any event one which is never revealed in
'art history,' but only in interpretation.  In interpretation mutual
relations between works of art emerge which are a-temporal, though not
without importance from a historical point of view.  Namely, the same
powers which in the world of revelation (which is history) becomes temporal
in an explosive and extensive way, appear intensively in the world of
reticence [Verschlossenheit] (which is the world of nature and works of art)."
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At 11:25 AM 02/12/2000 -0500, Sharon Sliwinski wrote:
>but i do find benjamin particularly useful for a number of reasons
>(you really should attend to him - and a new book is out just recently)
>mostly because of the current academic obessions with foucault
>i use benjamin because he does similar things in terms of
>the "social construction of history": histroy as a project of the present, we
>are subjects constructed by the discourses of the past, etc etc.