On 丸Nalter Benjamin's Concept of !vfimesis 1

On Walter Benjamin's Concept of Mimesis

Chien-kuang Lin 牢

Abstract

Benjamin’s concept of mimesis, though impo口ant both in his early and latter works,

has not been clearly and systematically investigated, by himself as well as by criti白也 This pa­

per can be regarded as a dialectical mediation between the importance of e>..-plicat旭g this

concept and its lack of explication. By examining his theo月r of language, the notion of al­

legory, and the dialectical images, I suggest that Benjamin’E practice of m i血esis not only

mirrors existing society but looks toward its abolition. In a pre lapsarian state, man’s

mimetic faculty, expressed in the language of names, served as the bond between God, man,

and nature. In the works of 17th-century Baroque allegorists and the 19th-century French

poet‘ Charles Baudelaire, Benjamin discov巴rs a critical modality of mimes話， which provides

utopian anticipation by engaging in a dialectical interplay between the imitation of the sta­

tus quo and the realization of a messianic state. Benjamin’s own practice of the dialectical

images harks back to the true mimetic faculty in perceiving non－自由uous similarities in di­

ametrically opposed things. In 17th-century allego叮， Baudelaire‘s poet可r and Be吋a血恤，s

dialectical images as well, the mimetic faculty pla抖 an essential role in that it provides a

way to tap revolutionary energes and consequently leads to the abolition of mythic histo可﹒

Key words : mimesis, mimetic faculty, allegory, dialectical image

*Instructor, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatu時， Taichung Evening School, Nati口nal Chung Hsing University

國立中興大學畫中夜間部學報（Journal of Taichung Evening School, ~CHU), Vo!.2(1996). 153～ li日

一﹞司一

2 〈固立中興大學臺中夜間部學報〉

In the brief essay,’'On the Mimetic Faculty’” Be吋am旭 points out the importance of

刊mimesis” in human history, saying that ”[p]erhaps there is none of his ﹝man可 higher func­

tions in which his mimetic faculty does not play a decisive role'' (333). Indeed, one might

boldly say that among Benjamin’s essential concepts, such as 叮allegory" and ’,dialectical im­

ages," perhaps there is none in which mimesis does not play a decisive role. From the early,

more theologically- or metaphysically-oriented Benjamin to the late, Marxist Benjamin, the

idea of mimesis had never been abandoned. The importance of this idea, however, is not

matched by its elucidation. Apart from the short essay mentioned above, Benjamin presents

no systematic explanation about this idea. Even the short essay can hardly be regarded as a

full explication of it. This paper can be seen as a dialectical mediation between the impor­

tance of clarifying the idea of mimesis and its want of clarification. I will locate this idea

mainly within the constellation of Benjamin’s theory of language, his concepts of ”allegory”

and the ”dialectical image."

百1e influence of Jewish mysticism upon Benjamin’s thought is generally acknowledged

among scholars. One manifestation of the influence can be detected in his philosophy of

language. For Benjamin, language is more than a means of communication or signification,

which is merely a degenerative form of the pure, pre-lapsarian language. Pure language, he

contends, is essentially an expression that mimics the harmonious relationship between God,

man, and nature. It is, moreover, a central cognitive medium that makes the knowledge of

this harmonious experience possible. Be吋amin’s early essay’”On Language as Such and on

the Language of Man, " written in 1916, shows most clearly the expressive as well as cogni­

tive function of language.

Employing an explication of Genesis I as his theoretical foundation, Benjamin asserts

that language is the link between God, man, and nature. God’s creation of things, from the

beginning, is the creative omnipotence of language:”Let there be--He made (created)--He

named" （”Language” 322）.百1e creation is an event that involves language as its essence.

Moreover, the name is the essence of the named or the created; and God’s act of naming

becomes an act that creates things through the "language of names”(328). In other words,

the name is a kind of language that assimilates or mimics the referent; it ”assimilates the

created, names it’,(323). As the name assimilates the thing in nature, the relationship be-

一 154 一

On Walter Benjamin's Concept of Mimesis 3

tween the two is not arbitrary, as contempor缸Y philologists such as de Saussure claims.

Rather, the name is an essential element in the thing. Between the name and the named,

or the signifier and the signified, there exist some essential similarities司

After the Creation, the name which assimilates to the thing becomes an important

medium through which the knowledge of God and nature is revealed.τbe language of

names, in other words, is a g正t of God to man, wherein the essence of Him and nature is

restored，叩d God’s act of creation, at the 回me time, is recalled. In addition, it is a contin­

uation of the act of creation:”God rested when he had left his creative power to itse芷 in

man. This creativity, relieved of its divine ac阻ality, became knowledge. 1~fan is the knower

in the same language in which God is creator·· (323). Language, in short, is the expression

of divine qualities in things and remains a major medium of recognizing those qualities.

For Benjamin, language is not an exclusive privilege enjoyed by human beings. Every­

thing has its language, which expresses or assimilates the thing. The language of things in

natu時， however, is imperfect compared with human language. Being denied the 、pure

formal principle of language-- sound’” the language of things, dumb and incomplete, can­

not express the essence of themselves (321). Human language, on 由e contrary, is special

because it is capable of lending the th旭E its voice and expressing its essential qualities.

Thus 叮naming is a kind of translation of the nameless into the language of humans”

(Habermas 110). And the translator of that mute language is man.

However, if nature depends upon man’s naming for the release of its rich potentiali­

ties, man also depends upon nature for the understanding of God. ，句 God creates things

in and through the name, the name preserves God’s image in things. Moreover, since the

language of things in na如何 is incomplete and things f臼d their full e"--pression only in

human language, knowledge about nature is possible only when man reads and names it:

”[o]nly through the linguistic being of t出ngs can he gain knowledge of them 企om within

himself--in name"' ("Language" 319). The language of names, therefore, remains the bind­

ing element between God, man, and nature. The revelation of divine and natural qualities

finds its ex'Pression mainly through the name, which mimics or assimilates things 函 nature.

In the 1918 essay’”On the Mimetic Facul恥” written two years after "On Language,"

Benjamin explains more clearly the role of mimesis 扭曲e relations出p between roan and

一 155→

4 〈固立中興大學畫中在閻部學報〉

nature. In this essay, he makes the distinction between two kinds of similarities in language.

One is ’,sensuous similarities’” and the other "nor間nsuous simlarities”{335). By "sensuous

similarities，刊 Benjamin means the similarities or correspondences between a spoken word

and the thing which it signifies. Such similarities can be found in onomatopoeic words (for

example, the spoken word ”tinkle’, is an imitation of the sound of the bell and therefore

there are similarities between them） .τhus human language, by lending sound, the ”pure

formal principle of language’” to the dumb language of nature, produces correspondences

or resemblances between the sound and the referent. Consequently the sound remains an

important medium, through which man can know nature旬

However, the most important function of the mimetic dimension of language lies in

its capacity of producing "nonsensuous similarities," i.e., the correspondences between the

"written word" or ”script" and the thing (335). Benjamin believes that there was once a time

when man’s impulse to be like nature (i.e., his mimetic impulse) was strong. In this state,

he could not only perceive the similarities between things in nature but also (re) produce

them. That is to say, he became part of the natural similarities which he perceived:

As is known, the sphere of life that formerly seemed to be governed by the law of

similarity was comprehensive; it ruled both microcosm and macrocosm. But those

natural correspondences are given their true importance only if seen as stimulat戶

ing and awakening the mimetic faculty in man.(333)

For example, in a dance, the dancer assimilates him/herself to a flower, a tree, or some­

thing else and consequently expresses the qualities of that flower or tree, which is otherwise

silent, inactive, or dumb. This capability of perceiving and producing similarities, along

with the capacity of being in organic communion with nature, has gradually been lost in the

course of history, during which a self-preserving rationality gradually replaced mimetic

communication with nature. Being itself a mimetic response to nature, language, especially

in written form, becomes a medium for the understanding of the corresponding relation­

ship--between natural things themselves, on the one hand, and between nature and man,

on the other. Language, in this sense, can be seen as the ’,highest level of mimetic behavior

and the most complete archive of nonsensuous similarity" (336). Even at the historical

moment when the mimetic faculty has decayed ”phy!ogenetically" as well 刊ontogenetically, ·•

一 15日一

。耳 Walter Benjamin's Concept of Mimesis 5

language remains ”a medium into which the earlier powers of mimetic produc世on and

comprehension have passed without residue『（333﹔ 336).

Here the role of mimesis is defined by the relationship benveen man and nature.

Mimesis is essentially an articulation of man's impulse to be assimilated to nature and also

to express fully the spirit of nature. As Habermas puts it, this kind of primordial mimesis is

”the as-yet-uninterrupted connection of the human orgamsm with surrounding nature. ” in

the sense that "e:>..-pressive movements are systematically linked with the qualities of the en

vironment that evoke them”(111). As the mimetic capacity of language contains the me血－

ory traces of a state in which man and nature e近sted in peaceful communion, man can

perceive in language a humanized nature, on the one hand, and a naturalized hu血凹i吵， on

the other.

However, man's mimetic impulse to b巳 like nature, to be forced into adaptation or as­

similation, also indicates a mythic fear of the violent forces of nature. This fear can be

found in the ”primal an剋ety of animistic world views,” in which man perceives things in

nature as supernatural, demonic deities \vho threaten to engu]f him (112). His adaptation

to nature, therefore, is a means of survival through the total dependence upon or surrender

to mythic forces. Such a kind of dependence should be avoided, for it always leads to man’s

annihilation by nature. On the other hand, the total 凶dependence of man from nature is

also undesirable because it might extirpate the expressive potential of th扭扭 and conse­

quently mutilate the communication between man and nature. Therefore, man should pre­

serve his fundamental difference 在om nature without amputat扭旦 his link or communica­

tion with it .As Habermas comments, the ”vocation of human species is to liquidate [man’s] dependence without sealing off the powers of mi血esis and the streams of semantic energies.··

For the corollary of man’s complete separation from nature is the loss of ”the poetic capac­

ity to intεrpret the world in the light of human needs" (112).

Benjamin's practice of the ”dialectical image，叮 his concep世on of the allegory of

Charles Baudelaire and 17th century Baroque writers aims both to reproduce 可ionsensuous

similarities" whe:ein ''the streams of semantic energies" lie and at the same time to break

the spell cast by mythic nature. Adaptation to or reproduction of a 自由ed, mythic nature is

merely a step toward its liquidation. In th包 connection, one of the functions of mimesis (the

一 157一

6 〈固立中興大學畫中夜閻部學報〉

capacity to perceive and reproduce similarities) in the post-Iapsar旭n state is to debunk

myth through the reproduction of its essential features. Mimesis, therefor宮， is necessarily

ideological (being itself a part of mythic nature）品 well as utopian (aiming to transcend

that nature). I will discuss first the role of mimesis in Baroque allegory.

The term ”allegory," for Benjamin, has little to do with the traditional view which de­

fines it ”as a form of narrative, a narrative that constructs an integral relationship of signify­

ing allegorical representation and sign由ed allegorical meaning'' (Jennings 170). Benjamin

designates allegory as a particular form of writing, wherein signifying representation (or the

signifier) is arbitrarily connected with signified meaning (or the referent). Such a kind of

writing can be observed in 17th-centu叮 German'Baroque writers. In their works, meaning

is shown to be arbitrarily imposed by the allegorist. The "nonsensuous similarities” between

th巴 thing and the name, which can be perceived in an ideal human language, are replac巴d

by the discontinuity or brokenness between the signifier and the signified. Similarly, the

organic view of natu間， in which things are similar and interconnected, is replaced by a na­

tu間， where things appear to be broken, fragmentary, and disc。nnected. In the eyes of the

allegoris包， nature is an object of contemplation and appears as a landscape of images con­

taining innumerable meanings.1 And the rich meanings of things are in fact the result of

the disconnection between the name and the referent, or of the lack of a single meaning.

As Liselotte Wiesenthal pu個 it：’，In the allegorists's power over meanings there lies at the

same time his impotence .... The material objects observed by him are ’incapable' of ’radiat­

ing a single meaning’”(qtd. in Buck-Morss 425). In other words, the precondition of the

rich metamorphoses of a thing is the hollowing out of its meaning. What the allegorists

present in their works is therefore a material world wherein objects are literally dead,

meaningless, and consequently susceptible of any meaning the allegorists impose.

This kind of writing, wherein both the theme and the form show an obsession with the

ruins, the brokenness, or the meaningle$sness of things, was generally considered to be

decadent and inferior. Benjamin's intention in The Origin of German Tragic Drama, how­

ever, is to show that allegoηis a ''morally responsible” form which mimics the dead, broken,

or meaningless nature in order to reveal the true historical condition from which allegory

emerges (Benjamin, Origin 84). Dead nature, in other words, is an allegorical object of

一 158-

On Walter Benjamin’s Concept of Mimesis 7

dead history， τnus the 17曲，century Europe is represented in Baroque allegory as ”natural

history,'’ in which ”history appears concretely as the mortification of the world of things"

(Buck-Morss 160).

The historical experiences of the 17th-century Europe, due to protracted war and th己

consequent social disrupti凹， consist in "hum血 suffering and material ruin" (178). Con­

front.ed with such experiences, the allegorists assimilated their writings to them and hence

images of ruins or brokenness permeate their works. A血ong these images, that of the cor­

pse or the human skull is the ultimate allegorical object for the representation of natural

decay, historical transiency, and the meanin耳lessness of human existence:

Everything about history that.…has been untimely, sorro吋ul, unsuccessful, is ex­

pressed in a face -or rather in a death's head’．．．﹝百ie death’s head] is the form in

which man’s subjection to nature is most obvious and it significantly gives rise

not only to the enigmatic question of the nature of human existence as such, but

also of the biographic historicity of the individual. This is the heart of the alle­

gorical way of seeing ....[the] importance [of history] resides solely in the stations

of its decline. (Benjamin, Origin 166)

The human skull『 in other words, is an emblem of natural decay (things being doomed to

perish) and the futility of man’s existence (his subjection to this natural deca吋. It is, above

all, an allegorical object for historical transiency, or the subjection of histo叮 to natural

decay （可he stations of its decline"'). Unlike the writers of 竹symbolic·· te泣s who hide the

truth of the natural decay of histo可 by representing a progressive history, 2 the Baroque

writers reveal the true nature of their historical e>..-periences as de臼dent, meaningless, and

dead. Th巳 decay of language in Baroque allego可 is therefore a mimicry of a decayed his­

叮叮﹒ The mimetic faculty of the allegorical language, in other words, consists in its capacity

to produce similarities with the historical experiences and thus become itself a part of that

his to可﹒

The aesthetic assimilation to histo可， however, shows not only the fo rce of natural

his to可 enjoining adaptation on the allegorists. Most importantly, it reveals the power of al­

le go可 in deflating the illusion of a progressive view of histo句， vaunted by the symbolic

writers. Allegory, therefo間， is a pa口icular form of mimesis, which is no more ideological

一 159一

8 〈國立中興大學畫中夜間部學報〉

than utopian. It ”at once redeems and debases things .... The destruction of things, their re­

duction to ruin and rubble, enacts at the same time the destruction of the false glimmer of

history--its pretensiorfs to totality and progress”(Jennings 172).

The 19th century French poet, Charles Baudelaire, is a great follower of the 17th­

century Baroque writers. Like the Baroque allegoris怨， Baudelaire reveals in his poetry the

true nature of history and aims to dispel people from the illusory view of their world. How­

ever, ther巳 are at least two differences between the Baroque writers and Baudelaire. First,

the latter is more historical than the former because Baudelaire adheres to the reified

"nat1.1.ral history" of his time without any easy resolution. I will discuss this point later. The

17th-century writers, caught by the dilemma between, on the one hand, the recognition

that hist。可 is nothing more than a natural history and, on the other, the necessity of justify­

ing their miserable existence, turn to Christianity for a final resolution. The historical suι

fering of human beings is thus explained as the consequence of the Fall of man and the

triumph of evil (Satan) in the secular world. This world, revealed as illus。可 by the

promised eternity of Heaven, will one day be redeemed by the Messiah. The suffering in

this world becomes insignificant because it is merely a preparation for the happiness in that

Other World. The particular concern with historicity in allego呵， Benjamin observes, is con­

sequently abandoned. The allegory of human suffering and historical decay, by this way,

becomes the allegory of Resurrection:’,The intention does not faithfully rest in the con­

templation of bones [or human skull], but faithlessly leaps forward to the idea of resurrec­

ti on”(Benjamin, Origin 233).3

The second difference between Baudelaire and the Baroque writers is the difference

of historical experience. While 17th centu可 in Europe was a time of material ruin and

human suffering, 19th centu可 was a time when the expansion of industrial capitalism resul­

ted in economic prosperity and material abundance.τhe condition that had given a

prominent place to the motifs of death and meaninglessness in Baroque allegory was no

longer present in Baudelaire's age. Why does Baudelaire's poet可 also abound with the

themes of death, evil, or meaninglessness when he should celebrate the economic prosper­

ity (which is often equivalent to human happiness) of high capitalism? The answer is that

because human happiness promised by caP.italism is an illusion; and death or meaningless

160一

On Walter Benjamin's Concept of 1'.·fimesis 9

existence is the true historical emblem of capitalism.

In commodities, Benjamin discovers the continuation of the Baroque emblem of

death in 19th-centruy Paris. In a capitalist socie吟， the inner meaning可 namely, the use value,

of a thing is replaced by its exhibition or exchange value.τbe value of a 由i時， once it is ex­

hibited in the marketplace and becomes a commodity, is nothing more than its price. Its

essence, its fundamental difference from other things, is annulled in the marketplace. On

the other hand, a new essence or meanin皂， namely,司 the price, takes over. However, the

second meaning (the p丘ce) of a commodity is usually unrelated to the first one:”[h]O\V the

price of the commodity is arrived at can never be totally foreseen, not in the course of its

production, nor later when it finds itself in the market.'' In other words, the meaning of a

comrnodi句話 just as arbitrary as that of the allegorical object of 17th-century Baroque

writers: "The fashions of meanings [in Baroque allegory﹞血nged almost as rapidly as the

prices of commodities change. The meaning of the commodity is indeed: Price·· (qtd. in

Buck-Morss 181).

However, the hollowing out of a single meaning, in the natural objects of 17th­

century Europe as well as in the commodities of 19th-century Paris, ahvays leads to the sub­

jective imposition of other meanings upon them . In addition to the various prices that may

be arbitrarily attached to a commodity, this commodity may also become a wish image for

consumers. This is possible only when the commodity is self-alienated. Once a commodity

is exhibited in the market, it loses contact with human labor, which is in fact the origin of

that commodity. It now appears as an independent, quasi-human entity containing a life of

its own. Thus a table is not just something made out of wood by human labor; it "not only

stands with its feet on the ground, but······on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain

grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than if it \Vere to begin dancing of i臼 own will"' (Marx

163 65）.前le estrangement of a commodity, i臼 alienation from human labor and from the

initial meaning, finally results in its ’,phantasmagoric-4 appearanc巳 The commodity 叫i­

刮目 a false 耳littering light and assumes an organic appearance, which attracts consumers to

buy and possess 泣， In other words, commodities have become wish ima耳目 for consumers,

who load them, as Adorno comments,”with intentions of wish and anxiety叮（qtd. 凶 Buck­

Morss 182).

一 161 一

10 （國立中興大學畫中夜間部學報〉

A phantasmagoric world is a world of commodities which have become wish images

for consumers. And a phantasmagoric worldview sees the modern capitalist world as a

world of material prosperity wherein lies the source of its wish fulfillment. This view, how­

ever, is rejected in Baudelaire＇日 poems as an illusion. Les Fleurs du ma!, for example, aims

precisely to tear away the phantasmagoric, prosperous, or organic appearance of capitalism

and reveal the underlying hollowness and poverty. He exposes the world of capitalism as

the world of death, in the same way the Baroque writers deal with their history. Moreover,

he also expresses an unrelenting rage against the meaningless world in which he is a part.

However, Baudelaire does not protest against the world by either veering away from

it or strikin呂 heavy axes on it (for the world might devour the axes as well as the axman).

On the contra可， he adapts himself to the dead world and allows himself to be marked by

the broken experiences inherent in it. This can be seen in his recognition that, being a poet

in a commodity society, he is necessarily commodified: "Baudelaire knew how it stood with

the poet: as a flaneur he went to the market; to look it over, as he thought, but in reality to

find a buyer" (qtd. in Jennings 23). His adaptation to death, however, is not a mere repro

duction of the objective, of things as they are. By bringing the dead, reified, and illusory

wish images of capitalism to consciousness, and revealing what capitalism tries to hide from

view, Baudelaire forsakes objectivity and characterizes the history of modern capitalism as

”natural history," a history always already decayed and dead. For example, the poem,’,The

Swan, "5 illustrates the poet’s allegorical insight in perceiving 可onsensuous similarities" be

tween the new and the old, or the living and the already dead. In this poem, images of the

recent (the newly rebuilt Place du Carrousel) and the ancient (Andromache, wife of Hee

tor) are jm.1aposed to produce an effect of "shock戶 The poet’s allegorical gaze is hence

redemptive in that the shock effect it produces has the potential to demystify the bourgeois,

progressive view about history. Thus "

technology and the archaic symbol-world of mythology’＇ re丸reals history not as an evolutior l

ary process aiming at a final goal, but as the mythic, eternal recurrence of the same

(N 2a,1) .7

-

孔foreover, Baudelaire’E allegorical representation of 19th-century Paris also reveals

that the happiness promised by the phantasmagoria of commodities and wish-images is

一 162 一

On \Va!ter Ben］且min‘s Concept of Mimesis 11

nothing more than a happiness reified, hollowed, and ephemeral. This is the case in the

poem，可he Confession, "8 in which love and beauty in capitalist society are represented as

hollowed out and depraved of any meaning. Because Baudelaire’s alleg。可 articulates ele­

ments otherwise hidden away from the dominant tradition (the phantasmagoric \Vorld­

view), it is a critical type of mimesis directed against mythic phantasmagoria. His poetry is

therefore a practice of ”allegory against myth叮（qtd. in Buck-Morss 183).

The final part of this paper will discuss the concept of the dialectical image, probably

the most important idea in Benjamin’s w。如. Them阻ive Ar品des Project, or Das Pas

sagen-Werk，正 completed, will be the constellation of "dialectical images”。r ”dialectics at a

standstill" (.N 3,1). For Be吋ami且， the core of the secular world after the Fall is an accumu­

lation of broken images or ruins, such 扭曲的C represented in allego可﹒＼Vhat the dominant

ideology presents, on the other hand, is a harmonious or organic world. This ideology can

be found in the traditional representation of history as a series of events progressing to』

ward a final goal. The brokenness, discontinui中， and meaninglessn巴ss, which comprise the

true nature of history, are repressed under the harmonious facade of totality or historical

progress. And people deceived by this facade are deprived of their critical opposition

against the dominant, phantasmagoric world view.

Intending to rip off the progressive disguise of histo月r and thus to rescue the mes

sianic moment lying within the fragmented ruins, Be吋amin argues that the representation

of history should be that of catastrophes or 叩ins‘ not that of an organic whole. To negate

the idea of progress and preserve the most concrete images hence becomes the major

methodological objective of the Arcades Project:“[h]istorical materialism has good cause,

here, to set itse]f off sharply from the bourgeois cast of mind; its basic principle is not

progress, but actua

ries吋（N 11,4). While a story contains a beginning, a middle, and an end, history is 由e com­

pilation of discontinuous and broken images or ruins.

What Benjamin designates by the concept of the dialectical image is the coordination

or constellation of dialectically opposite images taken from different epochs or different

places in order to reveal the underlying similarities. The flow of history is frozen into this

image （叮dialectics at a standstill") in which ”truth is loaded to the bursting point with tim e ’,

q叫

nhu 可Ei

12 《固立中興大學畫中夜間部學報〉

in a ”Now of recognizability”(N lOa,3; N 3, 1; N 3a,3） .τhe truth revealed by the constella­

tion of dialectical images is that there are ”nonsensuous similarities" between the most an­

dent and the most recent, or between the living and the dead. Therefore, history does not

progress, but always indulges in the mythic repetition of the same. For Benjamin, only the

historical materialist capable of perceiving correspondences from seemingly different

things can produce that image. Here is an example of the dialectical image that jm.1poses

the new and the old, the living and the extinct, namely, the consumers in the arcades of

19th centu可 Paris and the fossils of the dinosaurs:

Just as there are places in the stones of the Miocene or Eocene Age that bear the

impression of huge monsters out of these geological epochs, so today the Passag目

lie in the great cities like caves containing fossils of an ur-animal presumed extinct:

The consumers from the preimperial epoch of capitalism, the last dinosaurs of

Europe. (qtd. in Buck-Mor自由）

The 19th-century arcades, once new and promising, were replaced in the beginning of the

20th century by huge department stores and consequently became old and extinct. The

consumers of the 19th』century arcades, the commodities of which had once been wish im­

ages for the dreaming collective, became extinct dinosaurs along with the arcades. The new

buildings and the commodities inside is a witness to the decline of an economic epoch,

which, once new and prosperous, has become old, dead, and fossil-like.

The political significance of such a revelation lies in its power to awaken the masses

from the realm of the capitalist dream world. For Benjamin, the nature of collective

dreams in such a world is quite ambiguous.9 They are first of all collective illusions, a spell

which has to be broken in order to achieve a utopian moment. The collective illusions in

19th-century capitalism are the result of the reification of consciousness beset by the phan­

tasmagoria of the commodity. Consumers, deceived by the phantasmagoric appearance,

mistake the consumption of the commodity for the fulfillment of their wish. They do not

perceive that their wish or desire is reified during the act of consumption. On the other

hand, the dream is also 自己 stocking place of utopian impulses. It is the wish image in

which the collective utopian energy lies, waiting to be released. The prospect of a utopian,

messianic revolution depends upon the recovery of consciousness from the dream world. In

44A FO

On 嗎？且lter Benjamin's Concept of Mimesis 13

other words, utopia is the moment when the collective awakes 企om the dream world. Al­

though Benjamin is indebted to the surrealists, especially Aragon, for his attention to the

alternate experience found in the dream world, there is a remarkable difference between

them. While Aragon is content with living in the dream world, Benjamin's 自ial goal is to

awake from it. Aragon’s dream becomes Benjamin's nightmare 宜。ne does not awake 仕om

rt:

whereas Aragon persistently remains in the realm of dreams, here it is a question

of finding the constellation of awakening. \Vhile an impressionistic element

lingers on in Aragon （”mythology于 ·····what matters here is the dissolution of

"mythology” into the space of history. ()J" 1,9)

The dream proffers a mythic, progressive view of history, from which the collective has to

awake. In other words, the messianic moment, or the truth content, of the dialectical image

lies at the intersection of reification and the knowledge of that reification’。r the dream

and the moment of its awakening.10 The dialectical image, therefore, is a homeopathy in

the sense that it enters deeply into the dream in order to awake from it. Like the accumu­

lation of allegorical objects in Baroque allego丘sts and in Baudelaire, the accumulation of

dream images in the Arcades Project aims to dispel an illuso可 world-view as well as raise

people's consciousness.

Benjamin's conception of the dialectical i血age is based on the conviction that utopia

lies in every moment which is enchanted by natural history. The past does not simply pass

away, leaving no space for redemption. Its revolutionary potential can be realized by the

historical materialist who uses it as a means of consciousness-raising. The dead of the past

can be redeemed and sheds secular illumination on the present, the moment of salvation.

That is why he says that ”[o]vercoming the concept of 'progress' and the concept of 'period

of decline' are two sides of one and the same thing叮（N 2,5). For there is nothing that really

declines and disappears, nothing that is really unredeemable. Baudelaire's "'The Swan," for

example, illustrates the power of myth in demysti再告rg the idea of progress.

The precondition of the coming of the messianic moment is that the historical mater­

ialist perceives nonsensuous similarities between the most dissimilar things. This percep­

tion, embodied in the "dialectical image," will break the spell cast by the bourgeois concep-

一 165一

14 《固立中興大學臺中夜間部學報〉

tion of histo可 and then release revolutioa可 energies. We have already seen the constella­

tion of the images of consumers and dinosaurs, which might lead to the awakening of con­

sciousness. Let us look at another dialectical image before concluding this discussion. In

this image, Benjamin records the perception of nonsensuous similarities between two

seemingly unrelated places, Belleville and Moroccan:

There is in Belleville the place du Maroc: this inconsolable heap of rock with its

tenements became for me, as I happened upon it on a Sunday afternoon, not

only Moroccan desert but in addition and at the same time a monument of

colonial imperialism. (qtd. in Jennings 119 20)

From the early, metaphysically-bent Benjamin to the late, Marxist Benjamin, "mimesis”

has undergone rich metamorphos白， but it always remains a fundam巴ntal concern in his

thinking. Primordial mimesis makes possible the harmonious communion of all elements

in the universe. The language of names, in which ponsensuous similarities between God,

man, and nature are preserved, bears witness to that peaceful state. In Baroque allegory,

the writers perceive the outward nature and human history as the compilation of corpses

and hence produce in their works nonsensuous similarities to that natural history. Fur­

thermore, Baudelaire’s allegory is a conscious response to and attack on high capitalism.

Perceiving the underlying repetition of the same in the phantasmagoric appearance of the

commodity society, he produces similariti臼 in his poems to that society. The purpose of

Baudelaire’s adaptation to death, however, is to raise consciousness and subvert the dead

world. Last but surely not least is Benjamin's employment of the ”dialectical image," which

picks up trashes and images ~epressed in the dominant culture, reviving them through the

constellation of dialectical opposites. The underlying similarities between extreme images,

Benjamin believes, will probably cause the awakening of people from the dream world.

Benjamin’s concept of mimesis, in short, is the meeting place between reproduction and

transformation, or between ideology and utopia.

一 166一

On Walter Benjamin's Concept of Mimesis 15

Notes

1. ”Deadening of affects,”"distance from the surrounding world，呵＂alienation from one’s

own body, n these things become "symptom[s] of depersonal泣ation as an intense de耳目e

of sadness··· ···in which the most insignificant thing, because a natural and creative con

nection to it is lacking, appears as a chi血re of an enigmatic wisdom 臼 an incomparably

fruitful connection’,; quoted in Susan Buck” Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: ＼月／alter Ben­

jamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge: MIT, 1989) 170.

2. For a more clear explication of the concept of ”symbol” in Benjamin's theory, see

Michael W. Jennin醉， Dialectical Images: \Valter Ben]amin's Theory of Literary Criti­

cism (Ithaca: Cornell up, 1987) 166-69.

3. A more thorough explanation of Benjamin's discontent of the theological resolution of

allegory’s antinomies can be found in Buck－~1orss 170-77.

4.For a more detail explanation of the phantasmagoric world, see Buck－~νforss 81-92.

5. See Buck-Morss 179.

6. Although Benjamin does not ex-plicate the connections between allegory, the dial巴ctical

image, and modern high-tech products such as the camera, such connections are obvious.

Benjamin's optimistic view about modern technologies in "The Work of Art in the Age

of 孔1echanical Reproduction" is based on their capacity to produce a "shock刊巴ffect on

the audience, which is even more powerful than the literary montage of images in alle­

go可 and dialectical images. Capturing images from the status quo,_ the camera can

”perceive" things which the naked eyes cannot do. Mimesis in the camera is the capacity

to enhance ex-perience by mimicking the fragmentation of modern life that threatens to

annihilate it. It is a homeopathy that overco血es myth by its representation. See Buck­

Morss 263-270 and Joel Snyde丸”Benjamin on Reproducibility and Aura: A Reading of

'The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility,'” Benjamin: Philosophy,

Hist。可， Aesthetics, ed. Gary Smith (Chicago ; U of Chicago P, 1989) 158-7-1-.

7.Benjamin、s ’了﹝Re the 甘ie。可 of Knowledcge, Theory of Progress]" is collected in Smith,

ed. Benjamin 43-83.

8. See Buck-Morss 182.

門IPnuw

16 （固立中興大學臺中夜間部學報〉

9. See Richard Wolin’”Experience and Materialism in Benjamin’s Passagenwerk," Ben­

jamin, ed. Smith, 215-25.

10. See Buck－弘forss 210-12.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. "On Language as Such and on the Language of Man.'' Reflections: Es­~avs. Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writin四. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. New York: Schocken, 1978. 314-32.

~"On the Mimetic Faculty.” Reflections: Essavs, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. New York; Schocken, 1978. 333-36.

- . The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Trans. John Osborne. London: Verso, 1990.

Buck-Morss, Susan. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Beniamin and the Arcades Proiect. Cambridge: MIT, 1989.

Habermas, Jurgen. 刊Walter Benjamin: Consciousness Raising or Rescuing Critique.”旦旦Walter Beniamin: Critical Essays and Recollections. Ed. Gary Smith. Cambridge: MIT, 1991. 90 128.

Jennings, Michael W. Dialectical Images：可＇alter Beniamin's Theory of Literary Criticism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987.

Marx, Carl. ~盟且呈1- 3 vols. Trans. Ben Fowkes. London: Penguin, 1990. Vol. 1.

一 168﹜

On Walter Benjamin’s Concept of Mimesis 17

論班雅民的模擬觀

林建光＊

摘要

本論文之目的，主要是探討「拉提」止一觀念，在班雅民作品中的重要性。

在班氏平期，較具神學傾向的作品當中，我們得知人類的「模擬機能」（mi血etic

faculty）｛史上帝，人類，及自然三者間形成某種程度的相似或對應，而此一相似性

可反映於語言上。在討論十七世紀巴洛克寓吉體及十九世紀法詛詩人﹔支持某娟的

詩作時，拉雅民認為這些作品所呈現的破碎及死亡的意象實清早上可視為對當時歷

史的一種模擬。在較晚期的作品當中， J).E氏更致力於「辯証意象」的創作，若台

併置相對的人成事物，這些意象史觀出潛廷在人類意識深層的虛埠，換句話說，

不論是在寓言體，波特萊爾的詩作，式是辯証意象當中，模j是都不僅僅是意哉形

態的、同時也是烏托邦的。

間是宇：模擬、模投機能、寓言謹、辯証意象

＊固立中興大學薑中夜間部外國語文學系講師

國立牛興大學噩中夜間部學報（Journal of Taichung B叩ing School, >lCHU), VoL2(1996), 153~ 170

nMd po