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InC
"The Melancholy of Form" - On Adorno 2/3
by: daniele
*Tuesday 11th November - 4pm*
What for Adorno distinguishes art as art, what belongs to art as such and thus distinguishes it from what it is not, is the capacity for form. That is to say, nothing less than the question as to whether or not art is still possible – the guiding question of Aesthetic Theory – finds itself in turn conditioned by a further one: that of form – “Art has precisely the same chance of survival as does form, no better” – what its constitution, its event would consist of. And yet if form is that by which the work of art attains the autonomy that will allow it to register the possibility of a reality other than the one it at present faces (which, for Adorno, would mean a world reconciled with itself, purged of every relation of domination) it is at the same time that by which art is a priori guilty of participating in the violence to which the living have been heretofore subjected. In Aesthetic Theory this problematic bears a name: die Melancholie von Form, and the seminar will follow both Adorno’s presentation of its trajectory through the text, and the sense in which this problem informs art’s historical manifestations, in the epic, the lyric and the modern work of art.
Suggested reading:
Aesthetic Theory (London and New York: Continuum, 2002):
- From ‘On the Categories of the Ugly, the Beautiful, and Technique’: On the Concept of the Beautiful, pp. 50-53.
- From ‘Semblance and Expression’: Semblance, Meaning and ‘tour de force,’ pp. 105-07
- From ‘Coherence and Meaning’: Form, pp. 140-143; and Form and Content, pp. 143-46.
Notes to Literature: Vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991):
From ‘On Lyric Poetry and Society’: the reading of Goethe’s ‘Wanderer’s Nightsong,’ pp. 40-42.
Posted on: Friday November 07 2008 ______________________________________
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"The Melancholy of Form" - On Adorno 2/3
by: daniele
*Tuesday 11th November - 4pm*
What for Adorno distinguishes art as art, what belongs to art as such and thus distinguishes it from what it is not, is the capacity for form. That is to say, nothing less than the question as to whether or not art is still possible – the guiding question of Aesthetic Theory – finds itself in turn conditioned by a further one: that of form – “Art has precisely the same chance of survival as does form, no better” – what its constitution, its event would consist of. And yet if form is that by which the work of art attains the autonomy that will allow it to register the possibility of a reality other than the one it at present faces (which, for Adorno, would mean a world reconciled with itself, purged of every relation of domination) it is at the same time that by which art is a priori guilty of participating in the violence to which the living have been heretofore subjected. In Aesthetic Theory this problematic bears a name: die Melancholie von Form, and the seminar will follow both Adorno’s presentation of its trajectory through the text, and the sense in which this problem informs art’s historical manifestations, in the epic, the lyric and the modern work of art.
Suggested reading:
Aesthetic Theory (London and New York: Continuum, 2002):
- From ‘On the Categories of the Ugly, the Beautiful, and Technique’: On the Concept of the Beautiful, pp. 50-53.
- From ‘Semblance and Expression’: Semblance, Meaning and ‘tour de force,’ pp. 105-07
- From ‘Coherence and Meaning’: Form, pp. 140-143; and Form and Content, pp. 143-46.
Notes to Literature: Vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991):
From ‘On Lyric Poetry and Society’: the reading of Goethe’s ‘Wanderer’s Nightsong,’ pp. 40-42.
Posted on: Friday November 07 2008 ______________________________________
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