Adorno's Poetics of Form (SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

A critical study of the concept of form in Adorno’s writings on art and literature. Adorno’s Poetics of Form is the first book-length examination of the elusive deployment of the concept of form in Adorno’s writings on art and literature, and the first monograph to offer a comprehensive account of the relation of these writings to his broader philosophical project. It examines form within the constellation of concepts that exist around it, considering how it appears when seen in conjunction with and in opposition to content, expression, genre, and material. Illuminated from these angles, form is revealed as the site of a complex web of dynamic conceptual interactions. The book thus offers a resolution to a problem in Adorno’s work that has remained unsolved for several decades, and in doing so sets out the consequences of Adorno’s poetics for literary and critical theory today. Josh Robinson is Lecturer in English Literature at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. Contents 6 Abbreviations of Works by Adorno 8 Translations 9 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction 14 Form 14 Adorno 21 Poetics 25 Philology 32 Constellation 37 1. Form and Content 40 Adorno and Heidegger: The Form of the Thing 41 ‘Parataxis’ 46 Parataxis and Linguistic Form 52 Form as Sedimented Content 56 Parataxis in Adorno’s Reading of ‘Der Einzige’ 62 Consequences for Form and Content 69 2. Form and Expression 76 The Mediation of Form and Expression 80 Literary and Musical Expressionism 83 Expressionism and Surrealism 87 Kafka 94 Mimesis 98 Consequences for the Theory of Form 102 3. Form and Genre 108 The Fraying of Borders 110 The Genesis of the Forms 115 Universal and Particular 120 Nominalism and its Discontents 124 Bourgeois Art and the Culture Industry 128 The Novel as Form 134 Theory of the Essay 140 4. Form and Material 146 Material and Content 148 Technique and the Mastery of Material 155 Language and Poetry 162 The Literary Manifestation of Form and Material 168 Consequences for the Theory of Form 173 5. Artistic Form and the Commodity Form 176 Social and Abstract Labor 179 Abstraction and Exchange 183 Mediation and Form 188 Purposiveness, Communication, Language 193 Poetry and Reconciliation 197 Art Beauty and Natural Beauty 202 Priority of the Object 207 Coda 214 Lyric 214 Engaging Form 220 Beyond the New Formalism 225 Conclusion 229 Notes 236 Works Cited 264 Index 276