Benjamin modeled mass perception of reproducible art on drug-altered and absent-minded city experience.

Evidence

How Benjamin pictured this naked contemporary' was shown both in his essay on The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ and in various notes for the Passagen-Werk. He described the relationship of the masses to reality, and to works of art based on reproducibility, as one in which elements of the dream form of perception appeared. On other occasions, he had claimed that those who were intoxicated by hashish had an enhanced appreciation for similarities, a characteristic which, in the essay on the work of art, he emphasized in relation to the masses. In his first essay on Baudelaire, he considered that traversing the city absent-mindedly, as if lost in one’s own thoughts and worries, was a precondition for the successful presentation of large cities (for example in Dickens). — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 226

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Benjamin’s concept of dream-form perception as it recurs across the artwork essay, Baudelaire essay, and Passagen-Werk.
• DEEPTHINKING: The hashish-similarity link and the absent-minded flaneur are the hinge between Benjamin’s aesthetics of distraction and his theory of collective memory.
• XREF: connects to: Benjamin saw the masses as perceiving reproducible art through a dream-like consciousness — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 850; Benjamin grounded his method of perception in dreaming and ecstasy.; Benjamin valued distraction and habit in perception where Adorno required concentration. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 632
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Benjamin saw the masses as perceiving reproducible art through a dream-like consciousness — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 850; Benjamin grounded his method of perception in dreaming and ecstasy.; Benjamin valued distraction and habit in perception where Adorno required concentration. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 632

Broader Connections

• Benjamin saw the masses as perceiving reproducible art through a dream-like consciousness #expands (0.93) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 850