blog post 4

In this week’s blog post, I’d like to spend some time working through Adorno’s piece, “The Essay As Form.” I choose this particular work to focus on because, frankly, I had a lot of difficulty understanding it and am hoping to come to some sort of clarity by the end of this post.

The beginning of his essay (can I or should I refer to it as that?) seems to spend a lot of time working through the differences and historical barriers placed between what constitutes “art” and “science.” He does this form a starting point that I want to spend some time on- the relationship of the essay to the process of derivation. Adorno writes, “Nothing can be interpreted out of something that is not interpreted into it at the same time…the essay has something like an aesthetic autonomy that is easily accused of being simply derived from art, although it is distinguished from art by its medium, concepts, and by its claim to a truth devoid of aesthetic semblance” (4-5).  I’m not entirely sure, but to me it sounds like Adorno sees in the essay some sort of power to bridge gaps or mediate contradictions- especially between the idea of the essay being made of something that is derived. It sounds like he argues the essay is possibly a radically democratic form, because it is not hierarchical- there is no sense of digging to find the original essence- instead the essay is more interested in the relationships between its components and ideas; not the vertical process with which they are layered. There is, apparently, no real move to find the origins of thought or thesis- but rather the essay works to take these ideas and put them in conversation with culture and nature. It does this, again, by being perfectly happy to work with mediations. Adorno seems to think that mediations are the beginning and the end. (?) “…by dealing with objects that would be considered derivative, without itself pursuing their ultimate derivation…it does not insist on something beyond mediations – and those are the historical mediations in which the whole society is sedimented- but seeks the truth content in its objects, itself inherently historical” (Adorno 11).

Adorno links this back to methodology and empiricism: “empiricism has been as much a ‘method’ as rationalism. In the realm of thought it is virtually the essay alone that has successfully raised doubts about the absolute privilege od method” (9), however this is somewhat lost on me as I’m having difficulty seeing what the specific doubts raised about method (what specific method?) are. I see how he argues that mediations are not something to get away from- so perhaps he sees the denial of mediation (?) as methodology itself. At any rate, the language Adorno uses is anxious to get away from this idea of reducing something to its origin. He is more interested in the role of thought going deep to “penetrate its object, not on the extent to which it reduces it to something else.”

Some of Adorno’s language also reminds me of last weeks’ discussion on the anecdote, and the contested relationships that exist between the part and the whole. In this sense, the essay, according to Adorno, is supposed to itself mediate between “specific moments” (parts) and their relationship to the “whole.” The essay supposedly highlights the reciprocity between the two. The specific moments cannot be derived from the whole, and the whole can also not be derived simply from the moments. And at the same time, “the essay does not pursue them to the point where they would legitimate themselves outside the specific object…Instead, it moves in so close to the hic et nunc of the object that the object becomes dissociated into the moments in which it has its life instead of being a mere object” (14). So what I’m gathering is that the essay allows for pieces, thinks in fragments, and puts the fragments together in a way that comes together to some sort of unified meaning by actively acknowledging and allowing the pieces between the fragments to do their own work as well.  But then he goes on, “The essay form maintains the attitude of someone who is beginning to study philosophy and somehow already has its idea in his mind” (Adorno 14). My initial reaction is that this person sounds extremely annoying to deal with. Adorno thinks that one needs to start with the incomprehensible, complex problems and skip over the “ignorant” idea that we should first understand the “simple things.” While that makes enough sense, I also just inherently recoil at his idea of “comprehensibility” being “cliché.” Perhaps if writers like Adorno used essays to work towards comprehensibility, the apparently radical nature of the essay would be more accessible to everyone (isn’t actual MATERIAL ACCESS to knowledge what’s radical anyway??)