Walter Benjamin’s account of social class and photography Essay Example for Free

Walter Benjamins account of social class and photography EssayWalter Bendix Schonflies Benjamin was born in July 15, 1892 in Berlin, German. He was many things rolled in one sociologist, essayist, philosopher, translator, literary critic. Occasionally, he was associated with critical theory school of Frankfurt, as he wrote extensively on cultural and sociological thoughts and contributed greatly to the Western Marxism and esthetical theory. He translated Marcel Proust and Charles Baudelaire, the coiner of Modernism. He himself came up with the term auratic perception in the aesthetic field in which civilization was to recover myth appreciation (Mali 1999, p. 170).Benjamin came from in a rich business family. His parents were Emil Benjamin, a banker and later a dealer in antiques, and Pauline Schonflies, his sibling being Georg and Dora. He later married Dora S. Pollak who bore him a son called Stefan Rafael. He killed himself through an overdose of morphine in Portbou a French- Spanish border town in 1940. He was escaping from Nazis, who had invaded France. The discussion below will concentrate on Benjamin account of social class and narration of photography. Social classBeing one of romantic/socialist Jewish-German writers, Walter Benjamin developed a radical anti-protestant and anti- capitalist economy argument, which was chiefly instigated through the leans of Max weber (Lowy, 2010). In his attempt to describe the system of capitalism, Walter Benjamin proclaims that capitalism was a form of an evil and cruel theology. To him there embodys a connection between work ethic of Protestant hard work, ploughing back of profit to business and frugal life, all of which are the characteristics of bourgeois, and capitalism.Winning more and more money, accumulating wealth and in the process of doing so, one should let go of all pleasures of life are the basic tenets of capitalism. To capitalists, a person is conditioned to continue acquiring wealth non for the sake of gratifying his needs and wants, rather as organized way of living. To Benjamin, bourgeois pay little attention or no attention at all, to the struggle of proletariats. Capitalism begs that the human happiness and lifes need are something meaningless and irrational which according to Benjamin it is a complete switch of the common order of life.Capitalism brought about the order of people living for their work instead of working for their life. He borrows the phrase Capitalism as religion from Ernst Bloch and Max Webers work and Benjamin continue to show the apparitional aspects of capitalism, and it is non controlled by religion, but capitalism is in itself a religious phenomena, for it has taken the world like a bush fire, no one is save from its tentacles. His arguments goes on to highlight how at the Reformation time, Christianity opposed capitalism establishment, but how later Christianity let itself into capitalism (Weber 2002, p. 17).One of characteristic of capital ism as a religion is just like a cult capitalism does non have a specific theology or dogma but utilitarianism-which wins the day. Such capitalism utilitarian practices speculations, capital investment, manipulation of stock-exchange, financial operations, acquire and selling goods and services all these aspects take the shape of a religious cult. In capitalism, there is no requirement of a theology, a creed or a doctrine acceptance, rather action counts, which by extension, through social dynamics, take cult practices form.In capitalism, just like in religion, there exist adoration objects which come in form of money. People adore saints in ordinary religions, just as they adore money in capitalism. Benjamin does non stop at that, but goes all the way in comparing paper-notes with Hells door architecture manifesting seriousness as capitalisms Holy Spirit. According to him, the worlds religion state is despair, under capitalism. The other characteristic of capitalism, just like t he permanence nature of a cult, capitalism is conducted year in year out.Capitalism permeates all the life conduct setting on vocation calling of systematic, restless and continuous work. Most if not all of Catholic holi age have been suppressed by Puritan capitalists who see them as some type of idleness. Capitalist religion permanently deploy inviolate pomp every day of Finance or Stock-Exchange, adorers following with extreme tension and anguish, the fall or rise of the value of shares. Capitalist practices know not of stoppage, it take over the control of a person, twenty fours hours a day, seven days a week and three hundred sixty five days a year.