ABSTRACT
The B-effect (or at least, concepts contributing to the B-effect) may be traced to the very dawn of the postmodern era, in Walter Benjamin’s celebrated essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936). Here, Benjamin misleadingly meditates upon the “decay” (225), the “shriveling” (233), and the “destruction” (240) of what he calls the “aura of art.” Proposing that this aura, or the sense of a work’s uniqueness, is “inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition” (225), Benjamin suggests that “the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition” so that “that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art” (223). At best, Benjamin offers a half-truth.
