Autonomy and engagement in art (and science):

the concept of technique in Walter Benjamin

  • Rafael Zacca
Keywords: Technique, Engagement, Walter Benjamin, Art, Science.

Abstract

The article aims to contribute to the debate regarding the relation between art and its possibilities of autonomy and engagement, based on the concept of technique as formulated by Walter Benjamin in his essays from the decade of 1930. The main text to be convened, in that sense, is “The Author as Producer”, in which the philosopher formulates a demand of reflecting on this matter based on the function writers can exercise in politics, considering the position they occupy in a sort of literary mode of production. From Benjamin’s demand – of thinking, therefore, about literary relations of production – this article seeks to extend its conclusions to the field of science in the form of a hypothesis. In other words, that which Benjamin concludes in respect to artistic technique (that is, the non-oposition between autonomy and engagement in its development law) is not only the object of this article’s investigation, but a starting point for the elaboration of hypotheses on the relation between science and its possibility (or necessity) of autonomy and/or engagement.  

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References

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Published
2019-10-03