On 'Shock:' The Artistic Imagination of Benjamin and Brecht

Authors

Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra, University of Cambridge, UKFollow

Abstract

“Shock” is perhaps the central concept of modernist aesthetics and Walter Benjamin its best known theorist. It has been well documented that Benjamin’s long-lasting friendship with Bertolt Brecht and the latter’s dramatic theory had a profound influence on his thinking about this notion. Brecht's techniques of interruption and juxtaposition in the practice of epic theater were in close relationship with Benjamin’s use of montage as a mechanism to “liberate” meaning. Despite Theodor Adorno’s and Gershom Scholem’s attempt to situate Benjamin’s thought in a different aesthetic tradition, Brecht’s understanding of Verfremdung (estrangement) and Benjamin’s idea of “shock” are often deemed identical. In this paper I compare both concepts, looking at their points of coincidence and tension. I also relate their development to one of the most telling friendships in the history of twentieth-century philosophy.