La politización de la estética y la dialéctica del arte moderno en el pensamiento de Walter Benjamin

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to understand the place of the theses of Walter Benjamin on the mechanically reproducible work of art in his critical project of politicizing aesthetics. We analyse the characteristics of art produced in industrial societies in order to comprehend its social function during the processes of political organization in totalitarian States and in the critical or revolutionary thought. We propose a particular interpretation of Benjamin’s theory of aura to identify a form of experience that remains in the reception of modern artwork, which help us explain the political organization through the figure of a distracted examiner. We also present two ways critical action could be shaped in: the project of politicizing aesthetics and the experimental production of the avant-garde work of art. The former is the possibility of philosophical thought, while the latter represents the revolutionary action into the process of production and the experience of the artwork.