,~ BOOK REVIEWS
T. W. ADORNO. Aest'/Jetic' Theory_ Adorno, Jurgen Habermas), this T,anslated by C. Lenhardt. Edited by book constitutes a summa aesthe- Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann. tit;a. An English translation has London: Routledg'e & KeganPaul, long been overdue First publishe~ 1984, Pp x + 526. in German in 1970 one year after Aesthetics has be,come a central Adorno's death the boo~ soori area for Marxistthought in twentieth- app'eared in French (1974) and Italian century Europe. Among prominent (1915). For years it has been dabated Western Marxist philosophers' the and used on the EurQpean conti~ent. names of Georg lukacs, ~Jean-Paul Until recently, however, Aesthetic Theory has receiv~d little attention Sartre, and Theodor W. Adorno imm- ~ ediately, come to mind. It is not clear, in the English speaking world. Th~ however, whether Marxist thought publication of Lenhardt's translation has entered the mainstre,am of conte- in 1984 makes a wider reception mporary Western aesthetics. In add,i- possible. tion to unavoidable pol itico-economic This reception will not be easy barriers, a blockade of ignorance and, or smooth. The book is complex and hostility has prevailed between provocative, just, as its author was Anglo-Arneri~n and Continental bri IIiant and, cont roversial. An H~ge- philosophy. Although less rigid in Iian Marxist critical of bot~ Hegel aes~hetics than' in philosophy of and Marxist-Leninism; an assimilated science, this blocl-ade has often pre- German Jew exiled for more than vented productive dialogue between fifteen years in England and the Westerr) Marxists and leading figures United States; a polished, modern in Anglo-American aesthetics. As the musician who subjected Schoenberg blockade relaxes, one can expect and Stravinsky "to ideology' critique; such dialogue to grow. even thougn a sophisticated, philosopher better I:.ukacs. Sartre, and Adorno have known for his work in sociology, died. psychology, and communications than Adorno's Aesthetic Theory is for his studies of Hegel, Kierkegaard, perhaps the most original attempt at Husserl, and Heidegger-Adorno was a comprehensive philosophy of the as complex as his publ ished work, arts within the Western- Marxist tra- which fills some 20 volumes of Gesa- dition. For the Frahkfrut School mmelte Schriften. According to (Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Martin Jay, Adorno's writings occupy !1f.jp an hisftfri6alU~ -f6rt!e'ffelde .fi1f~~'fielM-8 'ie1eiver. tMf~e Ot;. tloiced,and ne~ss~ry tfarisformat[ons an unusualenfjagernent vliith:tha'-art ofsociety;are'lnaae ima~h'lable. Such of its ,. own time. Criticisms of works can'fc:;r .ooitl¥~i'~;the' purely Adorno's outdatedness' 'might"atso .' be immanent analysis of~;(.ormalistappro- prob lematic. ,tot se Idom. do they aches nor the purely: transcend'ent expli-cate ,rriteria fo,- assessing' the evaluation of some ideology critiques. significance blchanges within art. ., ' The task of immarrent'critic1sm is to. Therei'sone 'recurrent objection. evaluateworksfrom within but simu: 'h()we'vet~that mi'ght srgnal "a central Itaneousty to' assess thei r sociohistd- problem. 'rhisobjection concerns , . rical significance. ' Adorno's me'thod ofreadi'ng'att back- Thre~ - objectior;1s to .Aesthetic wards. Adorno never fully' Martin Jay, Adorno, Cambridge, field," which suggested an interac- Massachusetts: Harvard University tion between the elements analyzed Press, 1984. Pp. 199. by philQsophy-never unification. And Martin J;jy envisioned his study Writing in the summer of 1966, of Adorno's th Jught as a map of just Adorno ended the preface of his such a force-field, recognizing the Negative Dialectics with the decla- irreconcilable of Adorno's work: "To ration: "The author is prepared for reveal as best we can the unique phe- the attacrs to which Negative Diale- nomenon'that was Adorno, w,e must ctics will expose him. He feels no therefore conceptual ize him in a man- rancor and does not bergrudge the ner which will be as true to the un- joy of those in either camp who will resolved ten~ions in his thought as proclaim they knew it all the time possible, rather. than seek to find and now he was confessing. "[New some putative coherence underlying York, 1973, p. xxi] Those two sente- them. "[p. 23] But despite this pro- nces suggest not so much a man with viso, Jay's book is an elegant intro- Socratic patience facing his accusors, duction to Adorno's ideas, and at the as a man both embattled and beleagu- same it provides a Iively sketch of a ered. Indeed, Adorno was a cultural sensibility. More than that, Jay has critic at war with the two cultures in succeeded in establishing Adorno-a which he lived, and a philosopher in man who was at war with everyone- disagreement with the traditions of not only as a profound thinker but German philosophy and with the also as an extremely attractive one. representatives of modern philosophi- cal thought. He even broke on In the crowd around the institute. important points with his closest of Social Research, Adorno was a associates, Max Horkheimer and polymath. Jay describes him as "a Walter Benjamin. And it is this man, virtual microcosm of the Institute's whose philosophy was marked at combined staff. "[p. 86] And Jay dis- once by extreme subtlety and by cusses a number of Adorno's major hardnosed intransigence, who is interests, such as his cultural criti- portrayed with great viUlity by Mar- cism, ,possibly best represented by tin Jay in Adorno. In Jay's portrait, the Joint book with Horkheimer, The Adorno's very intransigence becomes Dialectic of Enlightenment, his work a virtue. for it stands as a figure for with psychoanalytic concepts, and Adorno's model of the final irrecon- his aesthetic theory. The man who ciliabiliN of moments in dialectics. wrote on Schoenberg and Schopen- Adorno 'iked to speak of a "force- hauer, Kierkegaard and Kafka, Beckett . /- and Balzac is clearly present in Jay's tors, that he was really a mandar. book. But Jay emphasizes most in pretending to be a ,Marxist or Adorno's "negative dialectics," which simply a deconstructionist avant la he traces from an incipient state in lettre. We must rather, in a way that Adorno's early to the publication in is more in accord with the deepest 1966 of Negative Dialectics. As a impulses of his own approach, under- negative dialectician, Jay's Adorno stand him as the shifting nodal point~. stands firmly against totalization in in which all intersect. "[PP: 22-23] philosophy,. and more specifically And Jay, who writes affectionately against the tctalization represented of the redemotive side of Adorno's by Hegel's dialectics. It is Adorno's cultural criticism, is fully aware that resistance to totalization which sepa- any simple identification of Adorno rates him from most of his, fellow with deconstructionism is misplaced. Marxists. Although Adorno-with Thus, rather than making Adorno the rest of the Frankfurt School-has merely into a patron saint 'of decon. often been associated with Western struction, Jay identifies those Marxism because of his dialectical aspects of Adorno's thought which turn, Jay points out that Adorno's prefigure important aspects of decon- negative version of dialectics "pre- struct! on. vented him from embracing the Marxist Humanist conclusion reached According to Jay" the common by Lukacs, Gramsci and Korsch. ancestor of the antitotalization of "[p. 85] But if Jay's Adorno was an Adorno and Derrida is Friedrich outsider with regard to Marxist Nietzsche; and Nietzsche ma' es Humanism, he could be embraced by frequent appearances in .Jay's book. today's post" structural ist as an in- Nietzsche's role ts primarily as an sider. Jay's book establ ishes Adorno influence on. Adorno's "negative as one of the. pioneers of the anti- dialectics." But Nietzsche, I would totalization of the presentday decon- suggest, had an impact on more than structionist, even if Jay tUrriS to Adorno's ideas; he also greatly influ- terms like "prot~-deconstructi onislOt enced Adorno's intellectual style. The only occasionally in his text. In,' not Adorno portrayed by Martin Jay is pressing the point too hard, Jay deeply serious, fully worthy of the probably sensed that Adorno himself contemplative portrait reproduced on would have been uncomfortable as an the cover of Adorno. But as serious insider in deconstructionist criticism. he was, Adorno was also given to Jay, in fact, writes that it is "mis- a playful wickedness in his writing, leading to argue, as some commenta- a playful wickedness which resembles -;,' .~ 'Nietzsche's. When one reads Adorno's written with analytical energy and discussions of American mas culture. critical insight. What Adorno does the imprint of Nietzsche is cle~r. for Adorno is to repro@uce the vita- Without question, the clever Adorno lity of 'his thought. or. more accu- t31king about the "maestro" in the rately. its passion. As it turns out. American concert hall should be loca- it is not Jay's biographical discussion ted on a genealogical line that runs of Adorno which brings the thinker from Nietzsche to Roland Barthes. back to life. but rather the sensitive There lre other aspects of Adorno's treatment Jay gave to Adorno's intellectual style which might have ideas 1dded to Jay's picture. such as Carl Landauer ~dorno's commitment to some of the McGill University lalues of the German professoriate. ~Ithough Jay acknowledges Adorno's Barry M. Katz. Herbert Marcuse nandarinism. he is compelled more and the Art 01 Liberation. Verso )ften to defend Adorno against those Editions, ,London, 234pp. II/ho read his cultural criticism as ittle more than the cranky and sno- Katz's study of Marcuse is an )bish posturing of a mandarin. Still. intellectual biography. authorised by", ~dorno's 'cultural elitism -which is Marcuse. and based not merely 'on a" ~videnced by his prose. by most of detailed investigation of his writin9$, but also on intensive discussi9'r;i{' lis cultural attachments, by hLs atta- . :rs on, jazz and other expressions of with Marcuse himself. It can thus be nassculture-cannot be dissociated considered definitive in its biqg~ai" rom the mandarinism::if the German phical features. HJwever. Katz has' Icademic. Jay may be correct in forsaken criticism at the expens~ of Irotecting Adorno from his detrac- an elucidation of Marcuse's lif~'~htFj; ,) t ars, but a discussion of the inter- teachings; as a result. the,. bc)ok'" ction between Adorno's thought impresses the reader for the d~pfh Off; nd the values of the Germanacademy its biographical detail and io'~\'i(~1 vould have added to the complex clear explanations of the 6rgins'8F )icture which Jay produced of so Marcuse's doctrines rather, :th~~:f6F ",,' <' '!:~; 0: :omplex a man as Theodor Adorno. any critical analysis of them.' 1£-:J Jay's Adorno was clearly written Katz traces Marcuse's\s~xty, :lfejt.1./ II/ith affection and reverEnce for one career from its origins in Berlin at )f the 1110stdifficult thinkers of the the beginning of the century to 1979, wentieth century. But it was also the year of Marcusa's death. Although / there is no single turning point in period, when he contributed to the Marcuse's career. Katz maintains articulation of the theoretical position of.the Frankfurt School. and into the that a preoccupation with aesthe- period of "one-dimensional society", tics constitUtes the single most Marcuse tended to be impressed by consistent theme running through the the power of advanced industrial whole of Marcuse's work. Thus the society to transform even its most author argues that aesthetic theory intractable critics into affirmations serves as the framework within which Marcuse's philosophical and of the prevailing order. By the end political work can be integrated. From of his life. however. in his critique his 1922 doctoral dissertation on the of deterministic Marxist. aesthetics. German "artist-novel" through to his he returned to his original position extended essay of 1967 on The Aes- that it is of the es~ence of the thetic Dimension, Katz shows that artwork to preserve an element of Marcuse attempted to lay the ground- transcendence which can never .be work of a theory of art that was also negated. This element. Marcuse main- a theory of politics and an enduring tained in The Aesthetics of Libera- tion, is artistic form which endures as standard of political criticism. As a an implicit criticism of the oppressive result. Katz ties his discussions of conditions on contemporary civili- such divers e writings as Reason and Revolution, Eros and Civilization zation. and One-Dimensional Man to Mar- Katz's study is invaluable for the cuse's continuing preoccupation with reader who wishes to understand art and its nature. Marcuse's philosophical views in According to Katz. the basic their social and historical setting. problem with which Marcuse grapp- He is most successfui in conveying a led during his .life concerned the sense of the historical context in autonomy of art in relation to the which Marcuse's social theories evol- external world. and his position shif- ved and matured in relationship to ted according to his perceptions of the constantly changing conditions the power of the established reality in which he lived. to absorb, co-opt. or defuse the radi- cal alienation that distances the art Ronald E. Roblin work from society. During the fascist State University College at Buffalo ...".' ;Jj Martin Scofield. T. S. Eliot: The book gains its significanc~ The Poems, Cambridge University in its concentration on Eliot's poetry Pres!1, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 264. itself; in it's attempt to unravel the wealth of hidden meanings in the Scofield's method of interpreting poems. Most of the sections deal Eliotspoetry will be highly useful to with an elaborate discussion of each both students and general readers. major poem or group of poems. The Such a method is based on uncanny author arrives at the structure of power of perception and analysis and meanings of these poems though the profound understanding of hete- Eliot's techniques of personal or rogeneous aspects of an encyclopaedic masks, his use of musical effects, his mind. Scofield finds in Eliot a symbolism and imagism, and more 'compound ghost', a writer compoun- over, the less hinted elements such ded out of many elements of the as surrealism. While interpreting The European tradition. Wast/and, the author is chiefly concerned with the continual inter- Ouite incisively, the (luthor exa- action between the forces of fragmen- mines the various strands that are tation and those of unification. In connected with the development of is study of_Four Quartets, he is Eliot's oeuvere, and more succintly to his life and a wider area of philoso- similarly preoccupied with a funda- phical and religious inquiry. He mental aspect of Eliot as a poet: traces, at the same time, the deve- "the question of how much our lopment of the poet's mind with a response to his poetry depends on remarkable clarity, Particularly, the our response to his bel iefs." The fourth chapter "Poetic Theory and author's laudable attempt to clarify Poetic Practice" reveals the way in the oscurities, to explain the allu- which Eliot's literary criticism is sions, serves to provide a comprehen- largely consequence of his creative sive and stimulating introduction to activity- Eliot confesses that his best T. S. Eliot's poetry. criticism consists of the essays P. Mishra Women's College written on poets and Poetic drama- Sambalpur tists. Thus, it was a 'by-product' of his 'private poetry-workshop'. On the Ellen Dissanayake. What Is Art other hand, in his negative judgments For ?Seattle : University of Washing- on some writers, he pointed to ton Press, 1988. Pp.xv + 249, tr.e qualities which he wished to $ 20.00. avoid. The author begins by declaring ,.- that her analysis of art will take a monies, and these in turn helped ubiobehavioral" perspective rooted promote group sOlidarity. In a in Edward O. Wilson's sociobiology concluding chapter. she argues that (1975, 1978). She thus assumes that in the modern West the arts no longer "certain ubiquitous behavioral fea- serve that crucial collective fuction, tures or tendencies in human Iife are but have instead become the province an intrinsic, relatively unchangeable of a special ;zed few who substitute part of our nature and have arisen detac,hment for genuine response and and been retained because they con- the slippery terrain of "deconstruc- tributed positively to our evolution- tion" for consensual meanings. She ary success" (p 19). She defines deplores this situation as "unnatural" "artt. not as those select categories in that it peparts from the scenario of objects or performances which a she has just limned: :'what the arts mordern critic might choose but ins- were for, an embodiment and reinfor- tead as all the-se varied behaviors by cement of socially shared significance, which human beings attempt "to form is what we crave and are perishing for today" (p. 200). 'and shape, to make things special, to decorate or beautify, to single out Along the way, Dissanayake and take pains to present something offers much of charm and Inlerest In in a considered way" (p. 61). Finding the first place, her topic-the place on review of the ethnograph ic Iitera- of art and the aesthetic response in ture that such behaviour is universal human evolution-is an important in humans. she assumes that it must one. While numerous anthropolo- have contributed positively to our gists, art historians and aestheticians species's survival and sets out both have "talked around" the issue. it to trace the prehistoric sources of has probably not been afforded such artistic behavior and to answer the undivided attention since nineteenth- query on the title page -or. more century evolutionists like Balfour and accurately. to determine what art Haddon turned their attention to art, was for in terms of natural selection working, of course, without benefit during the long course of hominid of modern .genetics, archaeology, and evolution. Her conclusion: that the ethnography. Her interpretation of arts and human aesthetic response Wilson is so nondoctrinaire and had survival value because, being commonsensical, so affirmative of pleasurable, they encouraged early human unity and potential, that it humans to engage regularly in group will seem largely inoffensive to even activities to which they were atta- the most intransigient of those "sen- ched. such as rituals and cere- sitive, well-educated social scientists and;'" 2r>'St" opoosed to sociobio- mechanisms, so that their responses logy (:c, 32) .\ hom she sets up as her are more or less automatic" (p, 119) putative theoretical foes. And in the -a baffling statement from an etho- third place, her account balances logist, sin~e current 'animal research re-statements of valuable truths, like suggests quite the contrary (see the intimate connection between Cowley 1988). ritual, play, and art, with fresh insights like a usuful distinction bet- As for humans, Dissanayake ween two kinds of art appreciation: endows them with contradictory "ecstatic" response to the sensual "instincts" a common pitfall among aspects of a work, and what she those who seek biological blueprints terms "aesthetic" response to its to the explain the species ,that in a manipulations of particular artistic single century has brought us Babi "codes" or conventions (p, 164), For Yar and the Salr-Sabine vaccine, such contributions, and for a clear, Idi Amin and Mahatma Gandhi. On jargonfree style of writing that made one page she describes human as , me want to "buy" her arguments conspicuously unwilling to love or even when I disagreed, one can only try to understand their neighbors" be grateful, (p, 30), and on the next, as posse- ssing a "universally observed pen- But there are problems with the chant for actively seeking out and V\ork-problems significant enough enjoying the company of others of to make the thoughtful reader regard one's kind" (p. 31)' Quick to assume o issanayake 's conclusions with that widespread behaviors are univer- caution. First, she makes statements sal, she ignores obvious exceptions; that are, at the very least, open to thus "the infant's smile... 'releases' empirical question. For example, she protective and fond emotion in refers to "dogs or sheep, which have whoever witnesses it," an evolutio- been domesticated at least as long nary imperative th 1t was apparently as human beings have been'cultured," lost on Nazj soldiers as they herded (p.29), implying that pre-Neolithic Jewish mothers and babies to their n'an lacked culture and/or that the deaths, Another "universal behavior" domestication of animals might which she cites as "human nature" is precade the onset of human culture- "investing power in those of greater both thoroughly untenable proposi- age" (p. 21)-an arguable trait at tions, Elsewhere she asserts that best, given a vast literature on the "the behavior of animals is largely subordination of the aged in indus- determined by genetically controlled trial society (e, g., Ewen 1976) and / in many traditional societies (e.g., before him, Lucien Levy-Bruhl (1910. Amossand Harrel 1981). Also, though 1966), she characterizes people in she stresses repeatedly that our the modern West as logical, rational, "species being" was forged in a and aware that no single point of hunting-gathering context and that view enjoys monopoly on truth, in our natures and our art are adapted contrast to their traditional, non- for that type of society (see p. 109), Western counterparts. But by she devotes surprisingly Iittle space what yardstick does one judge in her text or her references to works as "Iogical'" and "rational" the on hunting-gathering life. Had she culture which perpetrated Auschwitz done so, I doubt that she could have and Hiroshima and which is now posed the rhetorical query, "why are cheerfully carrying out the wholesale torture, crueltY and killing so easy destruction of the world ecosystem? to instill and so hard to eradicate?" And how is it possible for an author (p.16), implying that these are all presently living in- Asia (Sri Lanka, part of our inborn heritage, for none to be exact) to maintain that. it was of those behaviors are typical of .the modern West which first propo- hunter-gatherers. Indeed, a compre- sed that the world we perceive with hensive perusal of the literature on our senses may be illusory, and that hunter-gatherer arts might have there is not one "truth", but many? opened her centr31 thesis to question. There is plenty of evidence for the Even more perplexing is Dissana- importance of purely secular, non- yake's refusal to include the popular ceremonial aesthetic activity among arts and mass media in her discussion hunting gathering peoples {Mbuti of Modern Western culture, or to singing and dancing,jGwi instrumen- draw on the rich Iiterature on those tal music, and ! Kung story-telling topics in the field of communication come to mind), making "art for art's studies-especially in view of her sake" as plausible an evolutionary insistance that, when discus,; ing scenario as "art for ceremony's "art" in other cultures, she is empha- sake:' tically not restricting herself to what Still more bothersome is Dissa- critics regardas "good" or "high" nayake's insistance on a qual itative art. When discussing non-Western "break" between the cognitive patter- societies, she includes as "art" such ning of persons in preliterate cultures activities as face-painting and scarl- and those in postliterate cultures. ficati on, arrangement of temple offer- ings, decoration of grain bins and ~ Following C, R. Hallpike (1979) and, ~ ""''' the like. But when she turns to the have, in fact, been said before. contemporary West, she inexplicably Although she cites a wide and eclec- narrows her focus to "high" or tic range of source material, she is "gallery" art, ignoring the influential either unaware of that fact or has areas of fashion, advertising, archi- deliberately chosen not to credit tecture and design, not to mention some eminent precursors, It's difficult vibrant local movements in dance and to see, for example, how her key theatre and multi-million industries notion of "making special"(see p. 99) based on television, films and pop differs in any substantive way from music. In effect, the aborigine carving Jacques Maquet.s (1971) concept of pleasing shapes on his boomerang "non-instrumental form," or why, in is held up for contrast with Oscar an extended discussion of "oceanic Wilde, Marcel Duchamp, or some feelings" being traceable to experi- other aesthete out to epater les ence in the womb, she ignores the bourgeoises; little wonder that work of Trigant Burrow. A long modern Western "art," so narrowly digression on psychologist Howard defined, seems elitist and non-"colle- Gardner's research on "modes" and ctive." Perhaps more disturbing, she "vectors" as sources of our response never alludes to the complex politico- to art is really a recasting of the old ;t economic developments which would Lipps-Worringer "empathy hypo- render comprehensible the marginali- thesis". Even her central points, that zation of the modern Western artist; art and ritual are often intertwined indeed, she skirts the whole issue of and that art (like much ideational class stratification as a possible culture) functions to make us want factor in the erosion of "socially to do what we must do in order to shared significance" in the contem- survive, have been stated many times porary nation.state. by many authors. Finally, though her synthesis is Karen L. Field original. many of the individual Washburn University of Topeka points DissanayaKe offer as "new" Topeka, Kansas 66621 USA ." ~.""