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Studies in Communication and Culture (441-0-1)

Topic

Habit and Habitation: On Walter Benjamin’s Media A

Instructors

Astrid Christa Deuber-Mankowsky

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-425: Wed 5:00PM - 7:50PM

Overview of class

In recent years, Walter Benjamin has become one of the most quoted media theorists. His philosophy of technology is not as widely known as the concept of aura he developed in his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility. The contemporary relevance of his philosophy of technology lies in the fact that Benjamin establishes a connection between technology and different forms of habitation, and between the latter and the concept of habit (Gewohnheit), which is etymologically related to the concept of habitation (Wohnen). This enables a comparison of Benjamin's approach with the philosophies of technology developed by Heidegger, Deleuze/Guattari, and Simondon, all of whom associate technology with the shaping of environments and the problem of poesis. In our seminar, we will reconstruct Benjamin's media anthropology of technology through a close reading of his diaries and essays and compare it to philosophies of technology very much being discussed today.