Post-seminar 2

To prepare for this seminar I read the required texts, though I admit I did not really understand them all too well when I first read them. I also tried to find more texts about them to make sure if I understood them correctly, however I did not get to much out of that.

We also had a lecture on the texts which I really felt help me get the text into a context. That context wasn’t really evident as I first read the texts although I knew they were written around the second world war and were probably colored by that fact.

I felt I got the most out of the seminar, since I didn’t get all the questions quite right for my first blog post. A lot of these got straightened out at the seminar.

Firstly we discussed nominalism, which I did get right the first time, but we discussed it in contrast to Platonic realism. While nominalism rejects the existence of universals, Platonic realism instead sees the world as objects that are kind of copies or shadows of the real objects, which are the universals. The objects we perceive in the world are copies from the mold of the true object, which we cannot perceive as it is abstract.

We also discussed how nominalism is based a lot on observation of the world, that we perceive everything as individual and different from everything else. Nominalism and enlightenment are closely linked since both focus on the physical matter and obeservation of objects.

Adorno & Horkheimer contest that a nominalist position can be a dangerous one. If we simply just observe what we see, we will not question what is in the world and never think that things could be different. There will be no potential for change in the world unless we adopt a more conceptualist position. The nominalistic point of view is related to facism where the hierarchy is determined by nature and things are as they are with no question to change them.

We also discussed the revolutionary potential that exists in culture according to Benjamins text and in relation to Adorno & Horkheimer’s. Benjamin explains that movies, but also all other types of reproducible media makes it possible for the working class to be a part of the media. Factory workers can now be portrayed in the cinema as well as star in films. This gives a sort of dignity to them according to Benjamin. Adorno & Horkheimer adopt a more pessimistic view and state that mass media simply portrait things as they are, like a more nominalistic position, where we see things as they are and come to accept them that way. The mass media mirrors the everyday existance and does not show any alternatives to life, therefore it does not really have any revolutionary potential in the same way as Benjamin contests.

We also discussed historical perception and wether there is such a thing as good or bad art. It is Benjamins point of view that there is no such thing as good or bad art, because we are all slaves to our own context which determines how we perceive the art. Therefore facisms’ idea that there is an inherently good art and bad art is wrong.

A new thing I realised about aura at the seminar was when we discussed that german facism used aura in a similar way with its Führer cult. Benjamin sees a revolutionary potential in destroying the aura by use of reproducible culture.