Pivotal in Walter Benjamin is the politicisation of art.

Interviewee: Roger Behrens

The demands Benjamin makes in his 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of its Mechanical Reproduction, in particular the concluding demand calling for a politicizing of art, are only pertinent to a defence of art in so far as Benjamin places his considerations in the context of an antifascist theory and practice. In the preface to the essay Benjamin notes: “The concepts which are introduced into the theory of art in what follows differ from the more familiar terms in that they are completely useless for the purposes of Fascism. They are, on the other hand, useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art”. And so we have it: the politics of art, and not aesthetic politics! In the context of the 1930s this is unconditional: the pressing question in the face of fascist terror is whether and how art and the arts can defend the genuine humanism, the real movement, and that is: communism – in the name of the utopia of liberated humanity.