Dreams of a Better Nature: Walter Benjamin on the creation of a collective techno-body

Abstract

In this article I argue that the theories of Walter Benjamin about technology may help us to understand the historical and utopian functions that new technologies open up in the social body. According to Benjamin, the arrival of modern technology created a collective physis in which technology can be incorporated into the nature of human beings. The promises of a better nature—both for people’s surroundings and for the human organic nature—will be only achieved if the collective gains control of such a body. The capitalist-imperialist use of technology, understood as the mastery of nature by man, has betrayed the potentials of technology for humanity and therefore has prevented its revolutionary uses to be deployed for the sake of human beings. I will discuss possible forms of bringing that collective techno-body under control. Through the concept of aesthetics, which Benjamin conceived as a theory of perceptions which analysed the relation of the senses to a world which is increasingly affected by modern technologies, I will argue that the arena of cinema reception is an empowering training ground for the interpenetration between technology and the collective through a regime of play. My aim with this article is to elucidate theoretical understandings about the possibilities of digital technologies with regard to the creation of a social body.