From Aura to Non-Place: Experience, Space, and the Loss of Anchoring in Benjamin and Augé
Note: This text was originally written in Spanish and is presented here in English translation. Abstract This article proposes a comparative reading of Walter Benjamin and Marc Augé based on an underexplored structural affinity: the relation between the loss of aura and the proliferation of the non-place. Moving beyond a merely thematic analogy, it argues that both concepts articulate profound transformations of modern experience linked to the dissolution of the spatial anchoring that historically sustained meaning. In Benjamin, technical reproducibility emancipates the artwork from its “here and now,” weakening its ritual inscription and singularity. In Augé, supermodernity generates spaces of transit that suspend identity, relation, and memory. From this perspective, the non-place may be understood as the spatial correlate of the logic of reproducibility: not a profanation of the sacred, but the loss of its structuring function. The article examines the scope and limits of this c...