The observation drawn in my first comment would seem to concern your project insofar as music itself entails a necessarily repeatable component (generally speaking). However, this repeatability is different from the mechanical reproducibility through which technology disseminates that music. Moreover, one might ask about the difference between the reproducible and repeatable structure of say classical music or jazz vs. pop music. Here I think Benjamin may be of limited help, and you might want to draw on Adorno and Horkheimer’s discussion of the culture industry in "Dialectic of Enlightenment" and the differences they draw between these forms of music (e.g. “the hook” of the pop song vs. the classical arrangement).

Drew, this sounds like an interesting paper. My comment is too long here, however, and so I will have to split it into two comments. First, I too am working on Benjamin and some of these questions. One problem that I find particularly troubling in Benjamin is his account of reproducibility and reiteration. He marks the technological era by its specifically mechanical reproducibility, and yet acknowledges that this mechanical reproducibility was incipient in previous eras and art forms by virtue of technologies like the printing press and coining process. Here, however, he wants to suggest that a fundamental difference occurs with the kind of reproducible art of the 20th century in film and photography. The question that emerges is just what is the difference in reproducibility or reiteration itself? Are there substantial differences to be drawn here?

Ryan, I enjoyed your comment. I share some of your hesitations about the stronger claims made here. One objection I have to the critical theorist treatment of "technology" in general, however, is the tendency to see it as an isolated historical-economic moment and the failure to recognize the trans-historical relation that the human has shared with technology. While there is no doubt, a transformation and acceleration of this relationship in the modern era, in order to better understand the implications of this acceleration, I think one needs a fuller consideration of the human relation to technology in general. Here one might consider Heidegger's emphasis on the transformation of "techne" into "modern technology" or Bernard Stiegler's response to Heidegger about the irreducibility of "technics." I think this larger story would affect the way we think about the question of "autonomy" here and its transformation through technology.

Thanks for the comment. In response to your question, I largely agree with your own post above, and your connection between Derrida and Benjamin there. To assume a resolute absence of "barbarism" is a position that seems to be incompatible with the post-Marxist post-Hegelian historical materialism that Benjamin and the critical theorists support. The task, as you say, is to attempt to minimize violence and barbarism through an acknowledgment of the way that they have been covered over. Here, however, your second question about the possibility of a "worse form of violence" is perhaps more piquant. Such a danger seems to be concomitant with this shift in perspective, if only because the logic of historical materialist thinking refuses absolute claims, certain promises, and assured hope. The messianism or redemption here is "weak" not only because it is always insufficient, and thus must remain ongoing, but because as a finite human task, it always threatens to go astray, into a worse violence. In this way, it always continues to foresee the need for its own future redemption.

I also would like to suggest that we might read another Benjamin essay. Most of us purchased the book for the course and there are some great pieces beyond the Art essay. For instance, we might want to read "The Task of the Translator" or "Theses on the Philosophy of History."

Excellent post, Joe. I vote for part of Adorno's "Aesthetic Theory."

This is an interesting post, Alex. I would like to comment on the passage you raised here about the lovely/unlovely tree. I take this passage to rearticulate his general position about the need for a negative dialectic of critique in order to uproot naïve epistemological and normative judgments that reinforce uncritical prejudice. His point, as I see it, is that it is not that the bloom of the tree is strictly unlovely or terrifying as opposed to lovely, but rather we must recognize both sides. Indeed, one might say that the moment of bloom is also the announcement of death on its way. In short, we must be aware how value statements about what is lovely or good conceal the unlovely aspects of what they are predicated of, while at the same time marginalizing other entities as necessarily unlovely. The position of critical reflection that Adorno is advancing then, would be an attempt to avoid the alleviating comfort of any such value system in an effort to recognize both sides, the lovely and the unlovely, to everything. In this effort to maximize critical consciousness we may hope for the “possibility of what is better,” namely non-fascistic evaluations.