in discussing benjamin's "the author as producer" a few weeks ago with a friend, we came up with a few questions for the author/producer himself. clearly he's in no position to answer, so i put them to others who have thought similarly about his writing. but first, a synopsis of the article will help illustrate my concerns with it.
"the author as producer" seems chiefly about dispelling myths of what bourgeois writers are actually doing when they write and publish. WB suggests that a work's quality is irrelevant in contrast with what's intended by it. for example, an author's tendency towards certain political views are a better determinant of a work's value than the degree to which it meets formal conventions. this relates to my first question, since WB seems to emphasize political tendencies at the expense of others, perhaps equally important.
in discussing tendency, WB argues that it isn't enough for an author to simply politicize his or her work. coming from the left as he does, he suggests that bourgeois artists and writers should not simply write for the proletariat or to the proletariat, since such work would only amount to propaganda or a pedantic form of pedagogy. rather, bourgeois writers should write to bourgeois audiences in order to support the work of the proletarian classes (namely, the overthrow of the capitalist ruling classes). he cites the work of bertolt brecht as an important example, since the playwright's work challenges audiences to consider the material conditions of theatricality, the culture of the theatre, and the economics of theatre-going. in short, WB cites BB as exemplary at challenging the inherited, romantic notion of the aesthetic experience or "art for art's sake," since he suggests that such apolitical formulations of art and culture ignore and obscure real material inequalities and, furthermore, promote the commodification of cultural forms. the pure aesthetic experience, in other words, is a myth that must be countered by avant-garde and politically informed practice. this leads to my second question, since there appears little consideration in WB's commentary on BB about the relationship between an author-as-producer's intended new or redefined aesthetic/political experience and the experience had by audience members.
so, question one: does a political motive—whether intended or not—trump everything in artistic practice? on the one hand, is a supposedly depoliticized or "popular" art degraded by assuming a normative stance relative to the current political climate? on the other, is a politically charged art to be exalted for addressing the same climate? furthermore, if art and politics are each circumscribed by normative practices in their own right—inherent, namely and for example, in practices of aesthetic construction and of policy-making—what factors remain that define popular or avant garde arts as meaningless or meaningful? to be pointed, who really can say whether any art—mass media, photography, theatre, painting, or otherwise—is "productive" or not?
i'll formulate question two in the next post.
