Piog of Nature create5 rimllarities. One need only thlnk of mimicry. T h e highea capacity f o r producing similaritice, howrver. ic man's. Hie gift of seeing recemhlancer I F nothing other than a rudiment of the powerful cornpulrion in former times t o become and hehave like something else. Perhaps there ic none of hie higher functions in which his mimetic faculty does not play a decisive role. -Walter Benjamin. first paragraph of "On the llimetic Faculty." ( 19.34) all of o u r "higher functions." For this four-page essay of Benjamin's is by n o means an esoteric aside. A11 the fundamentals are herein composed; from his theories of language of persons and of things. to his startling ideas concerning histo?, art in the age of mechanical reproduction and, of course, that infinitely beguiling apiration, the profane illumination achieved by the dialectical image dislocating chains of concordance with the one hand, reconstellating in accord with a mimetic snap, on the other. His fascination with mimesis flows from the confluence of three considerations: alterity, primitivism. and the resurgence of mimesis with modernity. Without hesitation Benjamin P LFISF XOTF T H F PITCH M4DF FOR T H E I\fPORTATCF OF T H F u M I \ f F T I C F.4CtTLTY" IV “a ne\v schooling for our mimetic powers. connection hetxveen the w r y hndy of the perceiver and the perceived (\vhich ties in with the way Frazer develops what he takes to he the tux) great classes of sympathetic magic in The Golden Rouqh. a palpable. i t $ reproduction. that a ray of light. and needs. . Susan Ruck-Alorss makes this ahundantly clear \vith her suggestion that mass culture in our times hoth stimulates and is predicated upon mimetic modes of perception in \vhich spnntaneit!. Second. the novelist Honor6 de Ralzac. and mime \veil. on the other). Renjamin’s notion regarding the importance of the mimetic faculty in modernity is fully congruent \vith his orienting sensibility towards the (Euro--4merican) culture of modernity as a sudden rejustaposition of the very old \vith the \. Much more could he said of the extensive role of mimesis in the ritual life of ancient and “primitive” societies. with his esplanation of photographs as the result of . sensuousness xvith intellection. especially of its evenday-life rhythms of montage and shock alongside the revelation of the optical unconscious made possihle hy mimetic machinery like the camera and the movies. Filementan physics and physiology might instruct that these t\vo features of copy and contact and are steps in the same process.Phystovnomtc Aspects of Uisual Worlds affirms that the mimetic faculty is the rudiment of a former compulsion of person\ tn “hecome and hehave like something else. On this line of reasoning contact and copy merge \vith each other to hecome virtuall!.identical. via the circuits o f t h e central n e n o u s system. Discerning the largely unackno\vledged influence o f children on Renjamin’s theories o f vision. namely the two-layered notion of mimesis that is i n v o l v e d i m the one hand a copying or imitation and. tilm provides. she says.” Toget hold ofsomething hy means ofits likeness. Kitness the bizarre theory of membranes hriefly noted by Frazer in his discussion of the epistemology of sympathetic magic.cry ne\v. on the other. the surfacing of “the primiti\. ”The Work of4rt in the . and a language o f the hod\. this discovery of the importance o f the mimetic is itself testimony to an enduring theme of Renjamin’s. different moments of the one process of sensing. for the resurgenc-not the continuity-f the mimetic faculty.Iknjarnin. a t h e o n traced to Greek philosophy n o less than to the famous Realist. Ry detinition this notion o f a resurfacing o f the mimetic rests on the assumption that -once upon a time” mankind \vas mimetically adept. She seizes on Renjamin’s ohservations o f the corporeal knmvledge of the optical uncomcious opened up hy the camera and the mwies in \vhich. This is not an appeal to historical continuity. Third..combining thought with action. Instead it is modernity that pro\-ides the cause. means. cosmologies o f microcosm and macrocosm. Nevertheless the chstinctrm hetween cnpy and cnntact is no less fundamental. is paramount. sensuous. animation of objects. moves from the rising sun into the human eye \\here it makes contact \vith the retinal rods and cones to form. and in this regard Renjamin refers specifically to mimicry in dance.“ The ahility to mime. on account of capacities such as enlargement and sloiv motion. and divination hy means of correspondences revealed hy the entrails of animals and constellations of stars. a (culturally attuned) c o p of the rising sun. the magic of contact.”’ The Eye a s Organ of Tactility: The Optical Unconscious E w r y day the urge pro\\\ stronger t o pet hold of an ohjcct at very close range hy wav o f its likeness. is the capacity t o Other. in other \vords. on the one hand. for example. and that ofirnitatrm. Here is what is crucial in the resurgence of the mimetic faculty. context.e” \vithin modernity as a direct result of modernity.Age of Mechanical Reproduction. seeing something or hearing something is tn he in contact \vith that something. and the nature of their interrelationship remains nhscure and fertile ground for \vild irnaginingonce one is jerked out of the complacencies of common sense-hahits. No\\ t h e work of art hlends with scientific \vnrk so as to defetishize \ e t take advantage of marketed reality and therehy achieve "profane illumination. 20' . the single most effective step. the commodity conceals in its innermost k i n g not only the mysteries o f the socially constructed i t is this suhtle nature of value and price.ith regards to the mimetic pmvers striven fnr in the advertising image. secular. . a compleritv \ve ton easilv elide as non-mysterious with o u r facile use o f terms such as identification. . ph!-sioelectrically. expression. \ingIy and collectively in intricate divisions o f market orchestrated interpersonal lahor-contact and sensuous interaction with the ohject\vorld hring aforesaid commodity into being. is his vie\\.membranes lifting off the original and k i n g transported through the air to he captured hy the lens and photographic plate!' And \vho can say lve nmv understand any k t t e r i To ponder mimesis is t o hecorne sooner or later caught.ery of an optical unconscious." It is this state ofaffairs that makes the commoditv a mvsterious thing "simply hecause in it the social character of men's lahor appears to them as an ohjective character stamped upon the product of that lahor. i s I interpret it (and I must stress the idiosyncratic nature of my reading). hut henveen the products of their lahnr.nf the thing perceiwd.411 thi\ cnntact o f perceiver ~ i t perceived h is obliterated into the shimmering cop!. in fact. a spectral entity out there. hv .hat ensures the animation of the latter. \\e see that something as its own self-suspended self o u t there. The swallo\ving u p o f contact \\e might sav. hut also all its particulate sensuosity-and interaction of sensuous perceptibilitv and imperceptihility that accounts fnr the fetish qualit\. that it is preciselv the property of such machinery t o pia\.' For him such fetishization resulted from the curious effect o f the market on human life and imagination. in opening up "the long-sought image sphere" to the bodily impact Taossig . not the passage of its diaphanous membranes o r impulsions as light \vaves or hmvsoever you \\ant to conceptualize "contact" through the air and into the e!-e \\here the copy now burns physiognomically. s o adroitly channeled hy advertising (not to mention the avant-garde) since the late nineteenth c e n t u n . "The relation of producers to the sum total of their o\vn lahor." the single most important shock. displacing contact hehveen people onto that kt\veen commodities. e \ . and s o forth-terms \vhich simultaneously depend upon and erase all that is powerful and ohscure in the network of associations conjured hy the notion of the mimetic.." \\rote llarx. the animism and spiritual glwv ofcommodities. image and hodily involvement of the perceitrr in the image. need to note also that as the commodity pa\ses through and is held hy the euchange-\-alue arc of the market circuit \\here general equkalence rules the ronst. aloof unto itself. sense of the marvelous. mused Jlarr. . lording it over mere mortals \vho. in sticky Lveh of cnpy micontact. representation. its po\ver to straddle us. is \\. This capacity of mimetic machines to pump out contactsensuosity encased within the spectrality o f a commoditized \vorld is nothing less than the disco\. like the police and the modern State with their fingerprinting devices. opening u p ne\v possihilities for exploring reality and providing means for changing culture and society along \vith those possibilities. not the least arresting aspect of Renjamin's analysis of modern mimetic machines. \\'hen \\e see something. and as physical impulse darts along neuroptical fihers to k further registered as copy. ontn the retina. "is presented to them as a social rrlation. So \vith the commodity. its cop!-. existing not het\veen themselves. thereby intensifving to the point ofspectralit!. where all particularity and sensuosity is meat-grindered into abstract identity and the homogeneous substance of quantifiahle money-value.here it is obliterated from alvareness hy appearing as an objective character o f the commodity itself. Karl Mary deftly deployed the conundrum of copy and contact \vith his use of the analogy of light rays and the retina in his discussion of commodity fetishism.the commodity as an autnnomous entity \vith a \vi11 of its onm." \\'hat is here decisive is the displacement o f the "social character of men's lahor" into the commodity \\. This restorative play transforms \\hat he called "aura" (\vhich I here identify \vith the fetish of commodities) to create a quite different.\vith and even restnre this erased sense o f contact-sensuous particularity animating the fetish. Mars's optical analogy \vent like thiz. particularly n. these machines \vould replace mystique by some sort of ohiect-implicated enterprise. would create a new sensorium involving a new suhiect-object relation and therefore a new person.4n instance of such an illumination in which contact is crucial is in his essay on Surrealism. by slowing down the motion of reality.‘ But where do we really end up? With technology or magic-r with something else altogether where science and art coalesce to create a defetishizing/reenchanting modernist magical technology ofemhodied knowing? For it is a fact that Benjamin stresses again and again that this physiognomy stirring in waking dreams hrought to the light of day hy the new mimetic techniques bespeaks a ne\vly revealed truth about ohiects as much as it does ahout persons into whom it floods as tactile knowing. Noting that the depiction of minute details of structure as in cellular tissue is more native to the camera than the auratic landscape of the soulful portrait of the painter. “I can no longer think what thoughtc have k e n replaced by moving images. he goes o n to ohserve in a passage that deser\-escareful attention that at the same time photography reveals in this material the phyiognomic aspects ofvisual worlds Xvhich d\vell in the smallest things. by focusing down into. by enlargement. Here Benjamin finds revolutionary potential in the way that laughter can open up the body. penetrating the body of reality no less than that of the viebver. as worked through the surreal. that the clear-sighted eye of the camera will replace the optical illusions of idenlog!-.6By holding still the frame where previously the eye \vas disposed to skid. Marxist revolutionary key? Surely the theory of profane illumination is geared precisely to the flashing moment of mimetic connection. “the distracting element of \vhich is also primarily tactile. \ve can see on further examination that Benjamin’c concept of the optical unconscious is anything hut a straightforward displacement of -magic” in favor of “science”-and this in my opinion is precisely because of the nvo-layered character of mimesis a s both ( I ) copying. n o less individual than it is social! The T h i r d Meaning Benjamin’s theses o n mimesis are part of a larger argument about the history of representation and what he chose to call “the aura” of works of art and cult ohjects prior to the invention of mimetic machines such a s the camera.411 this is summed s the machine opening up the optical unconscious. . “It hit the spectator like a hullet. meaningful yet covert enough t o find a hiding place in \vaking dreams. to state the matter simplistically. scientific knowledge is obtained through mimetic reproduction in many ways. hoth individual and collective. yet hefore one up in his notion of the camera a concludes that this is ebullient Enlightenment faith in a secular Lvorld of technological reason.” Body and image have to interpenetrate s o that revolutionary tension hecomes hodily innervation. the individual. thus acquiring a tactile quality. make the difference hehveen technology and magic visible as a thoroughly historical variable. hut which.”’ The unremitting emphasis of the analysis here is not only on shocklike rhythms.” complains one of 1 want to think. for instance. to the image sphere. the two-layered character so aptly captured in Benjamin’s phrase. the psyche. Surely this is sympathetic magic in a modernist. engage not so much Ivith mind a s \\ith the emhndied mind \\here “political materialism and physical nature share the inner man.* Benjamin pointed out with respect t o the effect of Dada artworks tvhich he thus considered as promoting a demand for film.Physiognomic Aspects of h d [ Worlds of “the dialectical image. like surgery.” . and (2) the visceral quality of the percept uniting viewer with the viewed. it happened to him. What he assumes as operant here is that images. enlarged and capable of formulation. Benjamin’s sources. hut o n the unstoppable merging of the object of perception n i t h the body o f t h e perceiver and not just with the mind’s eye. In abolishing the aura of cult ohiects and artworks.p/yiognomic ospcts qfrisual worlds. n o less emhodied than it is mindful. These machines. We see and 208 . once again.5 . where unconscious strata of culture are huilt into social routines a s hndily disposition. history has not taken the t u r n Benjamin thought that mimetic machines might encourage it to take. of course. Rut. would not have heen lost on him had he lived longer.Benjamin \\ants to stress a harely conscious mode of apperception and a type of "physiological knmvledge" huilt from hahit. The revolutionan task-using the term \vith all the urgency of the time Benjamin a a s writing. and despite the fact that the eye is important to its channeling. "For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning point of histon cannot he solved. I am thinking here not only of tactility and tactile knowing. that is.comprehend hidden details of familiar ohiects.-Colonel in the IJ. But \\hat is the nature of the tactile seeing and comprehension here involved? ~ 1 I Automatic P i l o t Hahit offers a profound example of tactile knmving and is \-en much on Benjamin's mind hecause only at the depth of hahit is radical change effected.hat is trouhlesome and exciting is that not only are \ve stimulated into rethinking \\hat "vision" means as this very term decomposes hefnre our eyes. so linguistically impoverished yet actually so crucial to human being and social life.4nd \\. sensate hody? \\'hich is to say there is an indefinable tactility of vision operating here too. in Euro-i\merican cultures at least.S. he queasily displays for U. The irony that this failure is due in good part to the very power of mimetic machinen to control the future by unleashing imageric power on a scale previously only dreamed of. *hy optical means. this tactility may \\ell he a good deal mnre important to our kno\ving spatial configuration in hnth its physical and social aspects than is vision in some non-tactile meaning of the term.4ir Force as. in an age of \\-odd historically unprecedented State and paramilitan torture." he writes. The automatic pilot functioning \vhile asleep has to he woken to its o\vn automaticity. \ve live constantly in the shado\v of histon's incompleteness. \ e hecome a\vare of patterns and necessities Lvhich had hitherto invisihly ruled our lives. and thus go traveling in a ne\\ \vay \vith a new physiognomy-hursting its "prison-\vorld asunder hy the dynamite of a tenth of a second." hut also. as I write in the late tjventieth centun-the revolutionary task could thus he considered as one in \vhich "hahit" has t o catch up \vith itself. and other sensory modalities are. and nmv. They are mastered gradually hy hahit." . in the aftertaste of the sound bite's rolling echo. Of course \\hat happens here is that the very concept of "kno\ving" something hecomes displaced by a "relating to. under the guidance of tactile appropriation. as conveyed in the mysterious jargon of Lvords like "proprioception. and \\hat I take to he the great underground of knmvledges locked therein. ideologically. Ho\v d o \ye get to knmv the rooms and halhvays of a building? \\'hat sort of kno\ving is this? Is it primarily visual? \\'hat sort of vision? Surely not an abstract hlueprint of the sort the architect dre\v? Ilayhe more like a mohile Cuhist constellation of angles and planes running together in time \\."' So far. with quiet pride two days into the Persian Gulf \var in 1991. The claim is grand.here touch and three-dimensioned space make the eyehall an extension of the moving. as he !vas ready to note." Benjamin asks us to consider architecture as an example of habituated physiognomic knowing." comments the Lt. television news a prolonged video shot taken by one of his precision b o m b seeking its target. I Taossig "I F a l l and I f l y At One Ulith The Bodies F a l l i n g " "It almost makes you seasick. alone. hut \ve are also forced to ask ourselves \vhy vision is so privileged. by contemplation. gliding in . of the \-irtual \vordlessness of pain to-a point recently made clear and important for us hy Elaine Scam. Eisenstein complicated the theory of montage in filmmaking n i t h his notion of the "\-isual overtone. seen in a long shot." Thus Paul \. -1hchamp: "I \\ant t o ahdish the supremacy of the retinal principle in art.at one nith the hodies falling o r rising through the air." He concluded. assuming this free-falling image ofsensuous filmic participation into his argument ahnut the role of the camera and the type of visualization it opens u p for massive destruction as in \var." -Holly\vood. Vincent Canhy's . it's 1 fly. a new uniform formula muqt enter our \ocahulary: "I feel. 1989: Burning Cadillacs erupting frnm screens. Eisenstein understood Kahuki acting. There \\as 210 . Taking his cue from the Kahuki theater of pre-modern japan. linking s o many tons o f explosive with a programmed target on the ground. and the resurgence of mimesis \vith mechanical reproduction. "The estraordinary ph!. as "organic t o film.S. The same object can as easily he the surface o f the moon. For the niusizal overronr ( a thrnh) it i\ not strictly titting to say: "I hear. The flames are of a heat and an intensity t o melt a Cadillac Seville. Starting from toda\. tn take a recent commentary o n a Holl!-\vood film. And. we must add that consummate theoretician and sometime (\\hen he \vas allo\ved) maker o f films." . of emphases that are out of kilter. put under the control o f touch." For hoth.thin and a the interdependence of montage with physiognomic aspects of visual \vorlds.a soft \vavy motion through the Iraqi sky. prirniti\-ism.Air Force at \var having his tummy churned as his mechanical rye smartly dances death through the skv.siological quality in the f d ond the Trw. hen a match is struck hehind the credits." and in this regard emphasized its *cut acting" \vith sudden jumps from one depiction to another." -." Frnm pioneers o f Soviet a\. I am in perpetual movement. l approach and dra\v a\vay from things-I cra\vl under them-I climh on them-I am on the head ofagalloping h o r s c l hurst at full s p e d into a crmvd-I run hefore running soldiers-I throtv myself do\vn on my hack-l rise up with aerol ! . contempmar!. + t h ' e screen erupts \vith the roar o f a blast furnace." N o r for the iwal overtone: "I see."" ." first estahlished with his making of 7he Oldund the . is due t o such an overtone. "Cinema isn't 1 see." In the same \vork Virilio cites a Russian pioneer (If cinema. of David Lynch's Uildut Heart "is all a matter of disorienting scale. Especially s a result of those principles pertinent \\-as the \yay Eisenstein came to understand \\. or a shriveled. I am forever free of human immobility.4nd it \vas precisely the \-enera+ aged techniques of Kahuki theater that provided specific ideas n o less than stimuluc for the modernist theory and film practice of montage itself. 1 am the machine \vhich sho\vs you the \vorld as 1 alone see it.Veu York Time5 revie\\. Dziga \'erto\-: Physiovnomrc Aspects o f Uisual Ularlds 1 am the camera's eye.irilio in hi\ U 5 r u d Cinemu paraphrases '\'e\\ York video artist S a m lune Paik. who time and again in \vord and image espressed those principles at the heart of Benjamin's fascination \vith the mimetic faculty-namel\.Yew in 1928." And in an in\pired act he dra\vs the parallel o f a trip in a fun houce ghost train: "Nightmares are made real.ant-garde t o the capitalist ghost train so it goes. \\'ithout moving one seems t o plummet through pitch darkness. . 1913: "The eye should ht. Sergei Eisenstein. a "filmic fourth affect of 7Jie O dimension" amounting to a "physiological sensation. tactility all the \yay: -Tatlin." he explained. of course.4 Ikutenant Col<onel (of the I1.4 shot of a traffic light held too long is n o longer a traffic light. for instance. pockmarked haskethall photographed in close-up.alterity."' planes-I fall and I f Or. of i'ertov and Tatlin (and surely a profound influence on Renjamin 1. R-ikdaf Heart. And as \vith the fantasy-modeling of much shamanic ritual. Take as an example his 1928 montage-piece. opposes. the most real." the monteur's rhythm bartering desired desires internal to the phantom-ohject world of the commodity itself. enlarged and racy. acting \vith the leg only. theoretician of mimetic machiner! ' .And ho\v mohile." It ahnlishes the space \\. the mercantile gaze into the heart of things. its own transcendence? Far from opposing the commodity. hitting us hetlveen the eyes. and the sentient contact that is another mode . "This Space For Rent. as for instance \vith the Cuna shaman's figurines and the Emheri p y o boat." Montage. namely advertising! Does it not also provide the e\. Benjamin seeks to emhrace it so as to take advantage o f its phantasrnogoric potential. of "insistent. "a hreaking up nfshots.possibilities provided hy the culture of capitalism for its mvn undoing. sentimentality is restored to health and liherated in American style.': Thus \vas the !-de o f naturalism lifted for this earl!. function in this copy-and-contact visual tactility of the advertisement such that umatter-of-factness"is finally dispatched. But what ahout that other great explosion of the visual image since the late nineteenth century. Corporeal understanding: you don't s o much see as he hit. the role k i n g performed in pieces detached from one another. "Transparencies on Film. \\orking at a faster and faster rhythm. \\. acting \vith the right arm only. advertisements-reschool the mimetic faculty than this ohsenation that "people uhmn nothing m o w or touches any longer are r y h r to c'y q u r n hy films? .here contemplation moved and all hut hit\ us het\veen the eyes with things as a car."" Yet is it not the case that it is precisely in the commodity. jerky. as Benjamin puts it." Adorno makes the muted criticism that Benjamin's theory o f film did not elahorate on ho\v deepl!. . and in the face of the huge images across the walls of houses. acting \vith the head and neck only (compare \vith hreak-dancing hy . Each memher of the death agony played a solo performance. Bits of image suffice. such as the shiny leather surface of the saddle pommel and lariat of \4arlhoro Alan filling the hillhard suspended ahove the traffic and prnstitutes hustling on the \Vest Side Hightvay-in a strange rhythm. ho\v complicated." as Eisenstein gleefully put it. just as people \\horn nothinx moves o r touches any longer are taught t o cry again hy films. there is a cathartic. "The genuine advertisement hurtles things at us \vith the tempo o f a good film.\mericans in the streets and suh\vays o f Ne\v York City). grmving to gigantic proportions. what could he a more convincing statement of the notion that films-and heyond films. advertising here expands. careens at us out ofa film screen. unhinges. Lusting t o esploit the optical unconscious t o the full. that Benjamin sees the surreal and revolutionap.here toothpaste and cosmetics lie handy for giants. nearness. Frightening in the mimetic pmver of its own critical language. implodes to engulf the shimmer of the perceiving self. is the advertisement. Tansrig "The Genuine Aduertisement H u r t l e s Things At Us Ulith t h e Tempo of a Good f i l m " I have concentrated on film in my exploration of the rehirth of the mimetic faculty. more specifically in the fetish of the commodity.African-." and "cfisintegrated" acting as \vith the depiction of a dying \yoman.also unprecedented slmving dmvn of movement "beyond any point \ve have ever seen. 1 1 1 M." concerning \\hat he declared to he "todav.eryday schonling for the mimetic faculty? Even mnre so? In his essay. the interconnected dimensions of cop\ and contact turn out to he a i t h this dispatching of matter-of-factnesss! The c~py that is as much a construction as a copy. and fixes reality \vhich. some o f the categories he postulated "are imhricated ivith the commodity character \vhich his theor\. even curative. again. the optical unconscious noiv roves and scavenges. in the midst of its far-flung ruins and dehris. that it is the function of the tahoo tn hold hack violence. Hence. Rehirth of mimesis." Thus insofar as the ne\v form of vision. as a result of Rataille's intellectual lahors on tahoo and transgression. The tahoo is transgressed. Confined within the purity of its theater of operation."" And it is here. moving from t h e nether regions below to the head ahoy-then this tactile knowing of embodied knowledge is also the dangerous knowledge compounded of horror and desire dammed u p hy the tahoo. 212 . The Surgeon's Hand: t p i s t e m i c T r a n s g r e s s i o n Here \ve d o \\ell to recall Benjamin likening t h e process of opening t h e optical unconscious to the surgeon's hand entering the hod! and cautiously feeling its \Yay around the organs. gathering force. the reason of science jvould he impossihle. again. makes advertisements so superior tn criticism: Sot \\hat the moving red nenn says-hut the f i e n pool reflecting it in the asphalt. It is money that liherates these healthy American sentiments and brings the person into perceived contact with things. Yet we are told. . thanks to the uhiquity of mimetic machinery. Short-circuit. The question of heing moved. the laboratory. For the person in the street. Rut . Thus if science depends on tahoos to still the ubiquitous violence of reality-this is t h e function of the xvhiteness of the white coats. as Georges Bataille would insist. a roller-mastering of the s e n w dissol\ing hnth science and art into a new mode of truth-seeking and reality-testing-as \\-hen Benjamin. nearness that. in noting the achievement of film to extend our scientific comprehension of reality also notes in the same breath that film "hurst our prison world asunder hy the dynamite of a tenth of a second. the gnomic parting shot to "This Space For Rent": W'hat. that a new violence of perception is horn of mimetically capacious machinery. hut at the same time contact \vith it through an ether of jerky. The question of being touched. insisting. \vhich is where. the organs palpated. we calmly and adventurouslv go traveling. great violence and humor here as a tumultuous materialism is ushered into modernity's epistemological fold. Copy fusing with contact. incofar as it comes to share in those turbulent internal rhythms of surging intermittencies and peristaltic unwindingsrhythms inimical to harmonious dialectical flip-flops o r allegories of knowing as graceful journeys along an untransgressed hod! of reality. in the theater cfprcfane and everyfay operations. hits us hetxveen (not in) the eyes. it is money that arouses sentience. the gaze grasping where the touch falters. And "every day the urge grmvs stronger to get hold of an ohject at very close range by way of its likeness. espies-and feels. of tactile knowing. in the end. Fire in asphalt. then the new science opened u p hy the optical unconscious is a science to end science hecause it itself is hased first and foremost on transgression-as the metaphor of the mimetically machined eye as the surgeon's hand so \vel1 illuminates. n o such whiteness cloaks with calm the medley of desire and horror that the penetrating hand. . the scientifically prepared and processed sociological questionnaire. science can proceed calmly despite the violence of its procedure. For there is. so that noa. levering the gap hetween tahoo and transgression. is like t h e surgeon's hand cutting into and entering the hod! of reality to palpate the palpitating masses enclosed therein. the hod! is entered. and that \vithout this restraint provided by the unreason of the tahoo. says Benjamin. its reproduction . in this transgressed yet strangely calm new space of debris.* This is why the scientific quotient of the eyeful opened up hy the revelations of the optical unconscious is also an artistic and hallucinatory eye.I j I I I I Ph ysioqnomic Aspects of h u a l Worlds of seeing. Tot just a question of changing the size and fragmenting the copy. and so forth-if science requires a sacred violence to hold back another violence. .Sexyl-ork: International Publishers. R-or o d Cmrmo Thr Iqrstiis of Frrirytim. *The Filmic Fourth Oirnension." in Film Form E c u ! c 14. Brace.. (. \'irilio. 1981 ): 199-205." . " 4 Short History o f Photography. Tiasrig 2. Renjamin. 42." 240. (. I9ML . W . 29. 6. cited in Renjamin.'apiroI . Shorter (London: S e n I d t Rooks).: SIIT ' w. 19.hi&t Frqr. S.4dornci. Erotttm. "The Work d i r t in the . \ R e 7hc of \lezhanical Reproduction. Kenjamin. 9. 1949). 202.71.%-ern. 1989). lephcott and E. (New York: Schocken). Kenjamin.\ ( h t y u e ~~ffolrrrcol F.eorge\ Rataille. (Paris. W ! rn Furn 7'hr Ifoktng a d lJnmdrn.Art in the 4ge of\lerhanizal Reprcductinn.eorges I h h a m e l .\rf (l. Se\v York: Renjamin Rloom. Reissued 19-1).my. T h e Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram. 7'he Drolectm c/. *Tran\parenciec nn Film. and trans.?'-3% Film T h r o p . \'d.. 2 4 . Harry Zohn.r (Camhridpe." 238. 'The F'ork of 4rt in the . ed.ondon. lovanovitch. and ed.ark of . S w a n Ruck-Slorss. Srrrer o d Ofhrr U"nrtnq.3.notes I ." in One-Wo! E.1900. 11. 2nd Smtualirv f San Francicco: City Liphtc. Paul \'irilio.\rrndt. Sergei Eicenrtein.Age nf Slechanical Reproduction. 1967). 5. C. I (. 1 I. 1985).rrmon Cnrryue 2+25 (Fall-U'intrr. 19x9). Eicrnstein. Death.q R " h r Rrnpmin o d rhe Press. 4.q Cfrhr R-orld( Sew Ynrk: (kford (Iniwrsity Pres. Renjamin. IO. 'The U'ork of 4rt in the 4grofSkzhanical Reproduction." 1 % . tram." in Illumrnurimc.Yew. 2 . 26'. 13. T. -'_ Elaine Scam\. Patrick Camiller (London: \'erso.30). Orrync of. 72.ed. trans. Karl Slam.." in Film Form Ftu!s k d a ( K e w York: Warcourt. Hannah . . trans. 3. IS. T h e \\. in Film Thro??'.m. \I. S i r n e dr lo vir-/uture. (. 20. Y r j o Hirn. 5fass.. W . jay in 12.
Report "Physiognomic Aspects of Visual Worlds (Aaarg 2698) "