What is "aura"? What is the "culture industry"?

"Aura", as defined in Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", is referring to the authenticity of a work of art which is unique because of its inception at a fixed point in time and space: "The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of originality" (Benjamin 220). Benjamin is concerned with the influx of reproduction of art with the advancement of technology, because he believes that with the reproduction of art [even the most faithful one] brings about the "decay of the aura" (Benjamin 222), which makes the idea of the "Cyberaura" problematic. This can be reconciled though if we allow are selves to be of Benjamin's hierarchy of meaning/truth--that only the original can convey meaning, that only the original has value. For although it may be true that the original does hold within it a certain meaning that can not be transferred completely in a reproduction, is it fair to say that a reproduction can convey no meaning at all? or that it hold absolutely no value? Benjamin would say that it is fair, but with the obvious pervasiveness or reproduction on the internet, it would be ignorant to deny its use of reproductions of any value.

Adorno, I feel gets at the crux of what is problematic in cyberspace by taking Benjamin a little further. For Adorno it is no merely the reproduction of art that is "decay[ing] of the aura" (Benjamin 222), but the distillation and homogenization of art or culture. The "culture industry" is "in the business" of culture. The culture industry has progressively made it so that the boundaries between economic interests, entertainment, politics, culture have become blurred: "Culture [which I believe in this sense can be construed as the culture industry] is infecting everything with sameness" (Adorno 94). The culture industry uses entertainment [film, music, etc] as an instrument to restructure the values of its audience, to instead value principles that are economically beneficial private corporations. The culture industry is a fascist entity which seeks to socialize the audience in such a way that the individual no longer has autonomy over itself (though they believe that they do because they have been "re-wired" in such a way that they think that are making choices, however these choices have already been made for them.)


Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Schoken Books, 1968.

Horkeimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.