Lecture 004

Images and Links for Class

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

• art transformed from uniqueness value to informatics value

• film's ability to restrict audience make it more immersive

• mass production of art opens a new social change

• politicizing art was used in wars

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Culture:

• started from cultivation

  • started to build astronomy, technology, civilization

• training people in a specific mode (cultivation of people)

  • Ceres(god of cultivation and culture): has power of making things grow

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Marx:

• historial materialism

• contrasted with Providentialism(the end of history is heaven)

• critique of Capitalism based on history

• Marx draws history (contrast to new criticism, literary criticism -> pretend it doesn't account culture -> but failed)

Terms:

• Base: workers, materials, labors, means of production (we can't see, it affect superstructure)

• Superstructure: culture, politics, relations, (we can see)

• Reification: turning subjects into objects, turning abstract idea into physical thing

• Value: functional value, exchange value (what you make should be equal to what you need to make it -> exchange value should be equal to functional value)