Benjamin’s concern with the aura’s loss is really about historicity, not tradition itself

Evidence

A closer reading of Benjamin’s argument reveals, however, that Benjamin’s interpretation of the terms “aura” and “authenticity” is far more complicated than these readings suggest. What is often missed in discussions of the aura and its loss is that for Benjamin what was at stake was not simply tradition but a sense of historicity itself (see Asad on this point in Shaikh 2002 ). — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 799

Categorization

• DEFINE: Reframes the canonical aura concept: what dissolves in ‘mechanical reproduction’ is a sense of historicity, not tradition per se — a reading that enables Mahmood to rescue Benjamin from anti-tradition readings.
• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely paradigm-shifting rereading of the most-cited concept in media/cultural theory, with heavy stakes for how modernity theorists treat any claim to continuity with the past.