THE ARMORED BODY AND THE BODY-IMAGE

a convergence between two studies about Walter Benjamin

Abstract

This article starts from a common point between two antagonistic concepts of the work of Walter Benjamin, found from two different analyzes of the author. The first is an article by the philosopher Susan Buck-Morss, in which she uses two texts by Benjamin to argue that the aestheticization of politics, typical of fascism, is based on a sensory anesthesia of the body; the second text is the chapter of a book by the theorist Sigrid Weil, in which we find, in the study of a third text by Benjamin, the defense that the politicization of art, concept opposite to that of fascism, passes through a interpenetration between the body and the technologies of the industrial era. Within these analyzes, it was possible to observe a centrality, in the opposite concepts of politicization of art and aestheticization of politics, given to the theme of the mechanical body as a political solution.