Benjamin, BitTorrent, Bootlegs: auratic piracy cultures?

Seventy-five years ago, Walter Benjamin showed us that the line between "production" and "reproduction" had begun to blur. Reproduction was no longer optional, consequential and degrading (the shredding of the original’s aura), but was instead being transformed into a principle of production itself: something was produced bearing in mind how it was to be reproduced. No longer did the original exist (in photography, film, music recordings), but instead diffusion, exhibition. The work existed precisely at the time and place of its enjoyment. Today, the cultural pirates of the new digital era take this principle to the extreme, with a certain characteristic also foreseen by Benjamin: a yearning to participate, to post-produce something captured in order to later return it to the Internet, modified in some way and made available to others. This postproduction is what is now often mixed up with reception, just as production and reproduction used to be in Benjamin’s day. Postproduction on the receiver’s side, which somehow augments and extends the received work, in other words creates an etymologically rigorous author-ization (auctor as the root of both author and augmentation). The cultural pirate only deserves redemption thanks to this creative augmentation.

París, destino privilegiado del exilio español (1813-1851): a propósito de varias aportaciones historiográficas recientes

París es una ciudad mítica que siempre ha despertado un especial poder de atracción entre las élites políticas y culturales. Solo un reducido número de afrancesados y liberales españoles que en el siglo XIX se vieron forzados al exilio, tuvieron la posibilidad legal de buscar refugio político –en ocasiones una nueva patria– en la capital francesa. En la última década, se ha producido un extraordinario avance historiográfico en el conocimiento de las características y particularidades del exilio español en París, gracias a la publicación de varias monografías, artículos y biografías sobre el tema. Este artículo pretende dar a conocer una selección de estos trabajos y conectar algunas de sus principales aportaciones.