Adorno and culture after Auschwitz
‘Auschwitz demonstrated irrefutably that
culture has failed. That this could happen in the midst of the traditions of
philosophy, of art, and of the enlightening sciences says more than that these
traditions and their spirit lacked the power to take hold of men and work a
change in them…. All post-Auschwitz culture … is garbage’ (Adorno, Negative
Dialectics, p.366).
In order to
understand the position Adorno takes towards the Nazi genocide, it is important
to analyse his other sociological theories that have had influences on this
thought. Such theories vary from aesthetics, to critical theory and a
neo-Marxist view that he shared with the Frankfurt School of thought. The essay
will also discuss Kant, Schiller, Hegel, and some Schopenhauer and Nietzsche,
all essential to establish a bridge between towards Adorno. A connection with
the events in Auschwitz and his theories will therefore propose a more valid evaluation
as to what he, through justified means, believed in.
Critical Social
Theory offers an explanation of all the major sciences in order to reach an
understanding and to change society through its criticism. Karl Marx states:
“At the heart of idealism lies unacknowledged materialism”[1],
from where Adorno takes it and puts forth a materialistic metacritique of
German idealism. The ‘truth’ now becomes an analysis of political, economic, societal
and historical thought. Adorno furthers this by stating that metaphysics would
play the role of cynical, avoiding the necessary critique to change society.
The experience of metaphysics is still important for Adorno, but there is now a
need to go beyond affirming or denying the truth: to historically find a way to
abolish present sufferings and past ones. For Adorno, culture finds itself in
the midst of these two positions of truth. A reason as to why Adorno turned
towards this theory is exemplified by Michael Rothberg: “One of the later
Adorno´s most important insight is that the Holocaust forces a confrontation
between thought and the event from which neither philosophy nor history can
emerge unscathed.”[2]
To discuss
Adorno fully there is a need to retrace back and evaluate important arguments
that have had an influence on him. It is fairly well known that Kant
established philosophical aesthetics as a separate discipline and was trying to
lead his ideas towards a moral judgement as well as “[to] make sure that no
possibility existed for art to turn against morality.”[3]
A first thought sparks, as there is an obvious relation to Adorno´s main
statement with this last one about Kant, and also that art has suffered a
change in its function. For Adorno this function of art: “had degenerated into
ideology, because its reflection of the world in a positive light, its call for
a better world, became a lie which legitimated evil.”[4]
Schiller takes
on after Kant by actualizing German idealism and going a step further with his
Aesthetic Letters: “Aesthetic freedom [is] a prerequisite of political
freedom.”[5]
But for Adorno aesthetics cannot free the human being after the events in Auschwitz,
thus he turns towards a more ontological status and the neo-Marxist critical
theory. Hammermeister, who furthers this, explains: “Adorno holds that society
has broken the promise of Enlightenment because it has not overcome its inner
antagonisms. On a political level, this societal co-opting was most successful
with the integration of the proletariat into the bourgeoisie.” [6]
One can think that Schiller´s statement is
reversed for Adorno, and could rather read: political freedom is a prerequisite
of aesthetic freedom. Though there is no such thing as opposites for Adorno but
rather an ever-contradictive paradox. For instance, art must “remain
independent from any political agenda, and at the same time, it has to retain a
social nexus… Hence, it perpetually struggles between engagement and
entertainment.”[7] The
true underlying problem of mass culture is precisely this struggle, since there
are no limits that depict a clear differentiation.
Another paradox comes when Adorno says that
artworks must abandon communication so that they can be brought to the public.
Then, at the same time, the artworks would instil in the public the desire to
abandon total communication: concluding in complete uselessness in art´s
political results.
In relation to Schiller´s search for
objectivity, though in a rather pessimistic view, Adorno states: “The culture
industry, using statistical averages, calculates the subjective element of
reaction and establishes it as universal law. It has become objective spirit.” [8]
This objective spirit perpetuates death as objective and makes it equal for
all, terribly resulting in the death of millions of people. And so where
culture here has become so objectified through the mass, everything that
implies culture including its inner concepts such as metaphysics and the
already mentioned death, becomes part of the mass as well.
About Hegel,
Adorno remarks the fact that history has forced materialism upon metaphysics: that
there is a need to return to the actual material questions of existence and there
has been no such thing since Hegel.[9]
A very important statement was made in Adorno´s Negative Dialectics about the events in Auschwitz:
“Our
metaphysical faculty is paralyzed because actual events have shattered the
basis on which speculative metaphysical thought could be reconciled with
experience… That in the concentration camps it was no longer an individual who
died, but a specimen.”[10]
This is why matters concerning death became
a new problem; it is no longer death a terrifying concept but it is rather the
way one dies and how, a new concern, and so Adorno furthers: “The integration
of physical death into culture should be rescinded in theory.”[11]
The concept of a dying specimen has gone far beyond of what anyone could ever
think of, since Hitler imposed a new categorical imperative and thus death
became “a novel horror; since Auschwitz, fearing death means fearing worse than
death.”[12]
In the late
philosophy of Nietzsche there is a rejection towards the musical ideas of
Wagner. For Nietzsche, the music of Wagner represents the intoxication of
spirit since its orchestral power completely ravishes the sensitive cognitions
and induces the listener into a deep aesthetic experience, powerful and
unavoidable. He thus turns to the music of Bizet, whose expression is based on
the more earthly experience:
“Bizet makes me
fertile. […]I envy Bizet for having had the courage for this sensibility which
had hitherto had no language in the cultivated music of Europe – for this more
southern, brown, burnt sensibility. […]Il faut mediterraniser la musique. The
return to nature, health, cheerfulness, youth, virtue!”[13]
Adorno and Nietzsche, to some extent, feel
the need for metaphysics to return to an ideal materialistic and genuine state
of being, applying it to concepts such as death on one side and nature and
youth on the other. And so one concludes agreeing with Adorno and Nietzsche
that the arts are in need of anarchy: complete chaos to renew itself.
Schopenhauer stated: “Because of the
fleeting nature of aesthetic experience, art can never grand redemption but it
is merely a palliative; it is not a way out of suffering, merely a
‘consolation’.”[14] Furthermore, Adorno, in relation to
Schopenhauer´s quote, states that art is not a way out of suffering, but rather
it was created out of suffering: “As the truth of existence is pain, art must
be true to it: ‘Expression of art is mimetic as the expression of all creatures
is torment’.”[15] Though
this would stand as contradictive, because this suffering, so new and
terrifying, can bring new and more powerful art: but again, this precisely
means that art is in need of the constant changes in history in order to
evolve. But even this torment is unmerited: Adorno´s concept of mimesis reflects the fact that art is
mimicking something, which it does not deserve, and even this suffering would
be unreal and cynical, since Auschwitz should not be dignified through art.
The paragraph
before, with Nietzsche and Adorno being in need of more material, earthly
aesthetics, could thus lead to a necessity of a new art, inside all its
idiosyncrasies, otherwise it would not be categorised as art.
“It was the state itself – in intimate
connections with its own history – that stood mirrored in its works of art,
that communed with itself.”[16]
Wagner already mentions the fact that the state mirrors art, also perhaps that
history and art will be forever interconnected inside the circle of the state.
Therefore when Adorno states that the spirit of art, “lacked the power to take
hold of men and change in them”, he is assuming far too much and expecting the
arts to become a separate force that exists for and with itself. Adorno was, to
same extent, hoping that Schiller´s ideas of aesthetic education freeing the
political arena would indeed achieve its goals of a utopia. The fact that he
puts this burden on culture itself depicts the actual failure of culture and
its inability to change the societal man: a statement Schopenhauer already
envisioned by assuming art is more of a palliative. Adorno includes himself as
having lost a valuable memory: “it was in his image [the image of Adam] that
the child made its own image of the first man. That this has been forgotten,
that we no longer know what we used to feel before… is both the triumph of
culture and its failure.” Triumph because just as Wagner stated, “the one true
art, the perfect work of art… has not yet been born… it cannot be re-born, but
it must be born anew.”[17]
One could think here that new possibilities open up for the world of art, which
requires a new language. Agreeing with Adorno when the latter quotes Brecht:
“as Brecht put it in a magnificent line, its mansion is built of dogshit”. The
mansion of art carries both negative and positive aspects that, in connection
with the state, have blurred the reality and function of its ever more
demeaning objective.
Andreas Huyssen
confronts Adorno by stating: “Blaming the culture industry for capitalism´s
longevity, however, is metaphysics, not politics. Theoretically, adherence to
Adorno´s aesthetics may blind us to the ways in which contemporary art…
represents a new conjuncture which can no longer be.”[18]
But Adorno precisely blames metaphysics, as it has become a new reality since
Auschwitz.
Huyssen´s point is furthered: he
establishes that culture industry fulfils public functions and it therefore
achieves legit cultural needs. Though Hegel already argued that the artistic
truth was only fulfilled in the ancient Greek civilization through
‘Kunst-Religion’ or art-religion. Although this function would not solve the
problem, since religion seems to decay everyday, especially with the events of
Auschwitz, where Adorno declares: “The comfort of faith… sounds foolish and
cynical in its indifference to such experiences.”[19]
Hegel establishes that art had its function in religion, in glorifying the
beliefs of the Greek, furthermore, in the writings of Richard Wagner there is a
similar thought: “Grecian art was conservative, Wagner continues, because it
was a worthy expression of the public conscience”.[20]
The reality of a conscience that did not had any inner antagonisms and
therefore defined a clear relationship between the functions of a work of art. Adorno
though agrees with Hegel that great art was only possible during a specific
time in history as well as agreeing with Hegel´s view about the death of art. Adorno
states that even the French poet Rimbaud, predicted art´s decline with his
concept of silence: “Not even silence gets us out of the circle. In silence we
simply use the state of objective truth to rationalize our subjective
incapacity, once more degrading truth into a lie.”[21]
Though if art breaks all connections in
order to become true, it will further barbarism and if it continues, the
individual would become its accomplice. This last point is what Adorno mentions
about the countries in the East, where culture is abolished, resulting in
culture being used as means of control. Not only in the East but also in
Germany where Hitler made Wagner´s music propaganda. Eventually, mass culture
would be “getting what it deserves.”[22]
The infrastructure convicts its reality from below towards the superstructure,
and if barbarism becomes a cultural heritage it will obviously become the law
and norm. Therefore Adorno states that nothing artistic could be done after
Auschwitz, because that precise cultural heritage is based on a lie used by the
dictatorial forces. What is artistic and cultural is intrinsically metaphysic and
metaphysics are directed too much towards its abstract strand of thought
instead of the necessity to criticise reality:
“Trying to give
men courage’ – as if this [Auschwitz] were up to any structure of the mind; as
if the intent to address men, to adjust to them, did not rob them of what is
their due even if they believe the contrary. That is what we have come to in
metaphysics.”[23]
Adorno implies
that modern society has not resolved its antagonisms, and that a deeper
analysis of the form of an artwork is the resolution, since “[art] criticizes
society through its existence only.”[24]
This existence being the actual form of
the artwork, which denounces the total society. Whilst Hammermeister seems to
make a reality-check by defending culture and turning towards the actual
creation of the artwork and retracing it back to the moment of the individual:
“some kind of normative principle needs to be found in order to judge the
success of the individual work, because otherwise, the view that ‘anything
goes’ could hardly be avoided and a line between kitsch and art no longer
drawn.”[25]
There are thus three conclusions about the function of art: for the sake of the
public and its own cultural needs; to fulfil a specific social function such as
religion; and to advance the interest (or ‘engagement’ for Adorno) of the
individual who bases himself in the history of art and the culture industry
that lives today.
Adorno was still
trying to evaluate the Second Viennese School and attempted to defend the
betrayed concept of Beauty after Auschwitz. Helmut Lachenmann perfectly sums up
Adornean philosophy:
“Having been
delayed by the Nazi period, such evaluation [of Beauty] was urgently needed in
order to clarify the distinction between humanity´s legitimate and profoundly
rooted demand for art as the experience of Beauty, and its false satisfaction
and alienation in the form of art ‘fodder’ manufactured by the bourgeoisie and
preserved in a society of repressed contradictions.”[26]
In conclusion,
having evaluated philosophers from Kant to Nietzsche and Adorno´s modernist
views about the failure of culture, through his Critical Social Theory and
aesthetics, we find contradiction at the heart of Adorno´s critical philosophy.
But yet it supposes an important pillar for contemporary thought. Just like
Lachenmann adequately stated, we live in ‘a society of repressed
contradictions’. A breakthrough in history like the events in Auschwitz demands
a change in culture as well so that its philosophy is prepared to avoid further
cynicism. Another critical conclusion is the fact that art cannot be understood
without philosophy, but philosophy is not sufficient to fully understand it.
[2] Michael Rothberg, ‘After Adorno: Culture in the Wake of Catastrophe’, New German Critique. No.72 (1997), pp.
45-81 at pp.49.
[18] Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington,
1986), p.19
[26] Lachenmann, Helmut, ‘The ‘Beautiful’ in
Music Today’, Tempo, no. 135 (1980),
pp. 20-24 at
pp. 20
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