Notes on montage and critical theory in Walter Benjamin

Abstract

This article intends to outline some notes on the concept of montage in Walter Benjamin's writings and the relationship of this concept with Benjamin's critical theory. In methodological fragments linked to the project of a book about Charles Baudelaire, which only became public in the late 1960s, there is one of the rare records of the expression ‘critical theory’ (kritische Theorie). It is used by Benjamin to characterize his theoretical methodological self-understanding, in a direct link of this expression to framing and montage procedures associated with the photographic or filmic camera. Sustaining the link exposed in the methodological notes between critical theory – in the Benjaminian sense of this theoretical practice – and montage poses some questions. First, it is necessary to know what montage means for Benjamin. Particularly in the 1930s, the development of this notion is seen in various objects, in essays on cinema, Brecht's epic theater, Dada and Surrealist avant-gardes, Alfred Döblin's literature and materialist historiography. Furthermore, it is necessary to indicate in what sense the procedure arising from the arts and the new technical reproduction devices can contribute to the theory. Benjamin does not consider editing only from a procedural point of view, but emphasizes, for example, the pedagogical function and the cognitive gain provided through theatrical experiments. Likewise, Benjamin draws attention to the possibility of expansion of perception, provided by the cinematographic technique through the liberation of the optical unconscious.