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Walter Benjamin

15 July 1892-26 September 1940

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Addiction is characteristic of modernity. Intoxication served to buffer the shock of the modern. Beginning in the nineteenth century, a narcotic (via a tricking-of-the-senses as to what reality is by new cinema technologies) was made out of reality itself.

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Aesthetics is a genre in which the politicization of modern reproducible art is demanded both to reflect the state of a society and to incite change.

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The Angelus Novus is a drawing in which the nothing repels, a repulsion that is a parting gesture toward beings that are submerging as a whole.

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Aura is a kind of unapproachability, that is, the unique phenomenon of a distance however close it may be.

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Aura is a related to notions of uniqueness and authenticity, both of which become irrelevant in arts such as film which are eminently replicable in nature.

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Aura is all that is fascinating in a work of art, derived from its unique existence which endows it with symbolic authority. Its authority turns on the phenomenon of distance, that of the past and tradition.

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Aura is appearance of a distance, however close the thing that calls it forth. The trace, by contrast, is appearance of a nearness, however far removed the thing that left it behind may be. In the trace, we gain possession of the thing... in the aura, it takes possession of us.

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Aura is that whereby a thing, on the basis of its unbridgeable distance, takes possession of us... just as a trace is a kind of left-behind nearness that allows us to gain possession of a thing.

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Aura's loss is associated with an aesthetic impoverishment, a loss of cultural value and a severing of the connection with the past... the autonomy of the image is one of the fetishes of capitalism.

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Aura is the here and now of the artwork its unique existence in a particular place.

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Aura is the singular leave-taking of the singular, whose singularity is no longer that of an original moment but of its posthumous aftershock.

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The Aura is the symbolic authority of a piece of art gained from its uniqueness, its past, and its place within tradition. With modern reproducibility, that symbolic authority no longer functions.

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Aura is with the possibility of reproduction, in a state of decay and disappearance.

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The Author must attend to teaching the writer about how writing stands in the mode of production. An author who teaches a writer nothing, teaches nobody anything.

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An Author's politics is to be discerned by the extent of his reflection on his place 'in the process of production'.

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The Book is an article which tells much about a man: His tastes, his interest, his habits.