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Introduction Walter Benjamin positions his Angel of History along a trajectory from which it contemplates the mounting pile of debris sloughed off by âprogress,â a form of wreckage that asks to be interpreted as a spiraling series of technological advances, turned into waste by their own obsolescence. Threaded through his writings on new media such as photography, and through his encounter with Surrealism, Benjamin found a liberating potential within the experience of the obsolescent, or, as he called it, the âoutmodedââliberating because it offers a point of view outside the totalizing ambitions of each new technological order. As October approached its 100th issue, one editorial reï¬ex was potentially more morose than triumphant, contemplating the possible obsolescence of any critical project at the present time. Postmodernism, we are told, is obsolete, a message emanating from every reactionary corner of the art world, not to open up new avenues of work and thought, but in order to return us to politics as usual and to a pluralism that has been de rigueur since modernism was in fact declared obsolete. Critical media that this journal has been dedicated to theorizing and historicizingâonce new media like cinema and photographyâhave been simultaneously declared
October – MIT Press
Published: Apr 1, 2002
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