Aura means endowing a phenomenon with the power to look back

Evidence

Yet in the world of objects, this intensity of physical presence which constitutes the aura of something can perhaps best be expressed by the image of the look, the intelligence returned: “The experience of aura is based on the transposition of a social reaction onto the relationship of the lifeless or of nature to man. The person we look at, the person who believes himself looked at, looks back at us in return. To experience the aura of a phenomenon means to endow it with the power to look back in return.” — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 164

Categorization

• QUESTION: The image of the object looking back at the viewer is suggestive — worth exploring whether this reciprocity is what technical reproduction specifically destroys.
• XREF: connects to: Aura is the semblance of distance in an object however close it is — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 846; Attention can make the act of perceiving itself palpable to the perceiver — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 383
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Aura is the semblance of distance in an object however close it is — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 846; Attention can make the act of perceiving itself palpable to the perceiver — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 383