Rethinking T.W. Adorno (3)

[Ralph Dumain]

Notes on Jeremy Shapiro's talk:

What can we learn from Adorno?--how he listens to music--critical, 
dialectical, negative.  The left is susceptible to rigidification and 
ritualism.  The left has a notion of the unity of theory and 
practice.  Adorno adds the dimension of EXPERIENCE.  He teaches a lesson in 
having aesthetic experience, how to be.

Adorno did not have a good theory of his own practice (how to 
listen).  References: (1) How to listen to modern music (untranslated); (2) 
Introduction to the Sociology of Music.  Structural listgening/hearing -- 
demands technical expertise--but the technical stuff is usually not in the 
forefront.  Mahler: "The Earth": metaphorical description, subjective 
experience.

NON-IDENTICAL -> resistance.  vs. subordination of music to self 
[repetition].  Access to inner resources -> objectivity of artwork 
itself.  Cf. Sherry Nicholson, EXACT IMAGINATION.

Theory/practice not just an abstraction.

(1) Hear the individual moment and the whole structure at once.

(2) Hear historically, mediated by context.  Universality is in historicity.

(3) Potentialities: lived tension.

(4) Dialectical mediation of ideal form and physical substratum 
("subcutaneous").

(5) Hear literally and metaphorically.

(6) Draw on private experience -> universalize.

(7) Hear redemptively.

(8) Dialectical: formal vs. material [historical?]

(9)  Pure [looking?] at -> inner movement (Hegelian).  Abandon self to 
structure without submission.