“The Work of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin

In his essay, “The Work of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin discusses the changes that took place in the interior of perception and its influence on the way we see the visual work of art. The shift in perception realized by the mechanical revolution is similar to the change done by psychoanalysis fifty years ago. Freud made his point in trying to give meaning to things that normally nobody noticed. On the other hand the whole philosophy of the twentieth century is a revision of the paradigm of communication and a shift towards the phenomenology of body. The Freudian theories situate the paradigm of body of language, whereas the anthropological communication talks about body as language. It is this change of paradigm that theorize Benjamin as well : we move from soul to body in order to explore its capacity to master the space around, and in this perspective the era of mechanical reproduction has its separate role. Benjamin says that just as in psychoanalysis, film theories explore a different spectrum of optical and acoustical dimensions that enlarged human perception. Perception itself has been transformed. And if we consider Merleau-Ponty and Michel Henry studies on body and perception, Benjamin theory becomes more clear. What film and photography emphases is a deep relation between the artistic value and the value of science. These revolutionary functions of the mechanics have been able to enrich human perception. While traditional art had what Benjamin calls an aura defined by authenticity and authority, the modern age through film and photography writes it of through the mechanical reproduction of art itself. A painting has an aura, meaning that it always going to have a rest that can not be reproduced, while a photograph does not. Even if potentially any work of art can be reproduced, it remains utterly original. It is not the case of a photograph which is the image of an image. What does this loss mean for contemporary art? Benjamin points out that the loss of aura is similar to the loss of authority within the work of art. The question that rises in this perspective is what is going to replace that concept? It is the role of the cameraman who is able to manipulate the eye of his viewer in ways a painter was never able to. The perception involved in these new forms of art create an esthetics of reception too. And this new eon of reception represents the space of a continuous interdependence between the viewer and the object of art. In that respect the loss of aura is a good thing for Benjamin because it offers a potential toward the politicization of art even if this new perspective can be arguable.

Anne McClintock -"post-colonialism" an evanescent concept

Reading the article on post colonialism by Anne McClintock an obvious question surfaces, and that is, when is post colonialism situated. An even more commonsense understanding would state that post colonialism follows colonialism. But McClintock constructs her argument around this concept seen rather as a paradox. Why paradox? Because, for her any concept that includes “post” is rather a period of crisis, where progress is questionable. Any “post” word assumes a certain prevalence of a futile movement where everything becomes relative. For McClintock the term becomes almost irrelevant, because it is first hard to define colonialism. It seems that colonialism is an ongoing process and what means post colonial for some countries in respect to their European influence, may be interpreted as simply colonial with respect to the new colonizing neighbors. If the classical binary axis of power seems dated, McClintock doesn’t trust the binary axis of time either, but rather tries to say that the concept of post colonialism “occurs in an entranced suspension of history” (McClintock 1186). The assonance that McClintock perceives in this term is when it is used synonymously with a post-independence historical period. The concept becomes even more abstract when she refers to the definition given by the book The Empire Writes Back where post colonial literature is defended on a few different aspects. The very last of them states that post-colonialism should be understood as everything that happened from the very beginning of colonialism which means from 1492 on. In that respect every nation would have some grasp of colonialism in its roots. She goes on saying that the term received value on marketing the success of the term post- modernism, but she can not perceive the notion of progress within the concept itself.

Lopez "The Social Construction of race"

Lopez and "The Social Construction of Race" Since the concept of race dates several hundred years ago, there have been numerous attempts in defining it. Lopez, himself a social constructed person regarding race, argues that race should be considered a social phenomenon where physical features and other personal characteristics are mixed in order to give the race a new meaning. For Lopez race is "a vast group of people loosely bound together by historically contingent, socially significant elements of their morphology and/or ancestry. I argue that race must be understood as a … social phenomenon in which contested systems of meaning serve as the connections between physical features, races, and personal characteristics. In other words, social meanings connect our faces to our souls." In other words, for him race is not genetically determined, but rather socially. In order to convince, Lopez takes his own case and says that basically he was given his race by the name he received and that name infuenced his entire racial affiliation. He says that race is practically a formation, a process. He uses a meaningful expression : "racial fabrication" and offers four steps involved in this concept. First, he says race should be related closely to its human nature. Before perceiving the race in a person we should rather consider the human side with all affiliated implications. Second, race is just a part of our human profil. Another important factor is the pace at which people change or evoluate. The last important thing is that races are determined by relations established among people. Consequently race seems to be a process defined by inconstancy. The interactions between people influence the concept of race or these relations offer a subjective trait that is harder to monitor. In other words race is rather defined by perception, how one perceives oneself and how one is perceived by others.