Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 98.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2024-08-15 09:06:51+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: command of sources

Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, let me offer the following observation by
Walter Benjamin as an exam question for an advanced seminar in digital
humanities. This version comes from his "Little history of photography",
in The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and
Other Writings on Media (Harvard UP, 2008, p .290:

> "... one is brought up short by the way the understanding of great
> works [of art] was transformed at about the same time the techniques
> of reproduction were being developed. Such works can no longer be
> regarded as the products of individuals; they have become a
> collective creation, a corpus so vast it can be assimilated only
> through miniaturization. In the final analysis, methods of mechanical
> reproduction are a technique of diminution that helps people to
> achieve a degree of mastery over works of art--mastery without which
> the works could no longer be put to use."
>
> Discuss.

Yours,
WM

--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews;  Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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