Notes on Benjamin's Author as Producer

In this 1934 essay, Benjamin argues that radical artists cannot only articulate a progressive vision in the content of their work but that they also must become technical and stylistic innovators to fundamentally remake the forms of their work and the conditions under which it is produced. While he refers primarily to writers, these ideas have implication for all art forms, and though he is writing at a time of Nazism in Europe, there are pieces of his ideas that can be applied more broadly. He calls for cultural workers to come to truly understand their position as just that--workers under capitalism--and to use their work not only to articulate oppositional 'content' but to actually pay attention to how that work is positioned within that condition: who sees it and where, how it is made, and how it functions socially.

Early in the essay, Benjamin calls for a shifting of attention away from what a work of art is 'about' topically and toward an analysis of both how it functions socially and the position of the artist in that process. "This question directly concerns the function the work has within the literary relations of production of its time," or it inserts the political art project back into the mainstream of art and also allows political questions to be asked of conventional art. He is quite critical of artists who have only remade the subject matter of the work of art to reflect their idealism while leaving the implicit ideas about the position of the artist and the way that art functions untouched. "a political tendency, however revolutionary it may seems, has a counterrevolutionary function as the writer feels his solidarity with the proletariat only in his attidues, not as a producer." He is particularly sharp toward leftist intellectuals, whom he sees as "at best a social group," not a class and certainly not one of true solidarity with the working classes. This is a very anti-vanguardist position he is arguing--that the intellectual (and I would add artist) cannot be identified as outside or leading social change but must be understood within the process of cultural and economic production.

Benjamin asserts strongly that it is not enough for an artist to be "politically correct," he or she must also have 'quality.' He defines quality in a particular way--an expansion of existing forms and invention of new ones in order to "channel the...energies of the present." This kind of innovation is not driven simply by the desire to 'think different' (to borrow from Apple's old slogan reminiscent of the isolation of traditional avant-gardes) but by a deeply felt desire to respond to and change the world. He believes that traditional forms of art have fixed ideas of an artist/writer and public, and he calls on forms that democratize this process, or an art form that "revises the distinction between author and reader" and allow every reader to become a potential collaborator.

Benjamin provides examples of artistic work he feels is concerned with the "mere supplying of a productive apparatus [versus] its transformation." He accuses realist photography of presenting always a beautiful image, or of "transforming even abject poverty into an object of enjoyment." By contrast, he presents Brecht's theater as a radical art form that strives to "eliminate the antithesis firstly between performers and listeners and secondly between technique and content." What the artwork is--its form--is indistinguishable from what it is about--its content. Moreover, this kind of artist "will never merely work on products but always, at the same time, on the means of production." He calls for artists to become 'engineers' who make work that has a useful life as "an organizing function," or a way of foreshadowing and even bringing about the kind of positive, liberatory change that the artist/engineer wants to see. He believes that this work has a necessarily educational function, "which is able first to induce other producers to produce, and second to put an improved apparatus at their disposal. And this apparatus is better the more consumers it is able to turn into producrs--that is, readers or spectators into collaborators." By this method, everyday life is transformed and the existing order is challenged through cultural work.