Lit Theory exam 2

Benjamin, “Work of Art…”

Focuses on the shift from manual to technological reproducibility. Copies can potentially be independent of the original, so you can see things in the copy that aren’t in the original.

Loss of “aura,” an artwork’s original luster, losing its sense of being and origin. What defines art is that it no longer has aura.

An example of this is film, where it’s a presentation of humans facing a technological apparatus. It produces an illusion of being without equipment. With film, you learn how to concentrate or receive things while being distracted.

Horkheimer and Adorno, “Dialect of Enlightenment”

Focuses on how the space of the work of art is disappearing. The U.S. has turned into a farm of mass media and mode of mass deception. Amusement under late capitalism is an escape of the prolonged work process.

We’re getting trained to be a better consumer or better worker, not the possibility of becoming an individual. Part of the effort to occupy an individual’s senses 24/7, and part of the production of the eternal consumer. Structured as a consumer all your life by mass media.

Baudrillard, “The Precession of Simulacra”

The loss of distinction between the map and the territory. When you have the map before the territory, or the copy before the original, you lose the coordinate of the original. Once you have a copy, it endangers the existence of the original.

In a culture that’s become a simulacrum, the original is already lost and there’s no way of getting back to it. So, we live in a condition of hyperreality, in which what’s real and what’s fiction are seamlessly blended together so there’s no clear distinction.

Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society”

We live in a society in which art has been subsumed by consumer culture. Artwork was meant to offend and reorient people, but now it just reinforces the structures of capital.

Parody vs. pastiche: Pastiche is mimicry without satirical impulse, but we no longer have the critical function needed for parody because we have imitations without originals.

We have representations of past periods that are recyclings of past styles without being representations. We live in a culture that proves itself incapable of being able to represent the present.

Ngai, “Our Aesthetic Categories”

We exist in a condition in which aesthetics are everywhere, just in weak forms. The Cute, Zany, and Interesting are trivial, but capture where aesthetics situate themselves in society. Each one represents a core process of the capitalist economy.

The Zany describes how the boundary between work and play has dissolved, forcing us to perform strenuous labor with a smile. The Cute focuses on the consumption of small, unthreatening things in how cuteness triggers a mix of emotions (cuteness aggression), which is both a desire to protect and a desire to dominate or squash. The Interesting is detached and data-driven, born from noticing a small variation of patterns in a sea of information.

Humanity works in a condition in which everything is aesthetic, providing a radically generalized aesthetic experience.

McGurl, “Unspeakable Conventionality”

Amazon is a driving force of contemporary literature, converting us into perverts. It produces a situation where your relationship to literature is structured on your immediate need to be satisfied. All fiction is now genre fiction because of Amazon.

Fan fiction could be a type of fiction written to satisfy something other than consumer desires, since writers do it to satisfy fan impulses, reflecting human desire for stories.