Anthropological Materialism and the Aesthetics of Film

This chapter contextualizes Walter Benjamin’s film writings in relation to his concept of ‘anthropological materialism’. It argues that some concepts that are central to his writings on film, such as ‘collective body’, ‘second technology’, ‘innervation’, ‘second nature’, and ‘optical unconscious’ should be understood in relation to Benjamin’s particular conception of the body and the transformation of the human sensorium, made possible by the new paradigm of reception opened up by film’s technological nature. For Benjamin, this chapter argues, cinemas are conceived as exemplary training grounds to create a collective body through the innervation of the energy coming from the screen into the audience.