Benjamin argued a work’s reception need not end with its petit-bourgeois audience

Evidence

To me, it is conceivable that precisely in those corners of a work into which your psychoanalytic point of view leads, catalysts could be found which could not be assimilated to the petty-bourgeois way of thinking. In brief: it is conceivable that the reception of the writer does not necessarily come to an end with this one class, which is on the point of perishing. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 904

Categorization

• XREF: Benjamin’s plea that a great work outlives the class that first received it anticipates his later ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ and his messianic historiography. — connects to: Benjamin saw distracted mass reception as politically radicalizing — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 120
• DEEPTHINKING: This tacitly argues art’s meaning is not fixed to a class vantage point and that the interpretive horizon of a perishing class may be a temporary container, not the work’s true end — a genuinely destabilizing idea for orthodox ideology-critique.

Broader Connections

• Benjamin saw distracted mass reception as politically radicalizing #corroborates (0.85) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 120