Anxiety in the Age of Digital Reproduction

Abstract

The Utopian promise of digital technology is one of hygiene: reproduction without the mess.Walter Benjamin pointed out that mechanical reproduction, despite its own seductive promise, gave rise not to perfect replicas but to all sorts of miserable dichotomies: the original and the copy; the authentic and the inauthentic; the artist's proof and the tacky museum poster. Digital reproduction, however, hopes to refute Benjamin. At last the copy will emerge bit-perfect, atom by atom. Each clone will be indistinguishable from the original, no matter how many generations removed. No placenta.