"Ratio" in Adorno

[Jeffrey]

David,

Thanks for your reference to Zuidervaart.  I will certainly check him out.
And the reference in AT is quite helpful as well.

While mimesis and rationality remain faithfully opposed to one another,
Adorno's artistic expression -- a "willful spontaneity" includes both in
some sort of tenative mediation.  Expression cannot be "pure"; it must have
a material base in the "rational" or the secular.  (This is why all art,
even "new" art, for Adorno ultimately becomes fetish.)

Expressionism, the art movement, then, on Lukacs' critique, denied its
material base.  Adorno, of course, takes issue with this because of his
definition of expression -- that L's description of Exp. is simply
impossible.  If Exp. speaks at all, if it's not simply silence (although,
even silence is not truly silent), it must have an objective base.  (For
Bloch, the objective base of Exp. was its humanity, its connection with the
"volk".)

How then should Lukacs' Realism, Expressionism's seeming opposite, be
characterized?  I would argue that like Exp's hidden objectivism, Realism
must have a subjective element to it. OK.  However, is it not mimesis that
most comes to mind when one thinks of what Realism does?  Or perhaps, this
is only what the Realists intended, when in fact, following Mr. Goldstein's
post, on Adorno's critique, realism really just secularized its subject,
turning it even more immediately (more immediately than immediately!) into
an object of fetish.  L's organicsm, then, derives its "authenticity" more
>from its astounding rationality than from any possible ritualistic roots.

If it's not obvious, I'm currently working on the the idea of the "new" and
political protest in Bloch, Lukacs and Adorno.


Jeffrey Broesche


>>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
>>