The Essay Reconsidered, And Aesthetics, By Walter Benjamin

In “Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay Reconsidered,” Susan Buck-Morss draws on some of Benjamin’s claims, such as the parallel between aesthetic and politics, and argues that one of the main issues with modernity is that it leads to anesthetization of one’s emotions and senses. In other words, modernization resulted in this dullness and numbness when it came to experiencing feelings. Buck-Morss links this necessary numbing to neurasthenia, which would be treated with drugs such as opium (Buck-Morss, 19). The common use of drugs in the modern world led to the discovery of medical anesthesia. This ground-breaking discovery meant that patients could undergo surgery without experiencing pain. The patient became a passive
Phantasmagoria is the “appearance of reality that tricks the senses through technical manipulation” (Buck-Morss, 22). Benjamin was the one who documented the spread of phantasmagoria in public spaces, such as the Paris shopping arcades, and Buck-Morss drew from this to support her argument. Through controlled stimuli, phantasmagoria produced what were thought to be natural, sensory responses, but it is all an illusion done via manipulating the senses. Buck-Morss believes that shopping malls, theme parks, and video arcades are only manipulating the human synaesthetic system by controlling environmental stimuli. This in turn, anaesthetizes the human, “not through numbing, but through flooding the senses” (Buck-Morss, 22). According to Buck-Morss, the simulations provided via shopping malls, theme parks, and video arcades modify consciousness, just like drugs. However, there are no chemicals involved. Rather, consciousness is altered through sensory distraction (Buck-Morss, 23). Furthermore, the effects are felt collectively. Everyone experiences the same illusionary world, void of pain. Buck-Morss here provides insight into her argument of modernity numbing the masses. Shocks were ever present in the modern world in the forms of entertainment too. As life rapidly changed and became mechanized, people indulged in these escapes from reality as a cope mechanism. It was to the point where nothing could be
“Drug addiction was characteristic of modernity” (Buck-Morss, 21). The masses sought more stronger experiences to break through their shock defense, until nothing would hardly have an effect on them. Drug addictions was one of these experiences. Buck-Morss drew from Benjamin’s claim that there was a need to create these substances to alienate the senses. Benjamin states that “self- alienation has reached such a degree that it is capable of experiencing its own destruction as an aesthetic enjoyment” (Buck-Morss, 4). The numbing of senses that resulted from bombarding shocks led people to enjoy their own destruction as entertainment. Buck-Morss argues that for a sliver of a pleasure that drugs provided, people willingly endured something entirely horrible. This was because drugs were the mechanism used to adapt to the shocks. Without the feeling of intoxication to buffer the shock, they could potentially be