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Another Nature Which Speaks to the Camera: Film and Translation

in the Writings of Walter Benjamin

Gold, Joshua Robert, 1971-

MLN, Volume 122, Number 3, April 2007 (German Issue), pp.

602-622 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/mln.2007.0062

For additional information about this article

Access Provided by Universitaetsbibliothek Heidelberg at 07/28/10 8:07AM GMT

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mln/summary/v122/122.3gold.html
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Another Nature Which Speaks tothe Camera: Film and Translationin the Writings of Walter Benjamin

Joshua Robert Gold

The phenomenon o dj vu has oten beendescribed. Is the term really apt? Shouldntwe rather speak o events which aect uslike an echoone awakened by a sound thatseems to have issued rom somewhere in thedarkness o past lie?

Walter Benjamin,Berlin Childhood around 1900

I

What would it mean to read Walter Benjamins theory o lm inconjunction with his writings on language? I upon rst glance thisquestion appears unusual, even extravagant, it is because one typicallyassociates lm with the visual realmall theoretical investigations intolm sound notwithstanding. Nor does it help matters that scholarshiphas inadvertently obscured certain continuities running throughoutBenjamins works by separating them into an early theological periodand a later Marxist one. Finally, there is also a sense in which a con-siderable obstruction to reconsidering Benjamins theory o lm comesrom Benjamin himselspecically rom his tendency to invoke the

language o pictures, images, and vision (proane illumination, dia-lectical image, and so on).1 Yet his writings on lm and photography,

1 Samuel Weber exemplies commentators longstanding preoccupation with thisaspect o Benjamins writings when he notes that a certain pictoriality or gurality

MLN122 (2007): 602622 2007 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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ar rom breaking with his early works, actually elaborate his initialpreoccupations with speech and language; indeed, he arrives at the

conclusions in the way that he does as a result o his attempt to thinkthrough the implications o these youthul theoretical refections.

Here some degree o caution is required, since readers searching orevidence o the convergence between language and lm in Benjaminswritings will come away disappointed i they limit their investigationto the more predictable places. For example, Benjamin pays scantattention to the phenomenon o lm sound, and what ew commentshe ventures to oer on this topic in The Work o Art in the Age oIts Technological Reproducibility (193536) are so implausible asto border on the bizarre (such as his claim that there is a direct cor-relation between the advent o sound lm and the rise o ascism).2In act, the intersection between language and lm in his writingsmust be sought at those moments that describe the signicance omodern visual technologies in terms o their capacity to vocalizetheextremities o modern experience, thereby rendering audible (andhence intelligible) what would otherwise remain mute. From this per-spective, the revolutionary potential o lm and photography does not

have to do with how theyshowthe world as such, but with the way inwhich this showing constitutes a orm ospeech. Therein consists thetruly innovative character o Benjamins reading, which only becomes

(Bildlichkeit) distinguishes Benjamins own style o writing and thinking rom the veryrst. See Mass Mediauras; or, Art, Aura, and Media in the work o Walter Benjamin,in Walter Benjamin: Theoretical Questions, ed. David S. Ferris (Stanord: Stanord UP,1996) 27.

2 The simultaneity o these two phenomena results rom the economic crisis. Thesame disorders which led, in the world at large, to an attempt to maintain existingproperty relations by brute orce induced lm capital, under the threat o crisis, tospeed up the development o sound lm. Its introduction brought temporary relie,not only because sound lm attracted the masses back into the cinema but also becauseit consolidated new capital rom the electricity industry with that o lm(SW3, 123;

VII.1, 357). In the ollowing pages, reerences to the English translation and Germanoriginals will be given in the body o the text. SW1 = Walter Benjamin, Selected Writ-ings: Volume 1 (19131926), eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridgeand London: Harvard UP, 1996); SW2 = Selected Writrings: Volume 2 (19271934), trans.Rodney Livingstone and others, eds. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and GarySmith (Cambridge and London: Harvard UP, 2002); SW3 = Selected Writings: Volume 3(19351938), trans. Edmund Jephcott, Howard Eiland, and others, eds. Howard Eiland

and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge and London: Harvard UP, 2002); SW4 = SelectedWritings: Volume 4 (19381940), trans. Edmund Jephcott and others, eds. Howard Eilandand Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge and London: Harvard UP, 2003). Additional nu-merals reer to the volume and page number o Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften,eds. Rol Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhuser (Frankurt a. M.: Suhrkamp

Verlag, 1974).

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604 JOSHUA ROBERT GOLD

apparent ater having taken note o how his analysis draws upon arepository o acoustic motis that are already discernable in earlier,

more programmatic essays.3Taking as their point o departure Benjamins claim that it is

another nature that speaks to the camera as compared to the eye,the ollowing pages elaborate the anities between his analysis olm in The Work o Art in the Age o Its Technological Reproduc-ibility and his account o language in On Language as Such and onthe Language o Man (1916). In doing so it will become apparentthat Benjamins theory o lm owes a great deal to his early accountregarding the ability o the human language o names to enable thenon-human, inanimate world to express itsel. This is not to claimthat his vocabulary never undergoes any modication during thetwenty years that intervene between his essay on language and hisessay on lm; quite the contrary. Although he initially has recourseto the notion o speechlessness in order to characterize the Fall oCreation, Benjamin subsequently comes to understand this conditionas the deleterious eect o modern civilization upon the integrity otradition. Speechlessness, in other words, becomes symptomatic o

the modern regime o shock rather than mythic nature. Despite suchdierences, however, the present argument also demonstrates thestriking (i implicit) resemblance between the medium o lm and theactivity o translation in Benjamins writings. In addition to enablingspeech where there was once speechlessness, lm and translation areprocesses that dislocate an original text.4 Ater having touched upon

3 To the best o my knowledge, the only other commentator to have consideredrelationship o language to The Work o Art in the Age o Its Technological Reproduc-ibility is Alexander Garca Dttmann, who asks what Benjamin means when he claimsto oer concepts that are completely unusable or the purposes o Fascism. Readersare directed to Dttmanns provocative article Tradition and Destruction: WalterBenjamins Politics o Language, trans. Debbie Keates, Walter Benjamins Philosophy:

Destruction and Experience, eds. Andrew Benjamin and Peter Osborne (London andNew York: Routledge, 1994) 3258. They are also encouraged to consider Eva GeulensZeit zur Darstellung: Walter Benjamins Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischenReproduzierbarkeit, which examines the stylistic complexities o Benjamins essay. SeeMLN107 (1992): 580605.

4 From this perspective, this article ollows recent interest in Benjamins theory otranslation. See bersetzen: Walter Benjamin, ed. Christiaan L. Hart Nibbrig (Frankurt a.

M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2001). Two contributions in particular deserve mention or exam-ining the importance o auditory motis in The Task o the Translator: Rainer Ngele,Echolalie (1737), and Bettine Menke, Wie man in den Wald hineinrut, . . . Echosder bersetzung (36793). Readers are also encouraged to consult the third chapter oGerhard Richters work Walter Benjamin and the Corpus of Autobiography(Detroit: WayneState UP, 2000). Entitled Benjamins Ear: Noise, Mnemonics, and the Berlin Chronicle,

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these matters, this investigation will conclude with a brie considerationo how Benjamins persistent concern with articulation and muteness

can help us better understand the well-known amous conclusion oThe Work o Art in the Age o Its Technological Reproducibility,which opposes the ascist aestheticization o politics with the politi-cizing o art promised by communism.

II

The sixteenth section o The Work o Art in the Age o Its Technologi-

cal Reproducibility elaborates the description that Benjamin oeredin section ourteen regarding the revolutionary impact o lm uponhuman perception. There he put orth the now well-known contrastbetween the magician and the surgeon: Magician is to surgeon aspainter is to cinematographer. The painter maintains in his work anatural distance rom reality, whereas the cinematographer penetratesdeeply into its tissue. The images obtained by each dier enormously.The painters is a total image, whereas that o the cinematographeris piecemeal, its maniold parts being assembled according to a new

law (SW3, 116; VII.1, 374). Emphasizing the way in which the cameraundermines the experience o distance that was crucial to the aurao the traditional artwork, these lines are consistent with Benjaminspreoccupation throughout this work with the emphasis on proximity inmass culture.5 This being the case, his subsequent remarks in sectionsixteen hardly come as a surprise: Our bars and city streets, our ocesand urnished rooms, our railroad stations and our actories seemed toclose relentlessly around us. Then came lm and exploded this prison-world with the dynamite o the split second, so that now we can set o

calmly on journeys o adventure among its ar-fung debris (SW3, 117;VII.1, 376). The reerence here to dynamite is not without signicance:it evokes the power o lm to ragment, break down, penetrate. Whatit reveals in so doing, according to Benjamin, are aspects o the world

it oregrounds the moti o hearing and sound in Benjamins writings through a closereading o this autobiographical text. Rather than investigate the relationship o soundto translation, Richter reads certain acoustic gures in conjunction with Benjamins

concerns with technologyin particular the telephone. See Richter 16397.5 Conversely, as both Samuel Weber and Rodolphe Gasch have noted, the aura othe artwork or Benjamin can be understood as a maniestation or materializationo distance. See Weber 3536 and Gasch, Objective Diversions: On Some KantianThemes in Benjamins The Work o Art in the Age o Mechanical Reproduction,WalterBenjamins Philosophy189.

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that would otherwise remain inaccessible to a perception let unaidedby this phenomenological prosthesis. As he writes: Clearly it is another

nature which speaks to the camera as compared to the eye [eine andereNatur . . . die zu der Kamera, als die zum Auge spricht]. Other above all inthe sense that a space inormed by human consciousness gives way to aspace inormed by the unconscious (SW3, 117; VII.1, 376).

This last comment, despite its amiliarity to every reader o The Work o Art in the Age o Its Technological Reproducibility, is noless striking owing to its unconventional vocabulary. Ater all, whatis this other nature, and what does it mean or it to speak tothe camera? Admittedly, this reerence to another nature that lmdiscloses becomes comprehensible when read in conjunction withBenjamins elaboration o the seemingly esoteric ormulation theoptical unconscious. Thus, while we have some idea what is involvedin the act o walking and are amiliar with the movement o pickingup a cigarette lighter or a spoon, we still have no idea at all whathappens during the split second when a person actually takes a stepor what really goes on between hand and metal, and still less howthis varies with dierent moods. He concludes:

This is where the camera comes into play, with alls its resources or swoopingand rising, disrupting and isolating, stretching or compressing a sequence,enlarging or reducing an object. It is through the camera that we rst dis-cover the optical unconscious [dasOptisch-Unbewute], just as we discoverthe instinctual unconscious [das Triebhaft-Unbewute] through psychoanalysis.(SW3, 117; VII.1, 376)

According to these remarks, the optical unconscious designates thoseinterstitial perceptual regions which, having hitherto evaded the notice

o the human eye, reveal themselves to the recording techniques omodern visual technologies, similar to the way that the psychic uncon-scious reveals itsel to the interpretive techniques o psychoanalysis.Understood in this manner, the optical unconscious can easily beassimilated to the other nature that Benjamin also mentions, bothphrases being dierent names or the same historical process.6 No,

what remains problematic is the claim that this nature speaks to the

6 Miriam Hansen has astutely noted the ambiguities o Benjamins term: Like hisremarks on lm throughout the Artwork Essay, Benjamins elaboration o the opticalunconscious oscillates between a description o technical innovations and their emanci-pative possibilities, between historical analysis and a utopian discourse o redemption.See Benjamin, Cinema and Experience: The Blue Flower in the Land o Technology,New German Critique40 (1987): 210.

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camera as compared to the eyea matter that becomes even moreconusing owing to the implicit association o this nature with an opti-

cal unconscious rather than, say, an audible or acoustic one. In herinfuential reading o the artwork essay, Miriam Hansen claims thatBenjamin is describing the capacity o lm to lend a physiognomicexpression to objects, to make [the] second nature o the social

world reciprocate the human gaze, similar to auratic experience inphenomena o the rst.7 A suggestive comment, not least because itdraws upon Benjamins theory o mimesisyet it leaves untouched thisallusion to speech. As is so oten the case with his writings, these linesrecall a passage rom another textin this instance, Little History oPhotography (1931)although this version, having been subsequentlyreproduced in the artwork essay, oers little to explain how naturespeaks: For it is another nature which speaks to the camera ratherthan to the eye: other above all in the sense that a space inormedby human consciousness gives way to a space inormed by the uncon-scious (SW2, 510; II.1, 371). In short, Benjamins contention thatphotographic techniques are capable o uncovering hitherto unamiliaraspects o our quotidian surroundings is clear enough rom the context

o both essays; what remain less apparent are the implications o hismove rom a visual eld to a sonic one.

This reerence to another nature thatspeaksbegins to make sensewhen read in conjunction with Benjamins programmatic essay OnLanguage as Such and On the Language o Man. Although it hasuntil recently received less attention rom critics than The Tasko the Translator (1921), this text is central to Benjamins entirecritical undertaking, not least because it attempts to elaborate a non-instrumental conception o language.8 Rather than reduce language

to its capacity or conveying specic verbal contents, On Languageas Such and On the Language o Man examines how the languageo each phenomenon, be it animate or inanimate, strives to commu-nicate (mitteilen) through its own language (Sprache) what Benjamincalls an intellectual essence or content (geistiges Wesen, geistiger Inhalt):There is no event or thing in either animate or inanimate nature that

7 Hansen 210.8 Winried Menninghaus notes that the question guiding Benjamins essay can beunderstood as the ollowing: Wie ist der Begri einer Sprache zu verstehen, die

unmittelbar nichts zu tun hat mit den primren Daten des Sprechens, die manvielmehr als eine Sprache der Sprache bezeichnen kann (wobei der Genitiv nichtdas Verhltnis des Mittels, sondern des Mediums bezeichnet)? See Walter BenjaminsTheorie der Sprachmagie(Frankurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1980) 10.

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does not in some way partake o language, or it is in the nature oeach one to communicate its mental contents [geistiger Inhalt] (SW1,

62; II.1, 141).9 From this perspective, his understanding o languageis not limited to the everyday meaning o this term, which is to saythat he does not confate it with words; rather, language designatessomething more undamental: in the words o Peter Fenves, who likensthe place o language in Benjamins essay to the intuition o space inKantian epistemology, it is the experience, not o objects, but o themodes o their disclosure.10

O course, this is not to deny that Benjamin accords human lan-guage a privileged place in his account. This is indeed the case, or[l]anguage itsel is not perectly expressed in things themselves inas-much as the languages o things are imperect, and they are dumb.Things are denied the pure ormal principle o languagenamely,sound. They can communicate to one another only through a moreor less material community. In contrast to this mute language, humanlanguage establishes a magical community with things that is imma-terial and purely mental, and the symbol o this is sound (SW1 67;II.1, 147). This dierence between the audible and the inaudible

is not the only reason or the unique place o human language; inaddition, notes Benjamin, its distinct position has to do with how thelanguage o man speaks in words. Man thereore communicates hisown mental being insoar as it is communicable bynaming[benennen]all other things (SW1, 64; II.1, 143). Turning to the rst chapter oGenesisan exercise, we are reminded, whose purpose is the discov-ery o what emerges o itsel rom the biblical text with regard to thenature o language (SW1, 67; II.1, 147)Benjamin notes how, in thesecond story o the Creation, God does not create man through the

9 Here it is crucial not to be misled by the expression intellectual content, which doesnot designate the specic essence or meaning belonging to a given entity as much asit does its very capacity for communication. As Rodolphe Gasch observes: Although thiscontent is communicated in language, it does not coincide with the linguistic medium in

which it is expressed. It is something quite dierent rom that medium. He goes on toconclude: The mental content distinct rom the linguistic entity in which it is communi-cated is thus communicability itsel. In itsel, that is, as an expressive medium, languagecommunicates communicability. See Saturnine Vision and the Question o Dierence:Refections on Walter Benjamins Theory o Language, Benjamins Ground: New Readings

of Walter Benjamin, ed. Rainer Ngele (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1988) 87.10 Peter Fenves, Genesis o Judgement: Spatiality, Analogy, and Metaphor in Benja-mins On Language as Such and on Human Language, Walter Benjamin: TheoreticalQuestions83. For an extended treatment on how Benjamins early theory o languagecritically modies and transorms Kantian epistemology, see Werner Hamacher, Inten-sive Sprachen, bersetzen: Walter Benjamin174235 (in particular 19199).

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word (God spokeand there was). Unlike all other beings, thisman, who is not created rom the word, is now invested with the gift

o language and is elevated above nature (SW1, 6768; II.1, 147).This language, continues Benjamin, the language onames, possessesa creative power according to the account o Creation presented inGenesis, which describes how God brought orth nature according toa threeold act: Let there beHe made (created)he named (SW1,68; II.1, 148). Consequently, in granting humanity language, Godgrants it the power o names that it mayknowthings: Only throughthe linguistic being o things [das sprachliche Wesen der Dinge] can he[i.e., man] get beyond himsel and attain knowledge [Erkenntnis] othemin the name. Gods Creation is completed when things receivetheir names rom man, rom whom in name language alone speaks(SW1, 65; II.1, 144). Or as Benjamin notes:

God did not create man rom the word, and he did not name him. He didnot wish to subject him to language, but in man God set language, whichhad served him as a medium o creation, ree. God rested when he hadlet his creative power to itsel in man. This creativity, relieved o its divineactuality, became knowledge. Man is the knower in the same language in

which God is the creator. God created him in his image; he created theknower in the image o the creator. (SW1, 68; II.1, 149)

Hence the progression o terms underlying the argument o OnLanguage as Such and on the Language o Man: among those lan-guages within the order o Creation, the human language owordsisthe highest, while the decisive element within this language is thato the name. However, the crucial point here is that names providehumanity with knowledge o things by rendering them audible: it is

precisely in this regard that naming recties the imperect, mutelan-guage o things, and that Benjamin can claim that Gods Creation iscompleted when things receive their name rom man.11 Invoking amodel o language that eschews the intentionality o meaning, he goeson to note that in name appears the essential law [Wesensgesetz] olanguage, according to which to express onesel [sich selbst aussprechen]and to address [ansprechen] everything else amounts to the same thing.

11 Menninghaus is correct to relate this moti o articulation to the concept o revela-

tion. As he writes o Benjamins Aktualisierung der mystisch-theologischen Bestimmungder Sprache als Oenbarung: das Sich-Zeigen von etwas Unausprechlichemeben:Oenbarungist in ihr nicht lnger exklusives Zeugnis des Gttlichen, sondern eine

Audsrucksqualitt allen Sprechens. See Walter Benjamins Theorie derSprachmagie22. Seealso 2232 or Menninghauss account o the role o this term in writings o GeorgHamann and the Early Romantics.

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Language, and in it a mental entity in it, only expresses itsel purelywhere it speaks in namethat is, in its universal naming (SW1, 65;

II.1, 145). The unction o names in Benjamins account thereoreresembles that o stereo speakers that allow the music rom a recordto be heard, although what is at stake in On Language as Such andOn the Language o Man is no earthly music but the very languageo Creation itsel, as well as the prospect o knowing the beings thatpartake in this speech.12

These reerences to spoken language in On Language as Suchand on the Language o Man introduce a moti that will persist inBenjamins writings or years to come. Indeed, so important are thesegures that one can describe his critical undertaking as an attempt toarticulate what might otherwise remain silent, which is to say that hiswork attempts to bring certain phenomena to speech. From this perspec-tive, there exists a clear anity between philosophy and naming.13However, this does not mean that he regards silence in purely negativeterms, as the mere absence o speech, sound, voice, or communication.No: silence itsel speaks or Benjamin, which is to say that, inasmuchas it is intelligible, interpretable (or this is precisely what the essay

on language suggests) silence possesses its own language as much asany other phenomenon would. In this regard, the task o philosophyconsists in listening to and communicating not simply the languageo this or that artiact, but the silence that has allen over them dur-ing the course o time.

Nonetheless, by the time that Benjamin composes The Work o Artin the Age o Its Technological Reproducibilityand this brings usback to our point o departureit appears that he has ound otheractivities (or rather, technologies) capable o ullling the same unc-

tion that he had once reserved or the domain o philosophy alone.Clearly it is another nature that speaks to the camera as compared

12 Here it is important to note that, like the term intellectual content, knowledgedoes not reer to specic inormation that the language o things somehow conveys;rather, the knowledge that is acquired by hearing this language is precisely knowledgeo this speech as the communication o communicability. To cite Michael Brcker: dieim Namen erkennbare Wahrheit bildet keinen Sachverhaltdas ist der entscheidendeSinn der Benjaminischen Namenstheorie. Sie stellt dem menschlichen Erkennen die

Augabe, die Dinge in ihrem intentionslosen Sein zu begreien. Dies geschieht im

erkennenden Nachvollzug des gttlichen Aussprechens, das ein Nennen, aber keinReden ist. See Sprache, Benjamins Begriffe, vol. 2, eds. Michael Opitz and ErdmutWizisla (Frankurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2000) 745.

13 Gasch draws a similar point in his discussion o Benjamins concern with emancipat-ing language rom its natural and mythical interconnectedness and weblike qualities.See Saturnine Visions 94.

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to the eye: here at last, the meaning behind Benjamins statementregarding the speaking o nature starts to become apparent insoar as

there is a striking terminological consistency between On Languageas Such and on the Language o Man and The Work o Art in theAge o Its Technological Reproducibility. However, twenty years aterhis refections on language, it is lm, not names, that articulatesthe speech o natureanother nature, to be sure, not that o theCreation, but [o]ur bars and city streets, our oces and urnishedrooms, our railroad stations and actories. Such dierences notwith-standing, what is at stake in the The Work o Art in the Age o ItsTechnological Reproducibility remains much the same as beore: theprospect o emancipating a way o speaking rom the world that mightotherwise escape a comportment grounded upon the split betweensubject and object.14 In the context o this account, the revolutionarypotential o lm and photography to transorm human perceptionconsists in the way that theyarticulate, rather than disclose, our physi-cal surroundingsor rather, it consists in the way that this orm odisclosure simultaneously constitutes a mode o articulation.

III

Yet Benjamin does not transpose these acoustic gures rom one textto the other directly: between On Language as Such and on the Lan-guage o Man and The Work o Art in the Age o Its TechnologicalReproducibility, the moti o speech undergoes some crucial modi-cations. Although we have noted an ongoing preoccupation in hisworks with articulating that which is mute (indeed, with articulating theinarticulate itself), the terms that the artwork essay draws upon in orderto describe the condition o speechlessness depart rom Benjaminsearlier account. For the essay on language reads the silence o theinanimate world in conjunction with the Fall o Creation, whenceBenjamin claims the eeling o mourning as the proper expression othis state. (Because she is mute, nature mourns [Weil sie stumm ist,trauert die Natur], he writesSW1, 73; II.1, 155.)15 However, his writings

14 For a discussion regarding the way in which Benjamins conception o language

attempts to bypass the categories o subject and object, see Brcker 74647, 750.15 To be sure, nature as God created it is already mute according to Benjaminother-wise there would be no need or human language. In Benjamins account, the decisivedevelopment ollowing the Fall has to do with the degradation o names, which is inturn bound up with knowledge o good and evil. As he observes, the book o Genesistells us that God, upon seeing Creation, pronounced it good: on the seventh day,

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rom the 1930s are another matter entirely: rather than attributethe persisting muteness o nature to the Fall, these essays interpret

silence as a symptom o specic historical conditions.16 More speci-cally, speechlessness comes to be symptomatic o the degradation oexperiencewhich is to sayErfahrung, notErlebnisin modernity.17

This tendency is best exemplied by The Storyteller: Observationson the Works o Nikolai Leskov (1936), an essay which, though com-posed soon ater the artwork essay, also rehearses the analysis o modernshock that On Some Motis in Baudelaire (1940) will subsequentlyelaborate. What concerns the matter at hand is how The Storytellerdescribes modernity in terms o the contradiction between experienceand expression: according to this analysis, the ascent o modern tech-nology has transormed human experience at a pace that outstrips thecapacities o speech, the primary means that people have always had attheir disposal in order to record and hand down their understandingo the world. From this perspective, the crisis o modernity maniests

God had already cognized with the words o creation. And God saw that it was good.

I evil originally had no place in nature, then it ollows that knowledge o good andevil constitutes a alse distinction that names nothing; it is as though this knowledgeis the product o a orm o pseudo-naming that merely mimics the creative powerso language. Benjamin continues: Knowledge o good and evil abandons name, it isa knowledge rom outside, the uncreated imitation o the created word. Name stepsoutside itsel in this knowledge: the Fall marks the birth o the human word, in whichname no longer lives intact and which has stepped out o name-language, the languageo knowledge, rom what we may call its own immanent magic, in order to becomeexpressly, as it were externally, magic. What characterizes the human word is its reduc-tion o language to an instrument; to cite Benjamin once more, The [human] wordmust communicate something(other than itsel). The account o judgment and law,

which Benjamin goes on to elaborate rom these observations, need not concern ushere; what matters or the present argument is how nature remains imprisoned in itsown silence as a result o this decay o the blissul Adamite spirit o language. SeeSW1, 71; II.1, 15253.

16 Indeed, as Brcker points out in his discussion o Benjamins notion o judgement(Urteil), Das Ende der paradiesischen Einheit von Sprache und Schpung bedeutetzugleich den Beginn der Geschichte. See Sprache 747. In other words, accordingto On Language as Such and on the Language o Man, the muteness or silence oCreation ater the Fall is not so much the result o particular historical circumstancesas much as it characterizes the very condition o historical existence itsel.

17 The dierence betweenErfahrungandErlebniswill be amiliar to those readers whoare acquainted with Benjamins essay On Some Motis in Baudelaire. Although this

text was written nearly ve years ater The Work o Art in the Age o Its TechnologicalReproducibility, the distinction that Benjamin makes between these two terms in thisessay remains relevant to the present discussion:Erfahrungdesignates tradition-bound,long experience, experience over time, whereas Erlebnis concerns the isolatedexperience o the moment. See SW4, 344, ootnote 7. The denitions o these twoterms are the work o the editors.

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itsel as the increasing inability o people to articulate their encoun-ters with the violent orces unleashed by technology. Thus, reerring

to soldiers who ought in the First World War, Benjamin notes in therst section o his essay on Leskov: Wasnt it noticeable at the end othe war that men who returned rom the battleeld had grown silent[verstummt]not richer but poorer in communicable experience[mitteilbarer Erfahrung]? What poured out in the food o war booksten years later was anything but experience that can be shared orally[ Erfahrung . . . die von Mund zu Mund geht] (SW3, 144; II.2, 439).The anity between this vocabulary and On Language as Such andon the Language o Man is unmistakable: the muteness o the men,the inability to communicate experience, books that strive to conveysomething unspeakableall o these details recall motis that antedateThe Storyteller by two decades. The same holds true o Benjaminsdescription regarding the signicance o the gure o the storyteller,

whose crat required him to draw his materials rom a knowledge othe world that one generation transmits to the next by word o mouth:Experience [Erfahrung] which is passed on rom mouth to mouth[die von Mund zu Mund geht] is the source rom which all storytellers

have drawn (SW3, 144; II.2, 440). As this second citation suggests,the pre-modern world o the storyteller was the world oErfahrung: anepoch in which the communicabilityo experience through speechwasstill possible.18 Nonetheless, what sets apart these comments in TheStoryteller rom those in On Language as Such and on the Languageo Man is how this 1936 text attributes the breakdown o the spoken

word to the exposure o the tiny, ragile human body to a orce eldo destructive torrents and explosions (SW3, 144; II.2, 439).

These points o contrast present a better idea o what Benjamin

means when he claims that another nature speaks to the cameraas compared to the eye. For while On Language as Such and onthe Language o Man describes how the act o naming rees the

18 Here readers should take careul note o the act that speech and experience (un-derstood asErfahrung) are not two dierent phenomena or Benjamin, as i the ormerrepresented one option among many or describing the latter. Rather, the connectionbetween these two terms is much stronger to the extent thatErfahrungis inseparablerom speech, that one o its dening characteristics is precisely the manner in which

it is orally conveyed. As Thomas Weber correctly notes: Erfahrung ist ein Artikulati-onsbegri, wobei Artikulation im doppelten Sinne als Verknpung und als Ausdruckzu verstehen ist. Erahrung ist eine Dimension menschlicher Praxis, in der Selbst- und

Weltverhltnis derart artikuliert sind, da das Weltverhltnis als Selbstverhltnis undumgekehrt das Selbstverhltnis als Weltverhltnis artikulierbarwird. See Erahrung,Benjamins Begriffe, vol. 1, 236.

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language o things rom speechlessness, The Work o Art in the Ageo Its Technological Reproducibility describes how modern visual

media articulate an analogous language o historical phenomenathat threaten to exhaust human speech entirely.19 However, the trueanity between language and lm in Benjamins writings only comesinto ocus ater considering his notion o translation. In order to seehow this is the case, it is useul to turn once more to On Languageas Such and on the Language o Man rather than to The Task othe Translator.20 There he writes: The translation [bersetzung] othe language o things into that o man is not only a translation othe mute into the sonic; it is also the translation o the nameless intoname. It is thereore the translation o an imperect language intoa more perect one, and cannot but add something to it, namelyknowledge (SW1, 70; II.1, 151). Invoking a concept that recalls TwoPoems by Friedrich Hlderlin (191415) and anticipates The Tasko the Translator, Benjamin goes on to remark that the translationo the (mute) language o nature into the human language o namesconstitutes the task [Aufgabe] that God imparted to man: In receiv-ing the unspoken, nameless language o things and converting it by

name into sounds, man perorms this task (SW1, 70; II.1, 152). Readin conjunction with The Work o Art in the Age o Its TechnologicalReproducibility and The Storyteller, these remarks demonstratethat, as a process that enables the language o nature to speak, trans-lation resembles the manner in which lm allows the experience oshock to be heard.

19 A word must be said about the peculiar manner in which Benjamin claims thatvisual media, in particular lm, are supposed to realize this articulation. Recall thatthe visual technologies that are revolutionizing perception partake in the very violenceo shock: hence Benjamins remark cited above that lm exploded [sprengen] thisprison world with the dynamite o the split second. This claim suggests the homeo-pathic character o lm, which is to say that it suggests how lm overcomesshock throughshock. From the perspective o his preoccupation with language, this means that onlya dose o the very violence that has undermined speech can contribute to a new wayo articulating modernErlebnisse. As Benjamin notes: I one considers the dangeroustensions which technology and its consequences have engendered in the masses atlargetendencies which at critical stages take on a psychotic characterone also hasto recognize that this same technologization has created the possibility o psychic im-munization against such mass psychoses. It does so by means o certain lms in which

the orced development o sadistic antasies or masochistic delusions can prevent theirnatural and dangerous maturation in the masses. See SW3, 118; VII.1, 377. See alsoHansen 18586, 21011.

20 For a discussion concerning the signicance o Benjamins use o this term in OnLanguage as Such and on the Language o Man vis--visother competing theories olanguage, see Menninghaus 3738.

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Film and translation also resemble one another inasmuch asboth constitute processes involving the displacement o an original.

Benjamins claim in the artwork essay that photographic media havebrought about the temporal and spatial dislocation o the artwork isdoubtlessly amiliar to many readers. To cite a well-known passage: Thehere and now o the original [das Hier und Jetzt desOriginals] underliesthe conception o its authenticity [Echtheit], and on the latter in turnis ounded the idea o a tradition which has passed the object downas the same, identical thing [als ein Selbes und Identisches] to the pres-ent day. By bringing out aspects o the original that are accessibleonly to the lens rather than the eye, and placing the copy o theoriginal in situations which the original itsel cannot attain (SW3, 103;VII.1, 35253), technologically advanced visual media undermine thesingularity o location that underlies the identity and authority o theartwork. In a similar ashion, translation, although it does not generatea multiplicity o texts that are identical to the original, neverthelessentails dislocation rather than appropriation; in the words o CarolJacobs, translation does not transorm an original oreign languageinto one we may call our own, but rather, renders radically oreign that

language we believe to be ours.21

Yet, the disruptive eects o transla-tion or Benjamin are not only evident rom the way that it revealsretroactively the ault lines o the original; in addition, it involves animplicit temporal displacement o the original by submitting it to aseries o successive transormationsa continuum o transormations[ein Kontinuum von Verwandlungen] (SW1, 70; II.1, 151), as Benjamincalls it in On Language as Such and on the Language o Man.22 It

21 Carol Jacobs, The Monstrosity o Translation: Walter Benjamins The Task o theTranslator, Telling Time: Lvi-Strauss, Ford, Lessing, Benjamin, de Man, Wordsworth, Rilke(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993) 129. Paul de Man makes the identicalpoint when he notes: We think we are at ease in our own language, we eel a coziness,a amiliarity, a shelter in the language we call our own, in which we think that we arenot alienated. What the translation reveals is that this alienation is at its strongest inour relation to our own original language, that the original language within which weare engaged is disarticulated in a way which imposes upon us a particular alienation, aparticular suering. See Conclusions: Walter Benjamins The Task o the Translator,The Resistance to Theory(Minneapolis: U o Minnesota P, 1986) 84.

22 Benjamin makes a similar remark in The Role o Language in Trauerspiel und

Tragedy (1916), one o the preliminary ragments that anticipate his studyThe Originof German Tragic Drama(1925): Language in the process o change [Das Wort in Ver-wandlung] is the linguistic principle oTrauerspiel. Words have a pure emotional liecycle in which they puriy themselves by developing rom the natural sound to the puresound o eeling. For such words, language is merely a transitional phase within theentire lie cycle, and in them the mourning play nds its voice. It describes the path

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and communism, as two possible comportments toward moderntechnology, represent two competing conceptions regarding the

proper place oarticulationin the political domain. This brings us toBenjamins amous distinction between the aestheticizing o politicsand the politicizing o art. In order to understand these notions, itis useul to recall the ollowing passage rom the end o The Worko Art in the Age o Its Technological Reproducibility:

Fascism attempts to organize the newly proletarianized masses while leavingintact the property relations which they strive to abolish. It sees its salvationin granting expression to the massesbut on no account granting them

rights. The masses have a rightto changed property relations; ascism seeksto give them expression in keeping these relations unchanged. The logicaloutcome of fascism is an aestheticizingofpolitical life[eine sthetisierung des poli-tischen Lebens]. (SW3, 12021; VII.1, 382)

On one level, the aestheticizing o political lie reers to that processwhereby the artistic values olart pour lartengul the political sphere; tocite Benjamin once again: With DAnnunzio, decadence made its entryinto political lie; with Marinetti, Futurism; and with Hitler, the Bohemiantradition o Schwabing (SW3, 121; VII.1, 382). As these reerences to

DAnnunzio, Marinetti, and Hitler suggest, Benjamin sees a direct lineo descent rom nineteenth-century aestheticism to the political crisis othe thirties.28 However, the passage above is striking on account o theway that it mentions expression(Ausdruck)a direct reerence to the aes-theticist emphasis upon sel-expressionat the same time that it recallsOn Language as Such and on the Language o Man: all expression[Ausdruck], insoar as it is a communication o contents o the mind,is to be classed as language. And expression, by its whole innermost

nature, is certainly to be understood as language (SW1, 6263; II.1,14041). In the context o the artwork essay, this reerence to expressionis unmistakably pejorative, connoting an impoverished substitute or themasses right [Recht] to abolish capitalist relations o production. Misap-propriating modern technology in order to impose a alse resolutionupon the contradiction between revolutionarymeans o production andregressivesocial relations under capitalism (the discrepancy between the

28 It is worth noting here that Benjamin oers a preliminary version o this argument

in Theories o German Fascism (1930), a review o the anthologyWar and Warriors,edited by Ernst Jnger. Reerring to the resurgent militarism endorsed by the writers inthis volume, Benjamin notes: The most rabidly decadent origins o this new theory o

war are emblazoned on their oreheads: it is nothing other than an uninhibited transla-tion [note well: the German term here is bertragungrather than bersetzungJRG] othe principles olart pour lartto war itsel. See SW2, 314; III, 240.

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enormous means o production and their inadequate use in the processo productionSW3, 121; VII.1, 383), ascism mysties expression as

a vehicle or the masses immediategratication.Here it is important to note how Benjamin, in his aside about commu-

nism, does not reer to the politicizing o aesthetics but to the politiciz-ing oart. The reason or this dierence becomes apparent when onetakes the German word or art [Kunst] in the most undamental senseo the term as machina: structure, apparatus, or means.29 Understood inthis manner, the politicizing o art is not a call or ideologically vulgar,tendentious art as much as it is a demand or approaching technologyas a orce whose relationship to society concerns the uture o humanity.But how? The most obvious way would pertain to the ability o moderntechnology to help abolish capitalism and contribute to the revolution-ary reorganization o social relationships. However, Benjamin does notonly understand the revolutionary use o modern technology in strictlyMarxian terms; he also sees it as a means o reconguring humanitysrelationship to nature. In To The Planetarium, the conclusion oOne-Way Street(1928), he already noted o World War I: This immense wooingo the cosmos was enacted or the rst time on a planetary scalethat

is, in the spirit o technology [im Geist der Technik]. But because the lustor prot o the ruling classes sought satisaction through it, technol-ogy betrayed mankind and turned the bridal bed into a bloodbath(SW1, 48687; IV.1, 147). In other words, the dening contradiction omodernity is not simply the one between the private ownership o themeans o production and the social character o productive relations, asa more orthodox Marxian reading would have it; rather, it concerns thetension between the private ownership o the means o production andthe newphysisthat is emerging rom the very orces that capitalism has

developed.30 From this perspective, the politicizing o art would mobi-lize technology or the purposes o liberating the language o nature.31

29 In this regard one could say that Benjamin understands the term Kunst in termso its etymological kinship with the German auxiliary verb knnen(to do, to be able).See Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm, Kunst,Deutsches Wrterbuch, vol. 5: K (Leipzig: Verlag

von S. Hirzel, 1873) 266768.30 See also the concluding remarks to Surrealism: The Last Snapshot o the European

Intelligentsia (1929). See SW2, 21718; II.1, 310.31 In this regard it helps to recall the ollowing remark rom Theories o German Fas-

cism: Deeply imbued with its own depravity, technology gave shape to the apocalypticace o nature and reduced nature to silence [brachte sie zum Verstummen]even thoughthis technology had the power to give nature its voice [die Kraft, die ihr die Sprache httegeben knnen]. See SW2, 319; III 247. This comment is remarkable or the way thatBenjamin brings the rhetoric o speech and speechlessness to bear directly upon hisanalysis o ascism. Although this citation does not explicitly develop the communist

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However, Benjamin does not strictly equate the term nature with theexternal, non-human environment. Essays such as The Artwork in the

Age o Its Technological Reproducibility, The Storyteller, and OnSome Motis in Baudelaire suggest that he also regards the humanbody, particularly the senses, as a orm o vestigial nature.32 Thus, havingsuered under the regime o shock, the body too awaits release rombondage that is only possible through a revolutionary transormation operception that will enable it to recount the wounds and mutilations towhich it has been submitted in the name o progress.33

In concluding this reading it is necessary to add one last observation.Until this point it appeared as though Benjamins theory o translationserved as the model or his subsequent notion o lm; in act, nothingcould be urther rom the case. For i Benjamin conceives o translationas the dynamic transormation o an original text, then it ollows romthe discernable parallels between lm and translation in his writingsthat what is also at stake here is the translating of translation.34 To theextent that translation entails dislocation or Benjamin, this trans-lating o translation amounts to the displacement of displacementanexpression that suggests in turn an original condition o displacement

that existed prior to its decentering. But how could displacement, aterm which by denition reers to that which has lost its grounding,possibly possess a stable or singular sel-identity? In other words,what does it mean to displace displacement, i displacement itsel isalready displaced? One might begin by recalling de Mans observationthat translation or Benjamin is among those activities that kill the

alternative to the ascist misappropriation o modern technology as the artwork essay does,the reerence here to the capacity o technology to give nature its language indicates

what a revolutionary assimilation o technology would mean or Benjamin. A similargesture occurs at the end o this text: But even the habitus o the chthonic orces oterror, who carry their volumes o Klages in their packs, will not learn one-tenth o whatnatures promises [verspricht] its less idly curious but more sober children, who possess intechnology not a etish o doom but a key to happiness. See SW2, 321; III, 250.

32 For an extended discussion o the background behind the politics o perception andcorporeality motivating Benjamins theory o lm, see Miriam Hansen, Room-or-Play:Benjamins Gamble with Cinema, October109 (Summer 2004): 345.

33 See also Susan Buck-Morss, Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamins ArtworkEssay Reconsidered, October62 (Autumn 1992): 341. Although Buck-Morsss approach

and conclusion dier rom the present discussion, readers are encouraged to considerthis article or the way that it connects Benjamins concern with the body to The Worko Art in the Age o Its Technological Reproducibility.

34 Jacobss reading already points in this direction when she notes how the notion otranslation that Benjamin develops in The Task o the Translator translates the everydaymeaning o the word translation. See The Monstrosity o Translation 129.

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original, by discovering that the original was already dead.35 Takingthis as a clue, let us turn to the ollowing well-known passage rom

The Task o the Translator:Fragments o a vessel that are to be glued together must match oneanother in the smallest details, although they need to not be like oneanother. In the same way a translation, instead o imitating the sense othe original, must lovingly and in detail incorporate the originals way omeaning, thus making both the original and the translation recognizableas ragments o a greater language, just as ragments are part o a vessel.(SW1, 260; IV.1, 18)

In her reading o Benjamin, Jacobs has remarked that one would ren-der the oregoing passage translated by Harry Zohn more aithully asFragments o a vessel, in order to be articulatedtogether, mustfollow[folgenin the original GermanJRG] one another in the smallest detailbut need not resemble one another.36 According to her reading aswell as de Mans, this detail undermines any attempt to read behindBenjamins account o translation a totalizing impulse.37 Yet Jacobsobservation is also relevant or the matter at hand inasmuch as herversion brings out the emphasis upon the sequential and the diachronic

in Benjamins language. Not only is this o interest or the way thathe invokes these words with respect to a vase (a representative orthe plastic arts which, as in Lessings Laokoon, have traditionally beenassociated with the register o synchrony).38 In addition, diachronictemporality constitutes one o the dening characteristics o anothermedium whose specicity consists in the progression o images throughtime: lm. This is not to suggest that Benjamins theory o lm is thelogical conclusion o his theory o translation as much as it is to suggest

35 De Man 84. See also 9798: And what happens to the originalI think can besaidthe original is disarticulated, the original is reduced to the status o prose, isdecanonized, all that by the process o translation, because the impossibility o transla-tion is due to disruptions which arethere in the original. . . . Keeping with this lineo thought, he goes on to note: The translation is a way o reading the original which

will reveal those inherent weaknesses in the original, not in the sense that the originalis then no longer a great work or anything, or that it wouldnt be worthy o admira-tion or anything o the sort, but in a much more undamental way: that the originalis not canonical, that the original is a piece o ordinary language, in a wayprosaic,

ordinary languagewhich as such belongs as much to that category as [to the categoryo original]. It is desacralized.36 Jacobs 136 (italics mine).37 See Jacobs 137, de Man 9091.38 The author would like to thank Ms. Joyce Tsai o the Humanities Center at the

Johns Hopkins University or this observation.

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that translationat least as The Task o the Translator elaboratesitwas always already something other than itsel, a designation or a

movement o mutation and prolieration that could not otherwise benamed as long as it remained contained within itsel. It needed thissecond, seemingly derivative termlmto release its innermostpotential as an expression o non-identity.

The Johns Hopkins University

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