Mapping Benjamin. The Work of Art in the Digital Age

Since its publication in 1936, Walter Benjamin´s "Artwork" essay has become a canonical text about the status and place of the fine arts in modern mass culture. Benjamin was especially concerned with the ability of new technologies - notably film, sound recording and photography - to reproduce works of art in great number. Benjamin could not have foreseen the explosion of imagery and media that has occurred during the past 50 years. Does Benjamins´ famous essay still speak to this new situation? That is the question posed by the editors of this book to a wide range of leading scholars and thinkers across a spectrum of disciplines in the humanities. The essays gathered here do not hazard a univocal reply to that question; rather they offer a rich, wide-ranging critique of Benjamin´s position that refracts and reflects contemporary thinking about the ethical, political and aesthetic implications of life in the digital age.