Benjamin used the word "aura" to refer to the sense of awe and reverence one
presumably experienced in the presence of unique works of art. According to
Benjamin, this aura inheres not in the object itself but rather in external
attributes such as its known line of ownership, its restricted exhibition,
its publicized authenticity, or its cultural value. Aura is thus indicative
of art's traditional association with primitive, feudal, or bourgeois
structures of power and its further association with magic and (religious or
secular) ritual. With the advent of art's mechanical reproducibility, and
the development of forms such as film in which there is no actual original,
the experience is freed from place and ritual. "For the first time in world
history," Benjamin wrote, "mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of
art from its parasitical dependence on ritual."
