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Adorno on Mimesis
in Aesthetic Theory
Amresh Sinha
In Briel, Holger and Andreas Kramer, eds., In Practice: Adorno, Critical Theory and Cultural Studies. Bern: Lang, 2000, pp. 145-159.
Art is imitation only to the extent to which it is objective expression, far removed from psychology. There may have been a time long ago when this expressive quality of the objective world generally was perceived by the human sensory apparatus. It no longer is. Expression nowadays lives on only in art. Through expression art can keep at a distance the moment of being-for-other which is always threatening to engulf it. Art is thus able to speak in itself. This is the realization through mimesis. Art's expression is the antithesis of 'expressing something.' Mimesis is the ideal of art, not some practical method or subjective attitude aimed at expressive values. What the artist contributes to expression is his ability to mimic, which sets free in him the expressed substance." [1]
Adorno's critique of mimesis proposes a method of dialectical reflection which goes against the grain of the positivistic tendency of modern consciousness, which has a tendency to substitute means for ends. "Art's expression is the anti-thesis of expressing something," for Adorno, implies that it remains non-identical to a tendency that is related to the exigency of commodity exchange. It resists the functional aspect of being-for-other which "threaten(s) to engulf" its existence. Artistic expression cannot be substituted for something else. It cannot be absorbed into the identity of something that can be substituted for itself. Artistic expression resists absorption into a method. According to Adorno, both Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Marx's Capital, the "great dialectical texts of modern dialectics," use the methodology of reflection, but it is a method which performs a very different purpose. The method to which the object is now being subjected is derived from the positivistic symptoms of modern methodology, whose aim is to substitute means for ends. Instead of relying upon the functional aspect of description as a method purported by positivistic scientism, Adorno adheres to the Hegelian mode of dialectical reflection comprising both description and understanding, but only to the extent that the latter would soon take precedence over the former in almost every sense of the word. [2] The understanding of mimesis, for Adorno, lies in the fact that as a self-identical entity, the artwork is not produced in relation to the identity of a world or a method, but it is self-identical to its mimetic moment, that is, it is identical to itself and not to the other. This helps him to theorize the absence of the notion of subjectivity in relation to the mimetic moment which withdraws or at least remains "at a distance" from the moment of being-for-another. Art does not reflect the "mood" of the artist, is not a "replica" or "a fuzzy photograph" of the "psychic content," it is a contribution to expression, an ability that is transmitted through mimesis. Furthermore, the artistic contribution also brings to expression the immanent category of the truth content which is the object of understanding. Mimesis, therefore, is not about replicating the content; rather it is a form of expression. The mimetic moment in art is not found in the artistic intention, it outlines the features of expression, in other words, it expresses expression itself and nothing else. For Adorno the resignation of Schubert's music cannot be located in the so-called "purported 'mood'" of its composer, for that is not what his art expresses. What it expresses is rather the posture of slumping itself that mimics the resignation of his music.
Adorno, however, establishes a difference between the linguistic medium of art and language as such. The linguistic aspect of language is manifested through mimetic expression which itself is repressed in the medium of language insofar as this repression of mimesis is expressed by the language, which has "disgraced" itself by falling into the "pitfalls" of exchange language that determines the separation of subject and object. The linguistic medium of art is delineated in the features of the artistic expression, in its ability to mimic expression, or to lend a gesture or posture to a feature which is brought about to express itself, or "to speak in itself;" on the other hand, language as a medium of art does not express its mimetic ability but merely replicates the meaning, the content of the artwork. The linguistic is a medium-in-itself; language is a medium-for-another. In an attempt to recall Benjamin's doctrine of mimesis, Adorno invokes James Joyce, and his linguistic experiments which go beyond the scope of language, in order to stress the difference between communicative and mimetic language. Art has a dual or "double character." [3] It is both constitutive and constituted. Art, as a linguistic expression of form, as in Joyce's prose, sets aside the discursive model of language; it constitutes its own essence. On the other hand, art as a medium of language is no longer an expression of itself, but loses its character and is subordinated to meaning which poses a threat to its identity. And here we are at the crux of the problem. If the meaning of language is expressed through communicative language then it inflicts danger to itself.
Before going into the Benjaminian nature of Adorno's discourse of language, it might be useful to recall a significant essay Adorno wrote early in his career, "The Actuality of Philosophy," in which he reiterates the logic of the Hegelian interpretation of the riddle of the Sphinx in the Aesthetics, by describing the process of how in the presence of meaning the riddle disintegrates. Such is the form of the threat that hangs over the very existence of art, and that is the reason why the indecipherability or incommunicability in art is so precious and valuable for him. The very existence of the artwork depends on the fact that it remains undecipherable, insurmountable, autonomous, and free. An expression is undecipherable, unmasterable; it is unrepresentable.
In Adorno's theory of mimesis the non-significative character of language is given precedence over the significative or communicative aspect of language. This is so because in Adorno's consideration "the true language of art is speechless" (AT, 164). This, incidentally, also makes us reflect on his previous statement that "art is...able to speak in itself" (AT, 164). It might well be a matter of contention whether speechlessness coincides with an inner speech, or whether to "speak in itself" is merely a logical category of being-in-itself which resists the sublation of being-for-another. The fact that art does not speak out as a method does point to an important difference in that we can observe that the language of art is both self-contained and "mute." But, nevertheless, by standing on its own, art proclaims a selfhood that expresses through its "gaze" the being-in-itself insofar as it does not relinquish its self-identity by becoming a part of the totality of an identifying thought process. The gaze allows the work of art to express itself through mimesis. Mimesis presents the idea of the primary subject. Adorno's version of mimesis as the archaic holdover of language is an echo of the Benjaminian motif. In his essay, "On Language as such and the Language of Man," Benjamin speculates on the Adamic language before and after the Fall. However a slight difference can be perceived in their use of language. Benjamin shows a marked preference for the theological and messianic implications of the language, whereas Adorno works from a more anthropological and phenomenological perspective. The phenomenological aspect of Adorno's thinking is brought to light by his effort to formulate the discourse of art in the framework of the discourse of being. For instance, he writes, "it is as if art works were re-enacting the process through which the subject comes painfully into being" (AT, 164).
For as long as the memory of the primal history reverberates through the subject, the work of art will bear affinity with it in its expression. [4] The point is not to integrate this expression into the identity of the subject, the ego, because despite the similarity and resemblance of this expression with the subjective content, it should not be forgotten that the subjective element in the work of art at the same time continues to be an impersonal and non-subjective expression. The closest the work of art comes to expressing is the non-subjective impression of the subject. Adorno writes:
More specifically it is in art's apparitional quality or phenomenality (das Erscheinende) that the collective essence breaks forth because apparition goes far beyond the mere subject. The memory trace of mimesis unearthed by every art work, among other things, anticipates a condition of reconciliation between the individual and the collectivity. And this collective remembrance is not divorced from the subject but actualizes itself through it. The latter's impulsive aversions are an indicator of collective modes of response. That is why the philosophical interpretation of truth content has to proceed through the particular as well. The subjectively mimetic and expressive moment of works of art terminates in objectivity. They are neither pure impulse nor pure form, but the congealment of the process of obtaining between impulse and form. This process is a social one. (Emphasis mine) (AT, 190)
As the primal history of subjectivity, the mimetic impulses are themselves integrated and transposed through a process of re-enactment into the works of art, and "they retain their quality as plenipotentiaries of extra-aesthetic nature in the midst of art, except that they cease to be nature pure and simple, becoming an after-image of nature instead" (AT, 165). The mimetic impulse, as "plenipotentiaries of extra-aesthetic nature," is sublated in the work of art and, consequently, also preserved in its "after-image" as the objectification of the artistic expression. In that sense the mimetic language, the non-communicative aspect of the language, is no longer expressed in the language of nature, whose "speechlessness" indicates the cause of its own suffering, but is being now expressed as a language that transforms the language of suffering into a language of expression. The work of art, through its "integrative machinery," manages to transform and modify the original form of mimesis into the constitutive act of spiritualization, a moment which comes prior to the reflection of spirit. The expression of mimetic language in the work of art is preserved and conserved in the artistic expression that speaks immanently from within the artwork itself. But it is now as a modified, mediated version of spiritualization that the mimetic impulse survives in the objectification of the artistic expression. In Adorno, the historicization of mimesis remains informed by his reluctance to provide a descriptive or definitive model of mimesis which, incidently, also serves as a critique of the Benjaminian notion of "non-sensuous similarity."
Michael Cahn, in "Subversive Mimesis," argues that "for Adorno the relationship between word and thing, as a negative dialectic which is not content with a simple similarity, has to avoid the deadlock of synthesis which Benjamin's non-sensual similarity seems to imply." [5] It is curious to find Cahn's insinuation that there is a simplicity or naïveté to Benjamin's idea of non-sensuous similarity, because to many readers it holds the key to his rather enigmatic and revelatory concept of language. Cahn implies that it is simple because it is not sufficiently historical. It is simple because it synthesizes the archaic with the latest--the mythical with the technological. But what if it is none of that and consequently all of that? Adorno remains, so to speak, in more than one sense, faithful to Benjamin's non-communicative aspect of language. If the mimetic relation between word and thing has a fixed historical value in Benjamin, then how can we explain his claim for the "decline" of the mimetic ability, unless we completely ignore the implication of historical reification? To claim that mimesis in Benjamin is more or less de-historicized and thus, to reduce it exclusively to his rather idiosyncratic onomatapoetical definition, is, unfortunately, quite reductive itself. According to Cahn, "Adorno emphasizes the behavioral and almost sensual dimension of mimesis in mimicry and magic, and their primitive, anthropological quality constitutes the basis for other, less tangible 'versions' of the Adornian concept. But all of these have in common the fact that they do not designate mere imitation."[6]
Adorno's concept of mimesis does not define itself as imitation. But it nonetheless recognizes the insidious ambiguity in the word mimesis, which at once advances the concept of a "thinglike copy," and which "might also refer to the activity of a subject which models itself according to a given prototype."[7] Like Plato, Adorno, too, is conscious of the difference between good and bad mimesis. The meaning of the first type of mimesis refers to the structure of bad mimesis, whereas the second type, which is a model of adaptive "and" correlative behavior, is marked as the proper mimesis. In a peculiar fashion, Adorno both cancels and preserves, negates and affirms, the Benjaminian notion of mimesis. On the one hand, he rejects the nuances of imitation in Benjamin's unrestrained celebration of mass-reproduction, which is limited and controlled by its visual aura, on the other hand, he wholeheartedly embraces the Benjaminian doctrine of mimesis that offers "similarity" as the basic impulse of mimesis. This unequivocal support of Benjamin's language of mimesis echoes in his thought which claims that the original meaning of mimesis consists in "making oneself similar to an other."[8]
Imitation is relegated to bad or secondary mimesis. Yet, for Adorno, the concept of mimetic taboo--Bilder verbot--taboo on graven images--can also be seen as an example of mimesis itself. Cahn argues that Adorno's critique of mimesis "as a category of art must not be reduced to imaging representation," not because he is primarily interested in music and other non-representational arts, but rather "for him mimesis is a behavior which reaches towards the object, stands in a reflected immediacy to it, and thus it implies the archaic affinity between subject and object. [9] Similarly, in Late Marxism, Jameson makes the argument that the introduction of the concept of mimetic taboo also represents a moment of dialectical possibility between mimesis and rationality. [10] Only now, according to him, "the turn of so-called Western science will...be seen as a result of the anti-mimetic taboo and of anti-mimetic regression--that is to say, the passage from a perceptual 'science' based on the senses and on quality to notations and analysis based on geometry and on mathematics."[11] Both the anti-mimetic taboo and anti-mimetic regression have preserved the memory of a "science," "the mimetic prehistory of rationality." [12] Historically one can perceive in the enlightened repression of mimesis a continuation of the same impulse.
Art is a refuge of mimetic behavior. In art the subject, depending on how much autonomy it has, takes up varying positions vis-á-vis its objective other from which it is always different but never entirely separate. Art's disavowal of the magical practices--art's own antecedents--signifies that art shares in rationality. Its ability to hold its own qua mimesis in the midst of rationality, even while using the means of that rationality, is a response to the evils and irrationality of the rational bureaucratic world. (AT, 79)
The critical potential of art maintains itself qua mimesis in the midst of the irrationality of the world and is still relevant, despite the loss of the subject, to the priority of the object. Art survives first of all by adapting to the rational behavior of the mimetic impulse, and secondly by remaining distinct from the all-embracing identity of rationality. To put it slightly differently, the mimetic impulse in art survives due to its correlative, adaptive behavior. Art takes refuge in mimesis in order to escape from the irrationality of the death-like intensity of the reified world; this leads to Adorno's musings on the "posthumous" character of art in Aesthetic Theory.
Mimesis, in Adorno, mediates between two elements: life and death. In such a dialectical context, if we assume that art's survival in the midst of its potential annihilation by the bureaucratic irrationality of the world depends on the fact that it must partake in the process of rationality, which itself is the reason for its irrationality, then its relation to death is what is manifested as its relation to life. Despite the historical fact that art emerged gradually from the fetters of magical principles, it cannot simply go back to its natural origin, when faced with the rational composition of the irrational, reified, bourgeois world. It is already a part of it. Art's emergence from the shackles of the magic world testifies to its rational principle. But it does not fully indicate the separation of subject from the object. For Adorno, the "varying positions" of art signifies two distinct features. In the first place, the work of art is endowed with the principle of rationality, which indicates its separation from the dominance of the magico-mythical realm; secondly, art also stands in opposition to the rationality, the real domination. In both instances the actual process of art is "inextricably intertwined with rationality" (AT, 80). Yet, the traditional aesthetic reception tends to be surprised at the "mobilization" of technological, rational element of artistic production that works "in a different direction than domination does." Both art and rationality mobilize technology: one employs it for the sake of the survival of its magical heritage, the other pays no attention to it. The difference lies in the direction of mobilization itself.
The dialectic of mimesis, Adorno claims, is absolutely "intrinsic" to art, a proposition mostly misunderstood by the "naïveté" of modern aesthetic thought. For it fails to appreciate the progressive disenchantment of the world in the work of art as a means for securing, however through technology, the life of magical heritage of art. The dialectic of mimesis and rationality reveals the compatible but irreconcilable tendency of one to the other. Art's mimetic character is revealed in its disenchantment from and secularization of magic from the archaic period. It thus conveys the rational side of art, as well as its refusal to allow the domination of rationality to turn it into a technological perfect being. In art the resistance is felt in both directions as nothing but the mute suffering of its expression. For neither does its mimetic rationality permit it to regress to the magical realm, in order to separate itself from that type of cognition which aims at a singular conceptual grasp of the world, nor the knowledge of the "magical essence" let it slide towards the destruction of its self-identity.
Art's secularization from magic is secured within the antinomy of life and death. The artwork's survival depends on its adhering to the mimetic impulse, which is foremost a "zoological" or "biological" impulse, designed after the perseverance of the species, a natural, anthropological impulse that survives in the face of death by feigning death itself. In the face of death, many animals have been found to imitate death, their enemy. Their survival results from the assimilation to the other. By playing dead in the presence of extreme danger, by giving up the characteristic of life, by playing dead, in the presence of extreme danger, the animal gives itself, assimilates itself to death. In other words, the presence of death mimetically marks the absence of both life and death. This ritual, or if you prefer, the dialectic, of life and death points to a moment in the history of art that is indistinguishable from the dichotomy of the rational and the irrational. Art is without doubt irrational, or at least, its origin cannot be extricated from the horror that always distinguishes it from the other, but it is also, at the same time, rational, to the extent that it must not deteriorate to the superstitious mythological level. "What mimetic behavior responds to," says Adorno, "is the telos of cognition," which is to say that the tendency of modern scientism to reduce all means for its own ends will not do justice to the mimetic requirements. The telos of cognition, however, signifies the expansion of this concept into the non-existent, non-conceptual area--the domain of mimesis. This brings us to that moment in Adorno's doctrine of mimesis that performs the task of critique. The critical mimesis responds, more or less, in a manner of a "critique of critique."[13] According to Adorno, "art is rationality criticizing itself without being able to overcome itself" (AT, 81). Art is critical of rationality, yet cannot be identified with it, despite the fact that rationality, too, is a critical factor. The complimentary nature of this dialectical tension is best observed in the cases where the ideological concerns of positivistic thinking are most blatantly evident. Though Adorno himself does not hesitate to incorporate materials from other academic fields, he nonetheless objects to that type of the "rationalist critique" that, in order to make a point about art, applies the "criteria of extra artistic-logic and causality" (AT, 81). Naming it an "ideological misuse" of critique, he provides an example: "When a latecomer in the tradition of the realistic novel objects to Eichendorff's verse, which says that 'clouds are floating like heavy dreams,' pointing out that one may well compare dreams to clouds but not clouds to dreams, then poetry, faced with the homely persuasiveness of this objection, justly retreats into its own realm" (AT, 81). It is almost unbearable to leave the poetic and mimetic configurations and constellations--in which the external nature resembles the inner state of almost sentimental longing--in the hands of rationalist criticism.
Rationality is immanent to art, and this rationality is in many ways similar to the rationality of the outside world, but it is also, at the same time, different from the rationality of the conceptual order. No artistic work can exist in complete isolation from the "rationality governing the world outside," yet it may not reproduce or imitate the strictures of the governing logic that condemns it for having irrational features. What appears as irrational expression in art in the "eyes" of the conceptual ordering is actually the expression of the "forgotten experiences" that themselves cannot be understood by "rationalizing them." The defense of irrationalism, in Adorno, is prompted by a desire to defend expressionism and surrealism from the attacks of the propagandist apparatchiks like Zhdanov and his followers. Adorno maintains that "to manifest irrationality--the irrationality of the psyche and of the objective order--in art through a formative process, thus making it rational in a sense, is one thing: to preach irrationality, which more often than not goes hand in hand with a superficial rationalism in the use of artistic means, is quite another" (AT, 82). This leads to a critique of Walter Benjamin: "Walter Benjamin probably did not take cognizance of this in his theory about the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. For one thing, Benjamin's dichotomy between auratic and mass-produced art, for simplicity's sake, neglects the dialectical relation of these two types. For another, he becomes the victim of a perspective on art that hypostatizes photography as a model, which is just as atrocious as the view, say, of the artist as creator" (AT, 82).
One of Adorno's main criticisms of Benjamin hinges on his difference from Benjamin's endorsement of mass-reproduction, which has for him a negative connotation. Adorno's formulation of mimesis disavows any affinity to imitation, since imitation or "copy realism" cannot account for the critical moment in art. The concept of the mimetic taboo is introduced, in effect, to prevent mimesis from regressing to its archaic mode. Adorno traces the origin of the mimetic taboo to the psychoanalytical phenomenon of the return of the repressed. He returns in the Dialectic of Enlightenment to confront the question of the "return of the repressed" in the chapter on anti-Semitism. [14] Thus, in one sense, he manages to demonstrate the continuity of the "forms of domination" between the mimetic impulse and the process of enlightenment, which also signals the displacement of the discourse of the "specificity of science" onto its representation and its language. As a postulate of an archaic mode of behavior the mimetic capacity refers to a state prior to the distinction between subject and object; it lacks the instrumentality of expression which is conveyed through the means of representational languages and, therefore, remains immune to the representations of the instrumental reason to enforce a conceptual opposition to it. "The capacity of representation," according to Adorno and Horkheimer, "is the measure of domination, and domination is the most powerful thing that can be represented in most performances, so the capacity of representation is the vehicle of progress and regression at the same time." [15] The process of enlightenment--as forms of domination--is itself nothing but a continuation of science and ritual. The "enigmatic status" of mimesis is expressed in the dialectical possibility of both regression and progression. [16] This also reflects the progress of narrative in its historical form as a repression of mimesis.
If the structure of narrative, of the instrumental reason, causes the domination of mimesis, if mimesis is repressed, dominated and tamed by instrumental reason, then, it also, ironically, survives through the existence of the myth of enlightenment itself. Thus mimesis's "aggression" is purely bound up in its efforts for survival. Mimesis and narrative are the forces of dialectical possibility, but only in so much as they remain in opposition to each other. At one point Adorno speaks of the distinction between the linguistic and the language of mimesis. For Adorno the latter does not exist. Mimesis is not a language, a system of representation. If one must speak of the mimetic language, it should only be an expression of the "utopia of language" [17] between the relation of word and thing. Cahn interprets this shift in Adorno by suggesting that Adorno "separates mimesis from the crisis of representation and instead brings it to bear on the crisis of critique." [18] Mimesis is never mimesis of this or that. Mimesis is not constituted in relation to the subject-object dualism, since it is nothing but the expression of that dualism. This dualism refers to a state which originates prior to the division of subject and object, and historically one can locate it as "an attitude towards reality prior to the fixed (fixen) opposition of subject and object." [19] "What is not fixed in art seems to be closer to the mimetic impulse," says Adorno (AT, 147).
The distance between subject and object presupposes a clear line of demarcation, an abstraction that mostly serves the interest of enlightenment rationality, which, in other words, "liquidates" its object. "Expression in art is mimetic, just as the expression of living creatures is the expression of suffering. The lines of expression that are engraved in a work, assuming they are clear and sharp, simultaneously serve as lines of demarcation to keep out illusion. Even so, works of art continue to be illusory. Therefore the conflict between illusion--form in the most general sense--and expression remains unresolved, raging back and forth in the course of history. Representing a stance toward reality that is different from the rigid juxtaposition of subject and object, the mimetic mode of behavior in art has been progressively infiltrated by illusion--the organ of mimesis since the archaic taboo on mimesis, just as form has become the vehicle of autonomy" (AT, 162). Once again mimetic behavior is contrasted with the notion of imitation and developed more along the lines of expression. The works of art do not "imitate the impulse of an individual in the medium of expression, much less those of the artist himself"; the mimetic impulse, on the other hand, constitutes expression that is reified to the extent that in it the non-aesthetic experience of the real is expressed through the fictitious quality in art. Art no longer expresses the value of a living substance. Aesthetic expression aims at the "objectification of the non-objective" (AT, 163). And since the objectification of the non-objective already requires a form of expression--that no longer expresses the value of a living substance--in the objective substance of the artefact that "raises its voice to speak: sadness, strength, yearning" (AT, 163).
For Adorno "mimetic behavior does not imitate something but assimilates itself to that something" (AT, 163). Mimesis and its relation to the other, its assimilation to the other, is also indicative of a relation based on similarity and affinity. Moreover, the dialectical relation between mimesis and rationality can also be extended to how expression is diametrically opposed to conceptualization. In mimesis the relation to the other, "which exceeds the limit of history," is one of similarity and affinity. [20] As an expression mimesis is related to the other as a self-identical concept and therefore resists the power of objectification through conceptualization. In other words, the regression of mimesis which, being a part of that history which itself is anterior to the polarity of subject and object, is never actually a regression, constitutes its opposition through which it escapes the power of conceptualization in the process of identifying with something. Art becomes conscious of the other when it recognizes its own non-being. As long as art identifies itself with the image of nature, and that is exactly what instrumental reason reduces it to, it remains non-identical with the truth-content, which is immanently expressed through the historical development of the artefact. And since Adorno most emphatically declares that "truth content cannot be an artefact," therefore, truth, in its immediacy, is necessarily posited by its presence as illusion, as the illusion of truth (AT, 191).
"The mark of authenticity of works of art is the fact that their illusion shines forth in such a way that it cannot possibly be prevaricated, and yet discursive judgement is unable to spell out its truth. Truth cancels the artwork along with its illusion. The definition of art in terms of illusion is only half correct: art is true to the degree to which it is illusion of the non-illusory (Schein des Scheinlosen)" (AT, 191). The non-illusory is not the function of critique for art, because as itself it is nothing but the illusion of the other, the non-being, whose longing is translated in the form of image in relation to nature. For nothing than this sheer longing of art to assimilate itself to the other, nature, both withdraws it from the rationality of the identifying thinking, the power of conceptualization, and affirms its mimetic capacity for self-identity. In its relation to truth art functions as the principle of non-identity, which informs its separation from an all embracing identifying thought, and releases its mimetic ability to function as a critique which does not imitate the characteristics of instrumental rationality through which domination is institutionalized. Aesthetic thought, Adorno maintains, unlike Kant, is unable to fulfill the requirement of truth, which can only be experienced if it passes through philosophy. The artworks posit what is man-made, "the actuality of the non-existent," and its own reality testifies to the "feasibility of the unreal" (AT, 192). Thus through contradictoriness and negativity the artwork suggests a boundary beyond which its claim to truth is normally ascribed in the false claim that it can transcend these limits.
Artistic truth represents only half-truth as far as it is presented as a critique of reason, the other half is supplemented by the mimetic impulse that seeks identity with itself (AT, 153). If it is presented merely as an expression that is critical towards reason then its own objective ideal is virtually forgotten. As something other than itself, as a critique of reality, art itself cannot attain its own truth content which is manifested by "the law" that it resembles, here in the sense of similarity to itself, rather than imitation of an other, its own objective ideal. [21] Art carries the principle of contradiction to its extreme. For instance, as a man-made substance it is not purely "objective," and its ideal in its being is to become whatever it aspires to. Adorno captures the real tension between the objective and the ideal in the process of the artist making the artwork. For the artist to capture the essence of the objective ideal, he or she must account for an objectivity that is not "posited" by him or her, and an ideal that is reminiscent of the mimetic trace that every art work seeks to resemble. Adorno's dialectic of mimetic identity and instrumental rationality incorporates a sense of yearning and longing for the non-existent. "By their presence," says Adorno, "art works signal the possibility of the non-existent; their reality testifies to the feasibility of the unreal, the possible. More specifically, in art longing, which posits the actuality of the non-existent, takes the form of remembrance" (AT, 192). That which does not exist, i.e., the past, now exists in our memory. Through remembrance the present is joined with the past. The notion of utopia in art is, therefore, preserved in the act of recollection, in the specularity of anamnesis, in the potential of the yet-to-come. That which through remembrance remains potentially possible in the realm of the artwork does not necessarily mean a betrayal of the reality of the empirical world. Rather the imagery of art, through mémoire involontaire, "brings to life the existence of empirical world." And precisely along this line that we must acknowledge the importance of Adorno's critique of "copy theory," of mimesis as imitation of reality. Adorno reverses the adage of art imitating reality; instead he proposes that "reality ought to imitate art" (AT, 192).
The artworks reach the highest stage of their vulnerability at the moment when they seek to transcend the limit set by their own principle of negativity, a boundary that expresses the negation that "each and every work...seems to say: non confundar" (AT, 192). Adorno claims that the "truth content of art works, as a negation of their being, is mediated through them, but they do not communicate it any way whatsoever" (AT, 193). That the strength of artworks lies in the fact that they can transcend the limit also makes them, at that point, the most vulnerable to their own deception and fictitiousness. For the artwork's truth content lies not in communicating something other than itself; rather it is a mediation, a "participation," in history. The great works of art do not transcend the boundary of their own illusion, because their illusion represents their truth, an illusion of truth, i.e., their falsity. Aesthetic truth transcends illusion, but the artworks themselves are illusory. This is the paradox: they cannot lie, and yet they remain false.
NOTES
[1] Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. C. Lenhardt (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 164. All subsequent references will be given with page numbers in the text as AT.
[2] See H. T. Wilson's critique of scientism and positivism, "Critical Theory's Critique of Social Science: Episodes in a Changing Problematic from Adorno to Habermas, Part I & II," in History of European Ideas, Vol. 7, Nos. 2 & 3, 1986.
[3] Lucian Goldman, Cultural Creation in Modern Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977), 133.
[4] "Art possesses expression not when it conveys subjectivity, but when it reverberates with primal history of subjectivity and ensoulment" (AT, 165).
[5] Michael Cahn, "Subversive Mimesis: Theodore W. Adorno and the modern impasse of critique," Mimesis in Contemporary Theory: An Interdisciplinary Approach, ed. Mihai Spariosu, Vol. I (Philadelphia: John Benjamin's Publishing Company, 1984), 38.
[10] Fredric Jameson, Late Marxism (London: Verso, 1990), 105.
[11] Jameson, Late Marxism, 105.
[14] Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 168-208. See also Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973), 269-270.
[15] Adorno & Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 34-35.
[16] Jameson, Late Marxism, 104.
[21] See Lambert Zuidervaart, Adorno's Aesthetic Theory: The Redemption of Illusion (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), 181-183.