Benjamin Blurbs

This entire unit is supposed to focus around representation and presentation.  Much of Benjamin's article was spent arguing the idea of an original piece of work/art and its unique characteristics--characteristics that cannot be replicated.  The historical and social circumstances surrounding the work cannot be replicated, though the piece can.  Can a piece really replicated, with that in mind?  Also, with the idea of representation and presentation; can the representation of an idea in literature really ever capture the idea trying to be presented?  Rivkin and Ryan claim that a "purely 'literary' examination of the works in terms of narrative irony or rhetorical eloquence would seem to ask a great deal of readers"--in other words, there needs to be the political and social constructs attached to the piece in order for it to be an affective piece of literature.

I guess I get confused to how closely I'm supposed to consider a representation about an idea the writer had, and think it's accurately portrayed--especially when the historical, economic, and social aspects of a culture are not easily transferred to a replica.  Isn't written literature a replica of ideas?  A facsimile that will try to--and succeed--capture the face-value of the work but fail to garner the entire constructs that go into making the piece what it is?  Marxism relies on the idea that all of the constructs come together in the literature.  However, even if it would appear that the constructs are captured, "the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity's entire mode of existence", to the extent that writers did not "attempt to show the social transformations expressed by these changes of perception" (1236).  Will I really be able to fully understand and appreciate King Leer?  Since I am not growing up in the Elizabethan time, then I will not understand the politics that underlie many of Shakespeare's writings, right?

My only explanation would be to suggest that the new mode of replication--the mechanical reproduction--becomes the new "ritual" that a work of art holds a "parasitical dependence" with.  Or, do we take his last claim and assume that the ritual has become politics (is politics not a ritual of sorts, after all?)?

I'm confused.

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I took a few days to mull things over, and I'm trying to comprehend the idea of reproducibility and the aura of a piece.  I understand that the original piece has an aura about it that is not reproducible, but I also understand the argument that something needs to be reproduced in order to be authentic.  Is this because the more something is reproduced, the more agency is given to the original?  Aka, is there more power or a stronger aura with the original because of the efforts to reproduce it?  I do not think that aura can be created or destroyed (much like the law of conservation of energy), but I do think that it can be augmented or shrunk in presence.  The more someone tries to reproduce a work of art, and make it seem like the original, the more the original stands apart from the reproductions and is presented as "better" because of its authenticity.  Right?