Pubblico consumo. Beck e l'ansia produttiva come medium dell'insicurezza

This paper aims at investigating the role that the theory of the technical reproducibility of the work of art proposed by Walter Benjamin had in the construction of the sociology of risk pursued by Ulrich Beck, with particular reference to the connection between cultural uncertainty, informative standardization and identity removal. The risk society looms as the result of the medial inflation of contents, images and information, bound to develop an hyper-representation of the post-modern risks, interpreted by the actors in connection with the public ordeal. This kind of diffusion is tied to the technical reproducibility of the aesthetic experience, which determines the passing of the traditional values peculiar of the cultural heritage. This is one of the theoretical assumption of the sociology of risk drawn by Beck, who gives Benjamin the credit to have foreshadowed the connection between technical reproducibility of the collective meanings and the medial representation of the social risks, hanging between narration and uncertainty.