Abstract
The vanishing of the aura is the most celebrated postulate not only in Walter Benjamin's most celebrated essay, 'Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit' (henceforth the 'Work of Art essay'), but indeed anywhere in his writings. Even stating this fact became long ago a mechanical gesture.' The Work of Art essay, clearly intended as 'a scandal and a provocation', is seen to overturn established aesthetic beliefs so radically as to achieve epochal status.2 In a major recent history of German literature, for example, Benjamin's theses are described as 'terrifying', 'bordering on heresy', and 'shred[dingl the fabric of the most cherished beliefs about art', while even unabashedly hostile commentators feel compelled to pay 'homage [. . .1 to the essay's originality'.3 Benjamin himself encourages such a view when, at the outset of the essay, he claims to provide 'neu in die Kunsttheorie eingefuhrten Begriffe' ('new concepts for the theory of art') and elsewhere expresses anxiety lest his ideas be stolen before he has had the chance to publish them.4 The consensus regarding the importance and originality of Benjamin's account of the decline of aura has helped make the Work of Art essay 'probably the most frequently cited and most intensely debated essay in the history of the academic humanities of the twentieth century'. © Modern Humanities Research Association 2013.
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