Semblance of Subjectivity : Essays in Adorno's Aesthetic Theory

by Tom Huhn and Lambert Zuidervaart (Eds.)

• ISBN13: 9780262581769
• ISBN10: 0262581760
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-01-30
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

Theodor W. Adorno died in 1969 and his last major work, Ästhetische Theorie, was published a year later. Only recently, however, have his aesthetic writings begun to receive sustained attention in the English-speaking world. This collection of essays is an important contribution to the discussion of Adorno's aesthetics in Anglo-American scholarship. The essays are organized around the twin themes of semblance and subjectivity. Whereas the concept of semblance, or illusion, points to Adorno's links with Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, the concept of subjectivity recalls his lifelong struggle with a philosophy of consciousness stemming from Kant, Hegel, and Lukács. Adorno's elaboration of the two concepts takes many dialectical twists. Art, despite the taint of illusion that it has carried since Plato's Republic, turns out in Adorno's account of modernism to have a sophisticated capacity to critique illusion, including its own. Adorno's aesthetics emphasizes the connection between aesthetic theory and many other aspects of social theory. The paradoxical genius of Aesthetic Theoryis that it turns traditional concepts into a theoretical cutting edge.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Cultural Critique

Semblance and Subjectivity

Conceptual Constellations

Notes

Mimesis and Mimetology: Adorno and Lacoue-Labarthe

Aesthetic Theory's Mimesis of Walter Benjamin

Benjamin, Adorno, Surrealism

Concept, Image, Name: On Adorno's Utopia of Knowledge

Concerning the Central Idea of Adorno's Philosophy

Why Rescue Semblance? Metaphysical Experience and the Possibility of Ethics

Adorno's Notion of Natural Beauty: A Reconsideration

Kant, Adorno, and the Social Opacity of the Aesthetic

Art History and Autonomy

Construction of a Gendered Subject: A Feminist Reading of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory

The Philosophy of Dissonance: Adorno and Schoenberg

Select Bibliography

Theodor W. Adorno

Adorno's Books in German

Adorno's Books in English

Adorno's Articles in English

Writings on Adorno and Critical Theory

Anthologies and Special Issues ofJournals

Articles and Books on Adorno and Critical Theory

Contributors

Index

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