I have very little to add to what robin or martin
have said; I've been away for five days enjoying
the pleasures of a really lovely flu; so I got
your first message, keston,then robin and martin's
responses, and then your 2nd message taking back
some of your first message; if dialectical method
involves repeating the same thesis-establishing to
get the same antithesis to get the repent-thesis
I might have wailed it failed to be while it took
its time getting there, then I hope my inituition for
going away for that period of time doesn't have to go
so far as getting the flu to continue to play
its part in this civil decorum. I will add that I don't
see you, Keston, taking on the Prynne-ish, poetic
aspect, ie according the same respect (and I remind
that my response to Doug's "Prynne has always been
better than Derrida" led me to look at what either
might have to say to the other, where the being better
might be two-way, not just to be reversed, tit for tat)
to Derrida, his complex of idea and style. The passage
you quote
"The very fact that -meine- Wahrheiten is so
underlined, that they
are multiple, variegated, contradictory even, can
only imply that these
are not -truths-."
is not to falsify, but to take away any "always been true"
ness; he's specifically addressing the underlining, denying
that it emphasises, but that in fact it multiplies; he's
in love in many ways with what Nietzche's text achieves,
and defending it against the very criticism of over
self confident arrogance that you also want to rescue N
from, K. When D says truths, he also says to me, at least
this truth you like in N, *plus* other truths. In this
way, I think he shows the very respect for Nietzche or at
least for N's writerly unconscious, making the very gesture
that you berate Derrida for not seeing N make. But splendid.
If readers make the same point as D is making, but need to
claim it as their own, in a rhetorical gesture of getting
one up on D, then that at least gets readers making the
point. Bravo.
So tell me what's so great about Adorno. To adopt
the voice you say you adopted, to start discussion going,
I like his work on the Authoritarian personality and
family disfunction, but I think his idea of the negative
dialectic is macho and feeble, exemplified in his treatment
of Schoenberg and Stravinsky (tho g-d bless him for having
a go at jazz); what he says he wants achieved in listening
to Schoenberg, a facing of Caliban with himself through
total alienation, serves no dialectic at all, no process
of growth or change, in all but a few; yet the same thing
is achieved by the smaller more diplomatic resistances of
Stravinksy for many. Thus, it seems to me, his theorising
comes out of rationalising his "tastes" which seem based
on his fear of sharing the feeling of insightful growth,
in public, at a concert, with others; one must have a
favourite artist in whom one experiences broadly the same
pleasure as others do in other, not-total-sell-out
heroes, but name it as radically different, of a higher
order.
This to me is Adorno's & others' fear of slight
differences of opinion in a broadly shared pleasure.
Bravo though for the theory, it's marvellously applicable
to Stravinsky, through a reading of Hegel better than
Adorno's reading of Hegel, which Hegel might have felt
broad shared pleasure with slight difference over (as he
would, I suspect with Derrida more than with Adorno); its
roots are duff, but hey, that's where it comes from. And
that rests my critique of the fear of philosophy among
poets, (1) it springs from good taste to theory, but the
theory (2) never goes back to embrace that rejected as bad
taste; I believe it was Hegel who said that an artist should
go from (1) to (2) but rarely does (had sympathy for initial
arrogance leading to self-confidence leading to humility,
but as scientific method this is male science, unless it
matures, not if it does it use its self-confidence not for
itself but for others). Nor did Adorno.
Hi.
Ira
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