"Ratio" in Adorno

[David Sholle]

>On page 30 of Aesthetic Theory (of the 1986 ed.) Adorno writes,
>
>"Thrill is a subjective response to the cryptic inaccessibility of the new,
>which in turn is a function of its moment of indeterminateness and
>abstraction.  At the same time, thrill is mimetic behavior; it responds to
>abstractness in mimetic ways.  Now, it is only through the new that mimesis
>can be so firmly wedded to rationality that it will not regress, for
>_ratio_ itself becomes mimetic through the thrill of the new."
>
>First: To what does the "it" of "it will not regress" refer?  I take "it"
>to be mimesis and not rationality. YES
Second: But what would make mimesis regress?  Why does it need to be
"firmly" wedded?  In other words, how are Adorno's mimesis and rationality
or "ratio" at odds with one another?

--You might find Zuidervaart helpful on this ("Adorno's Aesthetic Theory").
In the section titled, "The Artist as worker" (pages 109-121) he discusses
some of these issues. Particularly, one must begin with the realization
that Adorno's discussion takes place in the context of socio-historical
materials and experiences. >

 How can rationality or empirical reality provide the expressiveness
(direction)?  And how can >mimesis (subjectivity, in the passage above)
provide the objectivity?

Social labor is characterized as an objectively mediated but subjective
process of objectification. The social labor of the artistic process "means
that the artist's experience is not strictly individual nor merely
subjective. It is preformed by society, and it undergoes configuration
along with the artistic material at hand." Z on page 111, then ties this
into Adorno's conception of mimesis as a mode of human conduct,
particularly linking the ontogenesis of artistic mimesis with the
development of rationality in its dialectic with nature.
>
All of this must be linked to Adorno's working through of the Hegelian (and
Marxist) concept of "alienation." In fact, the problem is centered in
Adorno's Negative dialectic as an attempt to reconstruct (critically)
hegel's logic. As Z points out, in this regard, "Expression is not merely
human," thus, we are back to the cornerstone of Hegel's phenomenology, the
manner in which the thing becomes subject, i.e., the ontological dialectic,
and to Marx's reworking of this. Z offers an interpretation of this on
pages 112-114. "All objectification requires an alienation between subject
and object, but artistic objectification alienates this alienation. On page
166 of Adorno's "Aesthetic Theory", he clarifies the relation, "Art amends
conceptual knowledge in that it attains, on its own and in complete
isolation, what coneptual knowledge vainly expects to learn from its focus
on the non-pictorial subject-object relation, which is that an objective
quality discloses itself through subjective effort." I recommend reading on
>from here, the section on "Expression and mimesis."

I hope, as vague as it is, this has been of some assistance. djs
>