Walter Benjamin's diagnostic and critique of culture

• Grant number: 14/16085-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: October 01, 2014
• End date: March 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Marcos Severino Nobre
• Grantee: Fernando Augusto Bee Magalhães
• Supervisor: Jaeho Kang
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of London, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 13/16760-4 - About the critique of the myth in the capitalist society, BP.MS

Abstract

This research internship project inserts itself in a MS research that has been developed at the Department of Philosophy in UNICAMP, Brazil. The general objective of this MS research is to clarify Benjamin's critic model developed in the 30's, which we understand as a critique of culture. To enter profoundly and extract the maximum possibilities of his critic model we are exploring the relation between the technological reproducibility and the concept of phantasmagoria, which is a critical concept he uses to understand modern society culture as a mythology formed by the repression of the emancipatory potentials of technological reproducibility and collective mass experience, and not as an impartial treasure that realizes humanity's progress. Considering this, the research internship project has three objectives that will help to improve the ongoing MS research in Brazil, they are: (i) improve the understanding of Benjamin's diagnostic of mass culture and technological reproducibility; (ii) work on the relation between technological reproducibility and phantasmagoria and, then, on (iii) the relation between phantasmagoria and myth. (AU)