In this essay I considers some pages from Walter Benjamin’s Little history of photography (1931) and The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (1936), where the German philosopher describes the optical unconscious: some aspects of reality registered by camera but never get processed consciously. Photography and film changed how we view the details of reality just as Freud’s Psychopathology of everyday life changed how we look at incidental phenomenon like slips of the tongue. I underline two main significant points: the bound between technique and contingency, and the animism of cinema, analyzed by many theorists since the first years after the birth of the medium. I connect this last topic with some Freud’s pages from The Unconscious (1915) devoted to the archaic animism.
Angelucci, D. (2017). Tra la mano e il metallo. Freud, Benjamin e l'inconscio ottico. L'INCONSCIO, 3, 47-56.
Tra la mano e il metallo. Freud, Benjamin e l'inconscio ottico
ANGELUCCI, DANIELA
2017-01-01
Abstract
In this essay I considers some pages from Walter Benjamin’s Little history of photography (1931) and The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (1936), where the German philosopher describes the optical unconscious: some aspects of reality registered by camera but never get processed consciously. Photography and film changed how we view the details of reality just as Freud’s Psychopathology of everyday life changed how we look at incidental phenomenon like slips of the tongue. I underline two main significant points: the bound between technique and contingency, and the animism of cinema, analyzed by many theorists since the first years after the birth of the medium. I connect this last topic with some Freud’s pages from The Unconscious (1915) devoted to the archaic animism.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.