Seeing through the Fog of Myth
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Benjamin’s early aesthetics reconsiders the meaning of line and colour by observation of their relationships to the signs of guilt and the scrawls of ‘innocent’ children. Transparent colours found in illustrated children’s books and the transiency of facial blushing caused Benjamin to hypothesise about certain redemptive effects of invisible rays on the turbid appearance of sin-stained or disgraced creatures. He further developed these ideas by his critical reading of Simmel’s philosophy. Simmel used analogies of colour and blood circulation to characterise law and economy as special ‘forms’ of life which transcend life itself and impose their quantitative evaluations (fine, reward etc.) on individuals. In Benjamin’s view, those who become familiar with the notion of Schuld (guilt/debt) become obedient to those forms in the ‘fog’ of mythic fate. The ‘flâneur’ exemplified such obedience in the lap of the arcades. He was dependent, like an embryo, on the fertility of our debt-producing economy. Benjamin tried to expose flâneurs to awakening illumination by staging the arcades (together with his own bourgeois childhood) in a changing light. He forces us to read their reactions to the threatening forces in the colour of their faces.
Source: Anthropology & Materialism
DOI: 10.4000/am.405
Author: Takaoki Matsui
Institutions: Berlin University of the Arts, The University of Tokyo
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2233015442