Blog post 4

First off and foremost, I am going to thank the cohort for informing my reading of Adorno. It allowed me to read The essay as form differently and see some patterns into his thinking of what the essay should be. However, I will mainly focus on Williams, trying to unpack some the things that interested me in his excerpt.

I like Raymond Williams explanation of forms which relates to the question Mark posed on canvas of what is the relationship between forms and the socio historical which I will try (no promises) to answer. Williams shows the problem of constructing new forms that or the “construction of theories of value around one or other projected pole, [because it] fails to give adequate recognition to the constantly interactive and in this sense dialectical process, which is real practice” (187).  From my understanding, Williams trajectory of the history of forms argues that to completely coincide or believe a singular form of theory as the only way to read could be false as it fails to recognize the “dialectical process” of real reading or theory that shifts with time and context. Like Williams states it is just “temporary stabilization”. He also criticizes neo classical theories of form as well even though he does give them some recognition by stating that they are able “to describe [and recognize] certain artistic forms . . .  while at the same time limiting understanding both of the forms and of the status of these ‘rules’ by failure to recognize” by a process of active shaping or the through multiple attempts to follow impulse (Williams). Here he shows that theories which attempted to describe forms in the past had value but as well limited themselves by forgetting the process from which they came from.  The key word that comes to mind is recognition and that form is related to this recognition but how? The answer seems to come from its connection to social theory. Williams explains that the problem of form in social theory “is a problem of relations between social modes and individual projects” which leads to him concluding that that “a social theory can show that form is inevitably a relationship. Form depends that is to say on it perception as well as its creation”. I apologize for quoting most of the first page but it was absolutely interesting. Williams seems to show that social theory and the socio historical helps illustrate that form is a relationship that involves recognition or the ability for form to be understood by its society and history while it is perpetuated and changed as society shifts in its perception of what is real or pertinent to it. To explain this better my take on it is that is that the relationship between form and the socio historical is that form is a reflection of the socio historical while the socio historical must recognize it in order to give it validity and understanding of its value in its current context.

In addition, both the socio historical and form are in a sort of “dialectical process” that shift constantly. Adorno’s essay and title now makes somewhat sense in regards to thinking of it in this way because his essay shows a very repetitive structure that stresses a similar principle but at the same contradicts what Williams states as well by saying that “discontinuity is essential to the essay; its subject is always a conflict brought to a standstill. While the essay coordinates concepts with one another by means of their function in the in the parallelogram of forces in its objects, it shrinks form any overarching concept to which they could all be subordinated” (Adorno). Thinking of the essay as a form that “brings conflict to a standstill” and that it shies away from any “overarching concept” it begins to show form as something that is able to bring something real in a very fragmented nature that could be analyzed and understood but not completely defined through theories that dominate (such as Marxism?) but rather allows for contradiction of meaning all the while getting closer to a meaning through more and more explication, leading to the form being recognized depending on the shifts in relationship with the socio historical.

In closing I just want to quote Williams because he could better explain at what I was trying to get at. “There is thus no abstract theoretical relationship between collective modes and individual projects. The degree of distance between them, with the continuing reality of each mode of consciousness, is historically variable as a function of real social relationships, both general and specific”. Thanks Williams. Form is a variable dependent on relationships and the shifting recognition of the socio historical.