Harvard University Press Publicity Blog

"A shattering of tradition"

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (2nd version)" (1935-36, unpublished in this form during Benjamin's lifetime):

"One might focus these aspects of the artwork in the concept of the aura, and go on to say: what withers in the age of the technological reproducibility of the work of art is the latter’s aura. This process is symptomatic; its significance extends far beyond the realm of art. It might be stated as a general formula that the technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By replicating the work many times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to reach the recipient in his or her own situation, it actualizes that which is reproduced. These two processes lead to a massive upheaval in the domain of objects handed down from the past—a shattering of tradition which is the reverse side of the present crisis and renewal of humanity. Both processes are intimately related to the mass movements of our day."

The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media is available now from HUP.

Above: Drawing of Benjamin by Ralph Steadman, 2006.

Women and the French Revolution

Check out this video interview with Denise Davidson, author of France after Revolution: Urban Life, Gender, and the New Social Order, courtesy of The Preservation Channel. In France after Revolution, Davidson offers a powerful reevaluation of the effects of the French Revolution, especially on women. Arguing against the view that the Revolution forced women from the public realm of informed political discussion, Davidson demonstrates that women remained highly visible in urban public life.

Walter Benjamin's archive published

Peter Conrad's review of Verso's new edition of Walter Benjamin's archive serves as a poignant reflection on the man himself and his ambition to exhume a forgotten European past before it vanished for good under the heavy boot of fascism. Don't forget that we're issuing the latest in our collection of Benjamin volumes this May, and this time it's the big one. "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility" is Benjamin's most well-known work, a document that serves as a foundation for modern criticism, and probably one of the most endlessly-cited pieces written during the 20th Century.

Our new edition, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, collects the strongest version of this seminal essay, along with Benjamin's other writings on media, many appearing here for the first time in English. And carrying on with our tradition of making Benjamin's writings look as good as they read, we've illustrated the cover with a fantastic drawing of Benjamin by none other than Ralph Steadman of "Fear and Loathing" fame.

Joseph Schumpeter Revisited

In this week's Chronicle Review, J. Bradford DeLong adds his voice to those calling for the rehabilitation of Joseph Schumpeter, in a review of Thomas McCraw's book Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction. "Perhaps this next century will give Schumpeter's work its proper place as the power of innovation to transform, create, enrich, and destroy makes itself manifest globally," says DeLong, whose economics blog Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal is one of the top destinations on the web for those interested in how economics intersects with our daily lives.

Three new I Tatti volumes

We're pleased to announce three additions to the I Tatti Renaissance Library for the fall season:

• Pietro Bembo's History of Venice chronicles the internal politics and external affairs of the legendary republic, principally conflicts with other European states (France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Milan, and the papacy) and with the Turks in the East. History of Venice, Volume 1, Books I-IV is the first in a projected three-volume edition of this seminal work, available now for the first time in English.

• Leonardo Bruni (1370–1444) was the leading civic humanist of the Italian Renaissance, famous in his day as a translator, orator, and historian, as well as the best-selling author of the fifteenth century. His History of the Florentine People is generally considered the first modern work of history, and was widely imitated by humanist historians for two centuries after its official publication by the Florentine Signoria in 1442. This third volume concludes the edition, the first to make the work available in English translation.

• Pius II (1405–1464) began life as Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini in a small town near Siena and became a famous Latin poet and diplomat. Originally an opponent of the papacy as well as something of a libertine, Aeneas eventually reconciled himself with the Roman church and became a priest, then a cardinal. Finally he was elected Pope Pius II (1458) and dedicated his pontificate to organizing a pan-European crusade against the Ottoman Empire. Pius’s Commentaries, the only autobiography ever written by a pope, was composed in elegant humanistic Latin modeled on Caesar and Cicero. This edition contains a fresh Latin text based on the last manuscript written in Pius’s lifetime and an updated and corrected version of the 1937 translation by Florence Alden Gragg.

More on the I Tatti Renaissance Library--history, purpose and forthcoming volumes.

Mary Beard interview--Part 2

BLDGBLOG has posted Part 2 of the interview with Mary Beard, editor of the Wonders of the World series and author of the forthcoming The Roman Triumph. Also, don't miss Mary's Times Online blog "A Don's Life."

The CIA and the cultural Cold War

Writing in The Guardian newspaper this month, Matthew d'Ancona revealed that newly-minted British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been turning to accounts of the CIA's Cold War "cultural front" such as Frances Stonor Saunders' Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War for inspiration as he crafts a strategy to win Islamic "hearts and minds" from the allure of extremism. Perhaps Mr. Brown should add to his list Hugh Wilford's forthcoming The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, the first comprehensive account of the CIA's use of front groups in the West's ideological war on communism--a series of operations famously exposed by the 1967 Ramparts magazine article that blew the lid off the whole thing, causing no small amount of embarrassment and providing a preview of the scandals that were to tear the Agency apart during the 1970s. Covering the intelligence officers who masterminded the CIA's fronts as well as the involved citizen groups--émigrés, labor, intellectuals, artists, students, women, Catholics, African Americans, and journalists--Wilford provides a surprising analysis of Cold War society that contains valuable lessons for our own age of global conflict.

The Mighty Wurlitzer is scheduled for publication in January 2008. Incidentally, the mystery man half-featured on the book cover is none other than Allen W. Dulles, the Agency's Director from 1953 to 1961, when much of these shenanigans were ongoing.

Venice--the city as theme park

A post over at BLDGBLOG (one of my favorite sites) surmises what Venice will be like once the city is completely depopulated of actual residents, a phenomenon that some observers predict will occur within the next 30 years. From The Guardian, last year:

Depopulation is getting to the point of no return, the Venice council housing chief, Mara Rumiz, said following the publication this week of the latest figures. "Beyond then, Venice will never again be a normal city, but will become a mere tourist destination and lose its charm - even for the tourists themselves," she was quoted as telling the daily La Repubblica yesterday.

If you want to know what the streets of Venice were like in the pre-ghost town days, pick up a copy of James H. S. McGregor's Venice from the Ground Up, a lively tour through the streets and canals of the once-powerful city.

Previously on the blog--maps of Venice, past and present.

Guernica and Total War

Jeffrey Burke reviews Ian Patterson's Guernica and Total War for Bloomberg News in a piece entitled "Guernica, Dresden, Baghdad: How Bombing Civilians Got Popular." The bombing of the Basque town in 1937, as we all know, marks the first airborne attack on civilians, as immortalized in Picasso's famous painting of the destruction. The consequences of this development, as Patterson shows, have been nothing less than transformational in terms of how we understand war in the modern age.

Kissinger--the unlikely icon

David Greenberg reviews Henry Kissinger and the American Century, Jeremi Suri's "bold" offering in the Kissinger re-evaluation genre, in yesterday's Washington Post Book World:

With his gravelly Germanic mumble, horn-rimmed glasses, cold-blooded espousal of realpolitik, and a head that Oriana Fallaci likened to that of a sheep, Kissinger has become a most improbable American icon. Like his equally complex and controversial benefactor, Richard Nixon, he has generated reams of chitchat, psychobabble and lore, from his 383-page undergraduate thesis to his rumored liaisons with starlets. (One favorite tale: when thanked by an admirer for "saving the world," Kissinger replied: "You're welcome.") If only for his Strangelovean presence in American culture, he warrants explication.

||| More on Henry Kissinger and the American Century.