Will Daddario (Ed.), KarolineGritzner (Ed.) - Adorno and Performance

Adorno and Performance
Edited by
Will Daddario and Karoline Gritzner
Performance Philosophy
Series Editors:
Laura Cull (University of Surrey, UK),
Alice Lagaay (Universität Bremen, Germany)
Freddie Rokem (Tel Aviv University, Israel)
Performance Philosophy is an emerging interdisciplinary field of thought, cre-
ative practice and scholarship. The Performance Philosophy book series comprises
monographs and essay collections addressing the relationship between perfor-
mance and philosophy within a broad range of philosophical traditions and
performance practices, including drama, theatre, performance arts, dance, art
and music. The series also includes studies of the performative aspects of life and,
indeed, philosophy itself. As such, the series addresses the philosophy of perfor-
mance as well as performance-as-philosophy and philosophy-as-performance.
Editorial Advisory Board:

Emmanuel Alloa (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland), Lydia Goehr (Columbia
University, USA), James R. Hamilton (Kansas State University, USA), Bojana
Kunst ( Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Germany), Nikolaus Müller-Schöll
(Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany), Martin Puchner (Harvard
University, USA), Alan Read (King’s College London, UK)
Titles include:
Laura Cull and Alice Lagaay (editors)
ENCOUNTERS IN PERFORMANCE PHILOSOPHY (2014)
Broderick Chow and Alex Mangold (editors)
ŽIŽEK AND PERFORMANCE (2014)
Will Daddario and Karoline Gritzner (editors)
ADORNO AND PERFORMANCE (2014)
Forthcoming titles:
Stuart Grant, Jodie McNeilly, and Maeva Veerapen (editors)
PERFORMANCE AND TEMPORALISATION (2014)
Bojana Cvejić
CHOREOGRAPHING PROBLEMS (2015)
Mischa Twitchin
THE THEATRE OF DEATH: THE UNCANNY IN MIMESIS (2015)
Published in association with the research network

www.performancephilosophy.ning.com
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Adorno and Performance
Edited by
Will Daddario
Assistant Professor in Theatre Studies, Illinois State University, USA
and
Karoline Gritzner
Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies, Aberystwyth University, UK
Introduction, selection and editorial matter
© Will Daddario and Karoline Gritzner 2014
Individual chapters © Contributors 2014
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Adorno and performance / Will Daddario, Karoline Gritzner [editors].
pages cm.—(Performance philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–1–137–42987–2
1. Theater—Philosophy. 2. Performing arts—Philosophy. 3. Adorno,
Theodor W., 1903–1969. I. Daddario, Will, editor. II. Gritzner, Karoline,
editor.
PN2039.A38 2014
791.01—dc23 2014025872
Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.

For Finlay Emilio
Against and Within Damaged Life
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Series Preface ix
Acknowledgments xii
Notes on Contributors xiii
Introduction to Adorno and Performance 1

1 Of Adorno’s Beckett 23
Michal Kobialka
2 Thoughts Which Do Not Understand Themselves:
On Adorno’s Dream Notes 38
Karoline Gritzner
3 Performativization and the Rescue of Aesthetic Semblance 53
Andrea Sakoparnig
4 On the “Difference between Preaching an Ideal and Giving
Artistic Form to the Historical Tension Inherent in It” 67
Mischa Twitchin
5 Cooking up a Theory of Performing 82
Anthony Gritten
6 Thinking Performance in Neoliberal Times: Adorno
Encounters Neutral Hero 98
Ioana Jucan
7 Pleasing Shapes and Other Devilry: An Adornian
Investigation of La Pocha Nostra Praxis 115
Stephen Robins
8 Thinking – Mimesis – Pre-Imitation: Notes on Art,
Philosophy, and Theatre in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory 130
Marcus Quent
9 On the Theatricality of Art 143
Anja Nowak
10 Adorno and Performance: Thinking with the Movement
of Language 155
Birgit Hofstaetter
vii
viii Contents
11 What Is Adorno Doing? Immanent Critique as

Philosophical Performance 171
Mattias Martinson
12 The Vanity of Happiness: Adorno and Self-Performance 190
Julie Kuhlken
13 Writing as Life Performed 205
Martin Parker Dixon
Bibliography 223
Index 236
Series Preface
This series is published in association with the research network

Performance Philosophy (http://performancephilosophy.ning.com/),
which was founded in 2012. The series takes an inclusive, interdiscipli-
nary and pluralist approach to the field of Performance Philosophy –
aiming, in due course, to comprise publications concerned with perfor-
mance from a wide range of perspectives within philosophy – whether
from the Continental or Analytic traditions, or from those which
focus on Eastern or Western modes of thought. Likewise, the series
will embrace philosophical approaches from those working within any
discipline or definition of performance, including but not limited to,
theater, dance, music, visual art, performance art and performativity in
everyday life.
In turn, the series aims to both sharpen and problematize the defini-
tion of the terms “performance” and “philosophy,” by addressing the
relationship between them in multiple ways. It is thus designed to sup-
port the field’s ongoing articulation of its identity, parameters, key ques-
tions and core concerns; its quest is to stage and re-stage the boundaries
of Performance Philosophy as a field, both implicitly and explicitly. The
series also aims to showcase the diversity of interdisciplinary and inter-
national research, exploring the relationship between performance and
philosophy (in order to say: “This is Performance Philosophy.”), whilst
also providing a platform for the self-definition and self-interrogation
of Performance Philosophy as a field (in order to ask and ask again:
“What is Performance Philosophy?” and “What might Performance
Philosophy become?”). That is to say, what counts as Performance
Philosophy must be ceaselessly subject to redefinition in the work of
performance philosophers as it unfolds.
But this does not mean that “anything goes” or that the field of
Performance Philosophy is a limitless free-for-all. Rather, both the field
and this series specifically bring together all those scholars for whom the
question of the relationship between performance and philosophy and,
therefore, the nature of both performance and philosophy (including
their definitions, but also their “ontology” or “essential conditions”), are
of primary concern. However, in order to maintain its experimental and
radical nature, Performance Philosophy must also be open to including
those scholars who may challenge extant concepts of “performance”
ix
x Series Preface
and “philosophy.” In this sense, “What is Performance Philosophy?”

could be considered one of the field’s unifying (or at least, shared) ques-
tions, just as the question “What is Philosophy?” has been a shared
question for philosophers for centuries. This is not mere circularity, but
an absolutely necessary methodological reflexivity that must constitute
an aspect of any field, which otherwise leaves its own axioms and prem-
ises un-interrogated. Indeed, the very vitality of a field of knowledge
lies in its willingness to persistently question its own boundaries rather
than rule anything out once and for all. The intention is not to police
these boundaries, but to provide a public forum where they might be
both stated and contested.
The absolute timeliness of Performance Philosophy – both as a field
and as a book series – is fourfold. In the first instance, it coincides with a
(self) re-evaluation of Performance Studies as having long since come of
age as a discipline. Second, it takes place in the context of the increasing
importance of the notion of “practice as research” in the arts. Third, it
reflects an increased engagement with Philosophy across performing
arts scholarship. Finally, it is emerging simultaneously with an inten-
sification of the questioning of what counts as Philosophy and what
form philosophical thinking might take – for instance, in the context
of new work emerging from object-oriented ontology (Harman, Brassier et
al.) and non-philosophy (Laruelle, Mullarkey et al.). Specifically, philo-
sophy is becoming increasingly interested in its own performance and
performativity, and in looking to the arts as a source of models for itself
as it moves away from traditional metaphysics. This series is uniquely
positioned to explore these currents.
We might note here that a certain anti-performance bias that has been
constitutional in the history of philosophy, as either demonstrated or
criticized by virtually every philosopher of note from Plato to Nietzsche,
from Kierkegaard to Sloterdijk, Derrida, Weber, et. al., is clearly part of
the inherited academic terrain. The purpose of the series is not to offer
yet another “introduction” to these philosophers by re-stating what
they have already said, but to engage with the pedagogic, political,
practical and theoretical potential of the questions that are raised, not
least as they concern the academy. This resonates in turn with what
is currently being addressed in Europe, Australia and elsewhere over
what constitutes “Practice as Research” (which itself relates to long-
standing debates within Social Research). This engagement also helps to
explain, at least partly, why in recent years Philosophy Departments in
universities world-wide have become increasingly dominated by those
schools of philosophy that stem from the analytic, or language-centered
Series Preface xi
traditions of philosophy, to the virtual total exclusion of those equally

well-founded phenomenological and hermeneutic strands of philo-
sophical enquiry for which the body, corporeality and materiality are
of central relevance.
In seeking to foster a platform for the publication of research find-
ings in which a plurality of notions relating to Performance Philosophy
may be addressed and negotiated, the series hopes to claim back for
philosophy some of the valuable approaches that have in recent years
gradually become woefully underrepresented within philosophy depart-
ments, while at the same time bringing fresh philosophical perspectives
to bear on the cultural practices of performance. For this reason we do
not consider the series as belonging exclusively to the realm of either
Performance Studies or Philosophy, for its purpose is precisely to contribute
to the process of defining Performance Philosophy as a field of its own.
Laura Cull, Alice Lagaay, and Freddie Rokem

Acknowledgments
The origins of this project date back to the PSi #18 conference
“Performance: Culture: Industry” in Leeds (2012) where the editors
organized two panels on Adorno’s relevance for Performance Studies.
The editors are grateful to Laura Cull who, as former chair of PSi’s
Performance and Philosophy Working Group, accepted our panel pro-
posals and who, as founder of the Performance Philosophy network,
supported the evolution of this essay collection and its inclusion in
the “Performance Philosophy” book series at Palgrave Macmillan. Huge
thanks go to the series editors for their constructive feedback to draft
versions of this manuscript. We want to thank all our contributors
for their diligent work and our editor Paula Kennedy and her team at
Palgrave Macmillan for their unflagging assistance and advice. Last, but
not least, we are grateful to our respective families, friends, and part-
ners for their love and support. Will especially wishes to thank Richard
Leppert for, in many ways, introducing him to Adorno’s thought and
Joanne Zerdy for her endless generosity.
xii
Notes on Contributors
Will Daddario is Assistant Professor in the School of Theatre and Dance

at Illinois State University. He is a core convener of the international,
interdisciplinary research collective Performance Philosophy and Chair
of the Performance and Philosophy Working Group within Performance
Studies international. With Laura Cull, he is coeditor of Manifesto Now!
Instructions for Performance, Philosophy, Politics (2013). In addition to his
research in the field of performance philosophy, Will has published
historiographical essays on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Baroque
Venetian performance and is currently preparing a manuscript on that
topic.
Martin Parker Dixon is Lecturer in Music at the School of Culture

and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow. His Ph.D. thesis explores the
intellectual history of Adorno’s philosophy of aesthetic production.
He is particularly interested in developing and practicing essayistic
approaches to writing about cultural and philosophical issues. Research
areas have included the Avant-garde, media and technology, and most
recently music and emotion. He is also a composer with particular inter-
est in song and music theatre. His one act opera The Lightning-Rod Man
was performed by Scottish Opera in 2009.
Anthony Gritten is Head of Undergraduate Programmes at the Royal
Academy of Music in London. His publications include two coedited
volumes of essays on Music and Gesture (2006 and 2011), a coedited vol-
ume of essays on Music and Value Judgement (forthcoming), and essays in
visual artists’ catalogues, on the thought of Lyotard, Nancy, and Bakhtin,
and on the music of Stravinsky and Delius. His articles in Performance
Studies have focused on issues ranging from distraction, trust, and
problem solving to ethics, ergonomics, and technology. Further details
can be found at http://ram.academia.edu/AnthonyGritten. Anthony is a
Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, and has given recitals all over
the UK, France, and Canada. Projects have included premiere perfor-
mances of several pieces by Daniel Roth, including his magnum opus,
Livre d’Orgue pour le Magnificat, and anniversary cycles of the complete
works of Tunder, Buxtehude, and Mendelssohn. Further details can be
found at http://organrecitals.com/anthonygritten.
xiii
xiv Notes on Contributors
Karoline Gritzner is Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies in the

Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at Aberystwyth
University (Wales) and one of the core conveners of the international
research network Performance Philosophy (www.performancephiloso-
phy.ning.com). She has published on modern British and European
drama, on eroticism and sexuality in theater and performance, and
on the interrelationship between continental philosophy (particularly
Critical Theory) and theater. She is the editor of Eroticism and Death in
Theatre and Performance (2010). With Laura Cull, she has coedited “On
Philosophy and Participation” (Performance Research 16.4, December
2011).
Birgit Hofstaetter is a Ph.D. candidate in Humanities at the University

of Brighton, UK. She completed a B.A. in Humanities at the University
of Brighton and an M.A. in Ideology and Discourse Analysis at the
University of Essex. Birgit’s thesis focuses on the centrality of Adorno’s
aesthetics to his philosophical project with particular focus on his musi-
cological writings. Her Ph.D. is supported by a doctoral award from the
Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Ioana Jucan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Theatre and Performance

Studies program at Brown University, where she is also pursuing an
M.A. in Philosophy. Recent publications include: “Performing the
Accident: Through Richard Maxwell’s Ode to the Man who Kneels” (in
Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies 8.3); “Losing the Temper of
Reason: Self-reflections out of Time” (in Parallax 18.2); “Cosmology of
Worlds Apart” (in Nerve Lantern 7). Ioana is an alumna of the Watermill
Summer Program under the artistic direction of Robert Wilson and has
worked with Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players as drama-
turge for Vision Disturbance (Abrons Arts Center, NYC). She is cofounder
and artistic director of the Listening LabOratory performance group at
Brown.
Michal Kobialka is Professor of Theatre in the Department of Theatre

Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota. He has published over
75 articles on medieval, eighteenth-century and contemporary European
theater, and theater historiography. He is the author of A Journey Through
Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestos, 1944–1990 (1993); Further on, Nothing:
Tadeusz Kantor’s Theatre (2009); and This Is My Body: Representational
Practices in the Early Middle Ages (1999); the editor of Of Borders and
Thresholds: Theatre History, Practice, and Theory (1999) and a coeditor
(with Barbara Hanawalt) of Medieval Practices of Space (2000) and (with
Notes on Contributors xv
Rosemarie Bank) of Theatre/Performance Historiography: Time, Space, Matter

(forthcoming).
Julie Kuhlken received her doctorate in Philosophy at the Centre for

Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University in
London. Her research is focused on nineteenth- and twentieth-century
continental philosophy, in particular concerning issues in aesthet-
ics and applied ethics. She is the author of Why Philosophers Take
Artists Seriously: Nietzsche on Wagner, Heidegger on Hölderlin, Adorno on
Schönberg (2013), and has published numerous articles in well-respected
academic journals including Continental Philosophy Review, Philosophy
Today, and Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Among her book chapters,
she has written on diverse topics ranging from rape as a weapon of war
to Adorno’s philosophy of film. Outside her scholarly work, she is an
accomplished graphic designer, and is currently co-owner of Pedernales
Cellars. She has taught in both the UK and North America, including
Goldsmiths College and Concordia University, and is president of the
Southwestern Philosophical Society.
Mattias Martinson is Professor of Systematic Theology at Uppsala

University, Uppsala, Sweden. He has published several works on
Adorno’s thought in English and Swedish, including the monograph
Perseverance without Doctrine. Adorno, Self-Critique, and the Ends of
Academic Theology (2000), the anthology Efter Adorno (2003, coedited
in Swedish), and the article “Ontology of Hell. Reflections on Theodor
W. Adorno’s Reception of Søren Kierkegaard” (2012). Martinson has a
special interest in the relationship between Christian theology, athe-
ism, and culture. He has published three monographs (in Swedish)
and several articles on these issues. Adequate examples of his research
accessible for an international audience, would be the articles “Silence,
Rupture, Theology. Towards a Post-Christian Interdisciplinarity” (2011),
“Atheism as Culture and Condition. Nietzschean Reflections on the
Contemporary Invisibility of Profound Godlessness” (2012), and
“Cultural Materiality and Spiritual Alienation” (2013). Martinson is
teaching and supervising in areas such as history of philosophy and
theology, cultural theology, critical theory.
Anja Nowak studied Theatre, Film and Media, and Comparative
Literature at Goethe University Frankfurt. She currently holds the Killam
Doctoral Scholarship and is pursuing her Ph.D. at the Department of
Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies at the University of
British Columbia, Vancouver. Together with Thomas Küpper, Anja is
xvi Notes on Contributors
editing Volume 9 of the new critical edition of Walter Benjamin’s works.

Her publications focus on Benjamin’s philosophy and his radio works,
as well as on Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory. Her book on Adorno’s notion of
theater was published in 2012 (Elemente einer Ästhetik des Theatralen in
Adornos Ästhetischer Theorie).
Marcus Quent has been working as an assistant at the Institute for

Theatre Studies and at the Dance Archive Leipzig since 2009. He has
organized a non-university lecture series dealing with the relation of art
and politics in Adorno’s aesthetic theory, “Ästhetik/Denken” (May–July
2012 in Leipzig) and an artistic and scientific event in cooperation with
the *Centraltheater Leipzig*, “Theater/Denken” (April 2013), which
explored the implications of Adorno’s thinking for contemporary
theater. Marcus is Editor of Das Versprechen der Kunst. Aktuelle Zugänge
zu Adornos ästhetischer Theorie (The promise of art. Current approaches to
Adorno’s aesthetic theory), a related anthology, released in February 2014
by publisher Turia & Kant.
Stephen Robins is Independent Scholar and Associate Artist of the

Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol. In November 2007 Stephen was invited to per-
form with La Pocha Nostra in their Barbarian Collection at the Arnolfini.
Stephen’s practice-based doctoral thesis, funded by the AHRC, investi-
gated the role of beauty and ugliness in live art and contemporary
theater. His doctorate was awarded by the University of Bristol in July
2012. He has recently contributed an essay to the New Arts Journal of the
National Academy of Art, Hangzhou: “Queer Performance, survey part 1:
UK/US perspective.”
Andrea Sakoparnig is a Ph.D. candidate at the Free University Berlin,

and a member of the International Research Training Group “Interart
Studies” in Berlin. She has worked with the Collaborative Research
Centre 626 “Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits”
(Berlin). Her research interests include Aesthetics (politics of art, aes-
theticization processes, intermediality and the concepts of aesthetic
experience and aesthetic difference) and Critical Theory with a focus
on Theodor W. Adorno’s theory. Her current research focuses on the
concept of aesthetic objectivity with regard to the interconnectedness
of the arts and the destabilization of conceptual boundaries (such as
producer/recipient, work of art/event). For ongoing research projects
and recent publications see www.andrea-sakoparnig.de and andrea.
sakoparnig@email.de.
Notes on Contributors xvii
Mischa Twitchin has a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship at

the Drama Dept., Queen Mary, University of London. Recent publica-
tions include: “Kantor after Duchamp,” in Polish Theatre Perspectives 1.2,
eds. Michal Kobialka and Natalia Zarzecka; “Making Sense of ‘Seeing’,”
in Frakcija Performing Arts Journal 62–63, a special issue on “the action-
able image,” eds. Tomislav Medak and Ivana Ivkovic; and “On ‘the
Live Effigy of Man Emerging out of the Shadows...’” in Übermarionettes
and Mannequins, ed. Carole Guidicelli, L’Entretemps and the Institut
Internationale de la Marionette. His book, The Theatre of Death: the
Uncanny in Mimesis, will be published in the Performance Philosophy
series by Palgrave (2015), and examples of his own performance making
can be found on his website: http://shunt.co.uk/OLD/mischa_twitchin/;
and on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user13124826/videos.
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Introduction to Adorno and
Performance
I.1 Intermittence: Adorno and performance
In his essay “Notes on Philosophical Thinking” (1965), Theodor W. Adorno

(1903–1969) provokes us with the following statement: “To think philo-
sophically means as much as to think intermittences, to be interrupted
by that which is not the thought itself” (131–132). The intermittence
pursued throughout this volume has been concealed through the word
“and” that conjoins the title’s two keywords: Adorno and performance.
That there exists any solid ground upon which to build such a pairing is
an assumption to which anyone familiar with the work of Adorno might
reasonably object. Despite his devotion to the practice of musical compo-
sition, his numerous interpretations of theatrical texts and the philosophi-
cal writings of notable playwrights, his documented attendance at theatre
events, and his micrological interpretation of such everyday acts as listen-
ing, writing, and thinking, the concreteness of the pairing Adorno and
performance cannot congeal without considerable philosophical effort, in
the sense offered by Adorno in the quotation above. In addition to offer-
ing a thorough orientation to the key concerns and the contents of this
volume, then, this introduction will unconceal the intermittence between
both Adorno and performance (as concept and artistic practice) and also
the thought of “Adorno and performance” as a critical, interpretive phrase
capable of orientating the praxis of performance philosophers, and sche-
matizing the work required to legitimize and mobilize such a phrase in
the first place.
To do this, and to act in fidelity to Adorno’s negative dialectical pro-
cedure, let us begin not with Adorno’s own thoughts but, rather, with
a playwright whose works so frequently motivated those thoughts.
1
2 Will Daddario and Karoline Gritzner
Turning to Samuel Beckett’s performance score for Act Without Words I,

we enter into the following scene:
Desert. Dazzling light.

The man is flung backwards on stage from right wing. He falls,
gets up immediately, dusts himself, turns aside, reflects. Whistle
from right wing. He reflects, goes out right. Immediately flung
back on stage he falls, gets up immediately, dusts himself, turns
aside, reflects. Whistle from left wing. He reflect, goes out left.
Immediately flung back on stage he falls, gets up immediately, dusts
himself, turns aside, reflects. Whistle from left wing. He reflects,
goes toward left wing, hesitates, thinks better of it, halts, turns aside,
reflects. (203)
The mime’s rehearsal in this segment of the score, his ensuing labor
and pursuit of the carafe (ever out of reach), and his repetitive failures
present a multifaceted allegory, which, once engaged through philo-
sophical interpretation, opens numerous perspectives onto the pairing
of Adorno and performance.
Note the order of events, “The man is flung backwards.” Then, only
after dusting himself off, the man “reflects.” Of the many reasons
Adorno returned to Beckett again and again throughout his life, perhaps
the order of events enacted in Act Without Words I tells us the most.
Object always precedes subject. That which flings the man onstage com-
mences the action of this piece. Man himself, once flung, slowly comes
around to thinking, here phrased as reflection. Negative dialectical
thinking takes its cue from this order of events.
Adorno returns to this choreography repeatedly: “Where think-
ing is truly productive, where it creates, it is also always a reacting”
(“Philosophical Thinking” 129). And yet, if one may be so bold as to call
it choreography, this aggressive pas des deux between subject and object
gives no sense of a starting point. Intended for repetition as a work for
the stage, one should neither say that Act Without Words I commences,
nor that it ends. Rather, as with so many of Beckett’s works, the piece
loops around. Man and objects vie continuously for reasons unknown
and, ultimately, irrelevant. What matters here is the doing. Similarly,
the stakes of the practice of thinking arise not from an understand-
ing of which comes first, subject or object, but from the willingness to
return again and again to the position from which one will be flung
onstage. Thus, even when one sentence in Adorno seems to offer a linear
order – “Despite the Copernican turn, and thanks to it, Kant inadvertently
confirms the primacy of the object” (129) – another will reveal negative
dialectical entanglement – “The primacy of the object means rather
that subject for its part is object in a qualitatively different, more radical
sense than object, because object cannot be known except through con-
sciousness, hence is also subject” (“On Subject and Object” (1969) 249).
Eventually, then, a question: who is flinging whom?
Thinking better of it, though, let us leave the answer to that question
aside and return to the engagement of thinking itself, what Beckett
calls “reflection” and Adorno rephrases as “expansive concentration”
(“Philosophical Thinking” 129). In Act Without Words I, the subject
matter at hand seems not to be the success or failure of the mime but
the interruptions ensuing from the mime’s approach to the wings of
the stage, the carafe dangling from the tree, the scissors, the cubes, the
tree itself, etc. When the mime “reflects” he engages in expansive con-
centration by attending to the intermittence that lies between and yet
also undergirds the thinking subject and vibrant object of/for/beyond
thought.
With this in mind, let us rephrase the question: To what extent may
one deploy words such as “performance,” “choreography,” “enactment,”
and “stage” when writing of Adorno’s philosophical practice? Are these
words figurative, metaphorical? Are we imposing an unwanted heuristic
by crafting an analysis of Adorno through a vocabulary germane to the
fields of theatre, music, and Performance Studies, or does there exist
within Adorno’s negative dialectical praxis a reliance on performance
and embodiment that necessitates such a vocabulary? We argue that
“performance” (and associated concepts such as presentation, expres-
sion, and embodiment) is indeed a central category in Adorno’s project
of critical and aesthetic theory. This is already evident in the first major
monograph with which Adorno began his academic career, Kierkegaard:
Construction of the Aesthetic (1933). In this important study Adorno
engages with Søren Kierkegaard’s concerted, but for Adorno ultimately
failed, attempts to overcome Hegelian idealist constructions of the self.
Adorno’s critique focuses on Kierkegaard’s proto-existentialist notion
of “pure inwardness” which suggests a disregard for the individual’s
historical situatedness, a dimension that becomes central in Adorno’s
later explorations. Furthermore, Adorno was responsive to the aesthetic
dimension of Kierkegaard’s thought, to the performative dimension
of truth; in other words, to the ways in which ideas are performed,
and not merely described. Encountering Kierkegaard, Adorno identi-
fies the importance of thought-images in aesthetic and philosophical
work, figures of presentation which make the truth content of the
work inseparable from its aesthetic form. Adorno argues that truth, in
philosophy as well as art, “presents itself in semblance”:
In fact, Kierkegaard nowhere better described the reconciling figure

in which his own philosophy joins nature and history, than in a
passage directed against Hegel that meant to destroy this figure as
semblance, while yet its semblance, recognized and maintained,
serves truth as its truest counterimage: “Some bend eternity into
time for the imagination. Conceived in this way, eternity produces
an enchanting effect. One does not know whether it is dream or
actuality. As the beams of the moon glimmer in an illuminated forest
or a hall, so the eternal peeps wistfully, dreamily, and roguishly into
the moment.” (Adorno, Kierkegaard 137)
And as Adorno would later write in Negative Dialectics (1966): “the pres-
entation of philosophy is not an external matter of indifference to it
but immanent to its idea” (18), implying that the philosophical concept
is a performative because it is dependent on a doing, an expression, a
presentation, a semblance. Unsurprisingly, Adorno’s preferred mode of
philosophical expression (performance) was the essay, a form of writing
in which language becomes emphatic and no longer over-reliant on
the concept. For Adorno, in the essay form the concept approaches the
non-conceptual and enables language to say what cannot be said.
In short, then, yes. Performance – as concept, practice, engagement –
fills Adorno’s thought and writing, both in terms of content and form.
His essayistic endeavors reveal the extent to which Adorno performs
and even stages his thought in writing. So too does his continual return
to artists, musicians, writers, and theatre makers demonstrate a desire
to think philosophically-in-tune with various forms of artistic, per-
formance-based expressions. Thus we return to Beckett’s mime in Act
Without Words I and his relationship to the carafe, which, interestingly,
tethers us once again to the thinking of intermittences when one con-
siders the less familiar, more abstruse definition of “intermittence” as
“alternately containing and empty of water” (Free Dictionary). Engaged
by a field of objects, the Mime seems to bring most of them under his
control through failed experiments and thoughtful reflection, but the
carafe – perhaps full, perhaps not – stands out as particularly elusive:
He looks up, sees carafe, reflects, gets up, goes and stands under it,
tries in vain to reach it, renounces, turns aside, reflects. […] With
length of rope in his possession he makes a lasso with which he tries
to lasso the carafe. The carafe is pulled up quickly and disappears in

flies. He turns aside, reflects. […] The carafe descends from flies and
comes to rest a few feet from his body. He does not move. Whistle
from above. He does not move. The carafe descends further, dangles
and plays about his face. He does not move. The carafe is pulled up
and disappears in flies. (Beckett, Act Without Words 204, 205, 206)
With every movement toward the carafe, the object itself recedes until,
after coming to some kind of understanding, the mime allows for the
out-of-reach-ness of the carafe. A similar series of events transpires
within Adorno’s oeuvre between the philosopher and the phenomenon
of performance, which, like the carafe, plays a dominant role in the
relationship yet always remains slightly out of reach.
Take, as an allegorical representative, the following passage in Towards
a Theory of Musical Reproduction (collected notes and drafts of unfinished
book projects dating from 1927–1959) where Adorno reflects on the
labor of the stage actor:
Gretel asked me how it can be that actors, who are mostly of question-
able intelligence and always uneducated, can represent people and
deliver lines that convey the most difficult of ideas, as with Hamlet
and Prospero, Faust, Mephistopheles. I ventured the reply: every
poetic work contains not only the meaningful-significative element,
but also the melodic-mimic aspect, tone, speech melody, and manner;
and it is a substantial criterion for success how deeply the former is
immersed in the latter, i.e. whether the mimetic, ‘magical’ aspect is
able to invoke, to force the meaningful one, to such a degree that a
tone of voice or gesture itself becomes the allegorical representation of
an idea. The actor’s ability is mimic in the true sense: he actually imi-
tates the melodic-gestural aspect of language. And the more perfectly
he achieves this, the more perfectly the idea enters the representation,
not least because – and especially when – he does not understand it.
The opposite approach would be the explanatory one: but to explain
the intention means to kill it rather than invoking it. One could
almost say that it is the prerequisite for an actor not to “understand,”
but rather to imitate blindly. (159, emphasis in original)
Like Beckett’s mime approaching the carafe in Act Without Words I,

Adorno approaches the embodied practice of performance. After a
general dismissal of actors as ignorants, Adorno draws our attention
to the intertwining of content (meaningful-significative) and form
(melodic-mimic), the very same intertwining with which Adorno con-

cerned himself in his unfinished and posthumously published Aesthetic
Theory (1970). For a performance, here understood as a presentation of
a work, to be successful (i.e., to adequately present and convey its truth-
content), the melodic-mimic aspect must contain within it and then
express the full force of the content. When this occurs, Adorno sug-
gests, the actor’s gesture (vocal or otherwise) will become the allegorical
representation of the truth content.
“The actor’s ability is mimic in the true sense: he actually imitates
the melodic-gestural aspect of language.” It is hard to say what Adorno
means here. Is he suggesting that the actor’s role is to perfect the
melodic-gestural aspect of language, or that the actor imitates that
aspect and, therefore, that the actor is removed from the reality of that
aspect? The next sentence eliminates some of the ambiguity of the pre-
vious one. There, Adorno seems to suggest that the better the actor can
express the form of the work, the more he will be able to convey the
truth content of the work. From this sentence, one might derive a defi-
nition of performance through the parsing of per-form, that is, perfor-
mance denotes the act of inhabiting and moving through (expressing)
the form of the work. Importantly, Adorno suggests that in order for the
actor to properly relay the gestural-mimic dimension of the work, and,
by extension, faithfully represent the content of the work, he must not
“understand” what he is doing: “The opposite approach would be the
explanatory one.” Namely, the actor must not take a stance toward his
labor that presupposes an understanding of the work’s truth content
or the artist’s intention, thereby making the goal of his interpretive
role the teaching of a lesson or the explanation of that intention. This
is what Adorno means when he says that, “to explain the intention
means to kill it rather than invoking it.” The actor instead must imi-
tate blindly, which, in turn, means to expertly move through the form
(per-form) of the work. This is the main role of the actor/performer.
Now, have we touched the phenomenon of performance through
Adorno’s notes, or has the mere thought of performance thrown us
back toward a position of critical distance from which, once again, to
reflect more deeply on the object at hand? Are we sipping from the
carafe or reflecting on it? One suspects the latter, and yet through
such a densely woven critical reflection on the problem posed by his
wife, we may simultaneously feel as though we have reached a new
understanding of performance thanks to Adorno’s reflection. One step
forward, one step back. The closer we get to performance, the farther
away we seem to be.
Something similar happens when dwelling on the translation from

Adorno’s German to English. Are we dealing with “performance” at
all, or merely an English-language equivalent to a specific German
word and concept? Wieland Hoban’s translation of Towards a Theory of
Musical Reproduction suggests the latter. In the notes that make up that
work, we learn Adorno is not concerned with “performance” as such;
instead, he takes up Darstellung. As Hoban explains,
This word means “presentation” and “representation”; in Adorno’s

usage, it often implies both at once. He uses it to refer to the act and
general practice of performance, where a piece is presented to the pub-
lic in a certain way; but he also brings out the implicit representation of
musical meaning in the act of presentation. (xix, emphasis in original)
Thus, the problems begin to compound. Before we approach the passage

on actors above, we halt before a terminological distinction that presents
another hurdle. To speak of Adorno and performance is never quite to
speak directly of Adorno and performance but, rather, of Adorno and (re)
presentation. Additionally, other than the occasional aside, Adorno most
frequently analyzes musical performance and therefore tasks the imagi-
nation charged with transferring Adorno’s thoughts on performance
(Darstellung) to the realm of theatre, much less to performance writ large.
Scholars of Adorno’s work, however, do not hesitate to place Adorno
and performance in proximity to one another. Taking Max Pensky’s
introduction to his edited collection, The Actuality of Adorno: Critical
Essays on Adorno and the Postmodern as one example, one finds the
following phrases. Regarding Adorno and poststructural theory:
Both are efforts to work out the philosophical import of the collapse
of philosophical idealism. Both seek to interpret this collapse not
in terms of a simple liquidation of philosophy but rather attempt
to perform a self-liquidation of the contents and intents of idealist
philosophy toward some radically new conception of philosophical
practice. (5, emphasis added)
A few pages later, while pondering Habermas’s uptake (or deviation) of

(or from) his teacher’s work:
For Habermas, the hypercomplex, claustrophobic, fretful atmosphere

of Adorno’s late work was the unavoidable consequence of a total
rejection of the rational and normative grounds of criticism, and led
to a form of performative self-contradiction just as pronounced as the

exhilarated gestures of French theory. (7, emphasis added)
And then, making a distinction between Adorno and Walter Benjamin,

Pensky embraces the metaphor of stage fright:
Adorno did not always follow up on the promise to transform the

impulse of idealism into a historiography of things: whatever we
make of the familiar accusations of his “Berührungsangst” [fear of con-
tact], it is true that, unlike Benjamin, he was always more comfortable
as an observer before the stage of the concept than he was wading into
the thicket of the historical material. (10, emphasis added)
For the empirical analyst, these occurrences may mean very little. For an
inductive interpreter, however, Pensky’s language presents a constella-
tion of terms that shines down onto the, what shall we call it now, rou-
tine between Adorno and performance. Never through a clean embrace,
always padded by ample critical distance, and yet somehow also pro-
foundly deep in its engagement with the phenomenon, Adorno’s treat-
ment of performance remains simultaneously profound and perplexing,
purposeful and purposeless, accidental and co-incidental. Adorno is to
performance as Beckett’s mime is to the carafe.
One final consideration adds some more weight to this claim and
brings us back again to the thinking intermittences, this time via
the related word “intermission.” “(1931–1933)”: This indexical mark
appended to the essay, “The Natural History of the Theatre” offers a
glimpse into the life of Adorno the audience member who, so it would
seem, explored theatre spaces during that three-year period making
observations not only about the onstage performance but also the
theatre of the world expressed through social and theatrical architec-
ture. Regarding the former, Adorno first reflects upon applause, which
he describes as, “the last vestige of objective communication between
music and listener” (65). Opposed to its mythic origins where music
served a ritual purpose, music in Adorno’s present was separated from
the audience by the platform, “that is to say, they [the audience] are
separated from a commodity which can be bought” (65). Clapping,
however, as an embodied connection between performer and audience
members, evokes the memory of mythic music and leads Adorno to con-
sider light applause, hissing and booing, the muffled static of applause
heard through radio broadcasts, and theatricalized applause produced
onstage by the actors themselves who, through so doing, seem to reflect
the intersubjective experience of performance back to the audience and

who appear to Adorno as “ghosts from mythical times” (66).
Both as a seated audience member during music and theatrical per-
formances, as well as a wandering flâneur between acts, Adorno sends
his attention from social architecture in the section titled, “Applause,”
to structural architecture in sections titled, “The Gallery,” “The Stalls,”
“Boxes,” “Upper Circle, First Row, Middle,” “The Foyer,” and the
“Dome as Finale.” Some of his anthropological/ethnographic readings
of these spaces and the activities contained therein reveal Adorno’s
own scruples and, in their unashamed self-revelation, seem to prefig-
ure the startling notes from his dreams that would later be published
as Dream Notes (2009). Appraising the boxes, for example, he declares,
“If you are a man, never take a box with another man. Two men in
a box are either boring or no men at all: they cut no sort of a figure”
(“Natural History” 71). Presumably this is so because, for Adorno, the
appropriate performance of masculinity in the theatre space requires
the presence of a woman. But even the heteronormative façade of this
statement points beyond semblance to a withering internal drama: “She
now shows herself with you so as to conceal herself. For this evening
she is your mistress, even if you have never possessed her except in
this dark, constricted frame which unites you as in a picture” (72). But
then, as quickly as it landed on this imagined picture of the boxes, his
gaze is off again, turned to the upper circle where the combination of
volume, fullness and resonance is most concentrated for the listener
(73). And then he’s off again, sending his attention further back still to
the Foyer where an altogether different performance unfolds in which
“the spectators are the players, presented to an imaginary public” (74).
Caught up in this voyeuristic game of seeing and being seen, Adorno’s
eye wanders back into the theatre space, now empty at intermission,
and glimpses the dome rising above the auditorium to reveal a posi-
tion resembling the vantage point of judgment day: “For one day, so
it would appear, the vault of the dome will draw the entire theatre
into itself. The theatre will then become a sphere which has ceased to
know the direction of historical time, something which our theatre has
yearned to master” (77).
We might ask, to conjure the title of Mattias Martinson’s contribu-
tion to this volume, what is Adorno doing? In this natural history of
the theatre, which reads simultaneously as a fantastical dream narrative,
Adorno exposes himself not only as a critic but also as a transgressive
audience member who recognizes a wider performance transpiring
beyond the limits of the stage itself. This type of audience member
enacts a tactical failure of the role assigned to him by the script that
tacitly prompts the theatergoer to sit quietly, hands folded in the
dark, awaiting a readymade transmission from stage to auditorium.
Matthew Goulish describes this failure in his essay “Audience Failure
Index,” where he writes: “Awakened to its unruliness, the trespassive
audience emancipates the force of the mess. It takes the stage from all
directions. Wherever it leads, a performance must follow” (25). Such is
Adorno’s figure in this natural history of the theatre and throughout
his entire oeuvre, a trespassive audience member interpreting, from
positions interior/immanent to them, various performances, some more
philosophical, some more artistic, but all expressive of an intermittence
between a doing and a thing done, between an action and a thought
of/within that action.
I.2 Historical situation and artistic affinities
Beckett’s résumé as a playwright and theatre maker helps to reveal

the connection between Adorno and performance, but Beckett was by
no means the only artist to attract Adorno’s attention. Additionally,
the work of Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, Paul Klee, Arnold Schönberg,
Richard Wagner, and, negatively, Bertolt Brecht all goad Adorno’s think-
ing. For Adorno, the works of these artists reveal the extent to which art
and thought express, through form and content, the sedimentation of
their historical situation.
Let us turn our attention toward Adorno’s treatment of Kafka in order
to develop this idea in more detail. As a paradoxical “expressionist
epic,” Kafka’s work, particularly The Castle and “The Hunter Gracchus,”
“tells of something about which nothing can be told, of the totally
self-contained subject, which is unfree and which, in fact, can hardly
be said to exist” (“Notes on Kafka” (1955) 264). For Adorno, this act of
saying that which cannot be told must occur through written expres-
sion, as text. As he explains in a footnote, “Drama is possible only in
so far as freedom – even in its painful birth-pangs – is visible; all other
action is futile. Kafka’s figures are struck by a fly-swatter even before
they can make a move; to drag them on to the tragic stage as heroes
is to make a mockery of them” (261–262, note 1). However, it would
not be possible to categorize Kafka’s works neatly outside the realm of
performance. If, beyond its application in the fields of the fine arts, per-
formance denotes a concerted life practice, an act of living life rightly as
Adorno might say, then Kafka’s writings constitute precisely this mode
of performance. Consider the uncanny similarity, for example, between
Adorno’s aphorism “Memento” from Minima Moralia (1951) and the

following idea penned by Kafka in his journal in 1921:
Anyone who cannot come to terms with this life while he is still alive
needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate – he has
little success in this – but with his other hand he can note down what
he sees among the ruins, for he sees different (and more) things than
do others; after all, dead as he is in his own lifetime, he is the real
survivor. (cit. Foster, “Adorno on Kafka” 175)
In both cases writing and living collaborate in the task of living among
the ruins of modern life, though, in the end, “the writer is not even
allowed to live in his writing” because the writing circulates without
him and, as in Kafka’s case, in spite of him (Minima Moralia 87).
As Adorno’s immanent criticism of Kafka’s works builds throughout
“Notes on Kafka” (which, one must point out, begin to resemble much
more than haphazard thoughts dictated to his wife when time permit-
ted, as the dedication to these notes also would suggest), the reader
becomes aware that statements seemingly developed out of close read-
ings of Kafka’s tales also refer to the historical situation of Kafka and
of Adorno himself. Roger Foster makes this same point by claiming
that Adorno saw in several of Kafka’s writings a direct citation to the
terrors of National Socialism under which both Kafka and Adorno suf-
fered (Foster, “Adorno on Kafka” 176). Again, the co-presence of both
men within the same historical situation reveals itself in Adorno’s
writing: “Whereas the interiors, where men live, are the homes of the
catastrophe, the hide-outs of childhood, forsaken spots like the bottom
of the stairs, are the places of hope” (270). But these places of hope,
hiding spots seemingly marginalized and claustrophobic when com-
pared to the expanse of the exterior, become the kernel of all that is
true. In his translator’s introduction to Adorno’s book on Kierkegaard,
Robert Hullot-Kentor reminds us that, “The idea of ‘truth-content’ for
example, which has remained so obscure, is a work’s content of hope”
(Kierkegaard xxi). Thus, one might suspect that Kafka’s writings, which
resembled at times the scribblings or diary entries left by a child hiding
beneath the stairs, compelled Adorno’s investigations into the dialectic
of truth content and semblance that show up repeatedly throughout
his life’s work.
Adorno chooses to frame these notes on Kafka with an epigraph taken
from Proust: Si Dieu le Père a créé les choses en les nommant, c’est en leur
ôtant leur nom, ou en leur donnant un autre que I’artiste les recréé (If God the
Father created things by naming them, it is in removing their name, or

giving them another that the entertainer has recreated them). Proust’s
words draw the reader’s attention to the play of textual signifiers and
their ability to trouble the supposedly pure and invariable concepts
named by words, something which is perhaps most visible in Kafka
where the word of the law reveals the extent to which it is always assert-
ing itself, even when there is no subject or case of justice to pursue.
Though it is not the relationship between the name and the thing, but,
rather, the relation between the whole and the detail that forms the tar-
get of Adorno’s essay “Short Commentaries on Proust” (1958), the focus
of the latter reveals another connection between art, philosophy, and
historical thinking. That is, whereas Kafka’s portrayal of the law forces
the reader to rethink the very nature of law – its absurdities showcased
as certainties – Proust’s casting of the relationship between the part and
the whole reveals an “allergic reaction to read-made thought,” and thus
conjures the philosophy of Henri Bergson, whom Adorno refers to as
Proust’s “kinsman” (175).
From where does Proust’s experimentation in the durée of memory
and writing emerge? Does Proust influence Bergson, or is it the other
way around? The answer seems to be, rather, that the shortcom-
ings, from Adorno’s point of view, found in Bergson’s philosophy are
addressed and overcome in Proust, and vice versa. To reap the benefits
of philosophical exegesis on the relation between the concept and the
thing, the general and the particular, one must turn to literature; and
to immerse oneself productively in the details of Proust’s search for lost
time, which enacts the interplay between part and whole, one must
turn to philosophy. The two systems are locked together and emerge
from the same historical situation in which philosophers tried various
methods of escaping the inheritance of German Idealism.
Again, much more than an insight developed through a close read-
ing of specific Proustian passages, the whole endeavor of this particular
essay carries with it the sense that Adorno seeks not only to enlighten
our understanding of philosophical concepts and literary tactics but
also to emulate Proust’s musical qualities in his own writing. “The pro-
ductive force,” he writes, “that aims at unity is identical to the passive
capacity to lose oneself in details without restraint or reservation” (174).
Proust resists such force through his narrative structure, but, here again,
one finds a passage that, in addition to functioning as an introduction
to the work at hand, reminds one of Adorno’s own practice as a philoso-
pher engaged in immanent criticism, a task that runs the risk of losing
track of the concept as it delves into the material world. Foster even
goes as far as to suggest that Adorno came to his negative dialectical

practice by, among other methods, working through Bergson’s attempt
at recovering spiritual existence (Foster, Recovery of Experience 113–114).
One can find many other instances (particularly in this volume)
where Adorno not only develops mutually constitutive relationships
between literature, visual art, music, and philosophy but also receives
instructions, as it were, in his own philosophical practices from specific
artists. Far from developing an aesthetic theory and mode of criticism
divorced from the exigencies of one’s historical situation, Adorno dedi-
cated himself to answering the very question that he placed near the
end of his posthumously published Aesthetic Theory: “But then what
would art be, as the writing of history, if it shook off the memory of
accumulated suffering?” (261). The act of developing answers to this
question artfully, or, better, of revealing through the art of dialectic
the extent to which such a question can illuminate the complexity of
an artist’s and art object’s philosophical-historical situation, drives the
work of Adorno’s dialectical materialism.
Adorno’s practice of thinking historically owes much to the work of
Walter Benjamin, which sought in no uncertain terms to “brush his-
tory against the grain,” that is, to deny the truth of history written by
the victors and to reveal the extent to which “every document of his-
tory is at the same time a document of barbarism” (Theses, cit. Leppert,
Essays on Music 40). Adorno addresses the philosophical underpinnings
of Benjamin’s dialectical materialist historiography, as well as his own
fidelity to Benjamin’s work, in a 1964 lecture titled (in the English trans-
lation), “‘Negative’ Universal History” (in History and Freedom). There,
Adorno reveals Benjamin’s inversion of Hegel’s concept-driven philoso-
phy of history. Whereas for Hegel, the concept is the thing, that which
contains both the identity and nonidentity of the particular, for Benjamin
the concept is non-identical to itself and “includes what gives history its
unity, what enables it to accommodate itself to the concept as well as what
doesn’t” (Adorno, Freedom and History 92). Formulating this belief into a
practice, what Adorno refers to as “the task of a dialectical philosophy of
history,” Adorno works toward a notion of history as the permanence of
catastrophe, a condition in which, “the very things that subjugate and
submit, these very acts of subjugation and submission in which identity is
torn apart, forge the identity of history of which we speak and which we
must describe as negative identity” (92). If art, then, constitutes the writ-
ing of history, it does so by expressing the suffering – mutely (in the case
of visual art), sonically and structurally (in the case of music), and through
the interplay of Idea and enactment (in the case of theatre) – written out
of history by the victors and the extent to which all objects do the same
once their relationship to their historical situation is revealed.
If one turns from Adorno’s project of encountering the truth con-
gealed in artworks toward Adorno himself as a historically conditioned
individual, one would find traces of a similar suffering encoded in vari-
ous signs. Take for example the “W.” in Adorno’s name, which some-
times appears in publication and sometimes does not. This “W.” carries
with it a remnant of Adorno’s expulsion by the Nazis from his position as
Privatdozent. Prior to this moment, as is evident in the Benjamin-Adorno
correspondences (1928–1940), Adorno utilized his Jewish father’s sur-
name, Wiesengrund. Not until afterward did the philosopher adopt the
name for which he is now known (Zuidevaart, “Theodor W. Adorno”).
Though not addressed explicitly in this volume, the lasting effect of
Nationalist Socialist ideology on German identity and thought, not to
mention the extent to which the Holocaust informed European and
U.S. cultural production, inheres in many of Adorno’s philosophical
formulations. The most famous of these, undoubtedly, is the claim
that “to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric,” which appeared in
Adorno’s 1949 work, “An Essay on Cultural Criticism and Society.” The
same statement appears again, intact, in “Commitment” (1962), and
then again, with a caveat, in the section “Meditation on Metaphysics”
in Negative Dialectics: “Perennial suffering has as much right to expres-
sion as a tortured man has to scream; hence it may have been wrong to
say that after Auschwitz you could no longer write poems” (362–363).
Less well-known, perhaps, is a section from one of Adorno’s lectures
on 17 November 1964 in which he almost casually references the state
of panic into which he was thrown when Nazi officers searched his
home. “A fact like a house search,” he said, “in which you do not know
whether you will be taken off somewhere or whether you will escape
with your life has a greater immediacy for the knowing subject than any
amount of political information […] and, ultimately theory can give
us access” (History and Freedom 20). In these lectures, Adorno openly
reveals the great extent to which his historical situation as a Jew under
Nazi occupation shaped his daily consciousness. Finally, the seemingly
innumerable references to the work of his friend and colleague Walter
Benjamin act as acknowledgments of the Nazi terror which led to
Benjamin’s suicide in the Spanish town of Port Bou on 27 September
1940. In all three examples mentioned here, as well as in Adorno’s
continual drive to recognize the suffering contained within artworks,
the legacy of National Socialism haunts his words and, as Karoline
Gritzner’s essay in this volume demonstrates, his dreams.
I.3 Taking seriously: Adorno and performance
Urged to consideration by Beckett’s Act Without Words I, the numerous

references to performance throughout Adorno’s life’s work, and the
ever-growing field of scholarship that recognizes in his thinking some-
thing of an object lesson in the performance of philosophy, this collec-
tion of essays takes seriously the proximity of Adorno and performance.
Not restricted to any one single understanding of either the philosopher
or the capacious, multidisciplinary umbrella term “performance,” the
book unites this particular thinker and this particular object of study/
artistic practice. And yet, like Beckett’s mime flung onstage by an
unseen, offstage force, the attempt to unite these two will result in the
creation of a conceptual force field (Kraftfeld). Adorno and performance
repel each other, but at the last possible moment the gravitational force of
each locks its partner into place as one pole of a world.
Since its inception as an academic discourse, Performance Studies
has articulated a multiplicity of views regarding the ontology, socio-
historical constitution and phenomenological effects of “performance”
understood as aesthetic object, artistic practice and socio-political
phenomenon. For example, performance has been defined as ritual
(Richard Schechner, Victor Turner), as speech act and stylized repeti-
tion ( J.L. Austin, Judith Butler), through disappearance (Peggy Phelan),
as trace and iteration (Jacques Derrida), in tension between techno-
logical mediation and liveness (Philip Auslander), and in dialogue
with practices of documentation and archiving (Diana Taylor, Rebecca
Schneider). Underlying these multiple perspectives on the complex cat-
egory of performance is a dialectic tension between performance’s mate-
rial basis and its objectless ontology. This tension is productive because
it allows us to view performance as both aesthetic object and process, as
material product and temporal experience.
The relation between art’s constitution as material object and ephem-
eral process was also crucial to Adorno’s understanding of art and
aesthetic experience. Art, for Adorno, is object-based and material as
well as time-based (historical) and enigmatic. Through our encounter
with art we experience a subjective reconfiguration of reality and are
invited to re-orientate ourselves in the world. Importantly, Adorno’s
aesthetic theory and mode of criticism are never divorced from histori-
cal experience, especially the experience of perennial human suffering
which for Adorno is encapsulated by the Holocaust and its after-effects
on Western culture. He witnessed the rise of Nazism, as the passages
above indicate, and lived in exile from 1934 (first in Oxford, then
in New York and southern California) until his return to Germany

(in 1949) where he became a leading figure of the Frankfurt School
(Institute of Social Research). During his American exile, he worked on
his influential critiques of modernity and the culture industry, such as
Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944, with Max Horkheimer), Philosophy of
New Music (1948), and Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life.
Upon his return to Germany, he became a leading German intellec-
tual and, until his death in 1969, dedicated himself to answering the
very question – cited above, but well worth repeating – posthumously
published in Aesthetic Theory: “But then what would art be, as the writ-
ing of history, if it shook off the memory of accumulated suffering?”
(261). Responding, in particular, to the idealist tradition of Kantian and
Hegelian metaphysics, Adorno’s materialist aesthetic and critical theory
proposes a “primacy of the object,” which on the one hand manifests
itself in the somatic, physical effects of art on the individual (the notion
of art as affect and shudder); on the other hand, the priority of the object
in Adorno’s post-metaphysical thought is to be understood as a critical
negation of the historically dominating and instrumentalizing effects of
Enlightenment reason in today’s culture industry.
Adorno’s thinking about art, and our attempt at bringing his thought
in productive dialogue with the discourse of performance studies, aims
at the creative construction of new forms of non-coercive knowledge
and the discovery of new forms of non-discursive truths. We propose
that we might find the actuality, relevance, and indeed political urgency
of Adorno’s aesthetic philosophy today in his unique conception of art
as a critical-creative and historical practice, which, in turn, can offer
us a recovery of individual experience. Such critical recovery of experi-
ence neither seeks to resurrect the ideological concept of the bourgeois
humanist subject, nor does it join in hasty celebrations of the erosion of
the human. Rather, Adorno’s attention to the material basis of our social
and historical existence and his valorization of the somatic dimension
of our experience of art suggests that what is needed today, more than
ever, is a radical critique of the limits of rationality or “identity think-
ing” in our globalized world of late capitalism. Significantly, he consid-
ers the aesthetic to be a principal form of non-identical thinking. In her
keynote presentation at the recent Performance Studies international
conference at Stanford University (July 2013) Peggy Phelan (in the
spirit of Benjamin but also of Adorno without, however, mentioning
his name) articulated such a desire for a reconception of the human in
response to the aesthetic. She argued that performance’s particular abil-
ity was to engage us with the material density of the now, and suggested
that performance’s labor was post-conceptual in the sense that it reveals

the limits of the conceptual while at the same time inviting us to con-
ceive of “a concept that is not conceptual.”
Performance is process and objectivation, temporal experience and
material sensation; or to paraphrase Hölderlin: performance is a disap-
pearance in the process of appearance and vice versa. This dialectical
movement is at the heart of performance and central to Adorno’s aes-
thetic theory which offers us a dynamic constellation of ideas about art
and its relation to society, history and time: the past, the present, and
the future. Indeed, it is the principle of hope which guides Adorno’s
understanding of art as the utopian promise of reconciliation, freedom
and happiness. But art cannot positively affirm utopian visions of a
healed world without relinquishing its critical negativity. Art can do
no more than risk the promise of happiness – a promise which, in the
manner of Beckett, is always broken. To take Adorno and performance
seriously means to turn a critical eye toward the enactment of this bro-
ken promise, to tune the ear toward the mute language of art’s expres-
sion, and to engage in a dialectical mode of thinking wherever Adorno
grapples with performance, whatever form that performance may take.
I.4 Contributions and disciplinary boundaries
The editors of this volume have neither divided the contributions into
subgroups, nor arranged the essays into anything resembling “the most
logical” order. Instead, we have carefully scrutinized the singularity of
each piece and assembled each chapter into a verbal mosaic, a constel-
lation as it were, one fragment teaming up with the next to form a
rebus of Adorno and performance. A casual reader, and one not familiar
with Adorno’s work, will find assistance parsing the philosopher’s dense
vocabulary. Someone more conversant with Adorno’s oeuvre will find
this vocabulary mobilized in numerous directions, serving at times as
critical lenses to the contemporary neoliberalization of higher educa-
tion and specific performance works (from Pocha Nostra to Richard
Maxwell); at other times, serving as goads to philosophical reflection
on matters as diverse as academic publishing and the act of dreaming.
Whether familiar with Adorno’s work or not, each chapter continues
the thinking of intermittences that has begun in this introduction and
goes on to reveal the stakes of thinking through Adorno in the present
day. For anyone seeking a guide to the expansive secondary literature
on Adorno, the editors encourage a careful perusing of the works
cited in this volume and, beyond that, we recommend visiting the
bibliography in Lambert Zuidervaart’s entry on Adorno for the Stanford

Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
But then a question: do you read straight through or do you hop
around? While keywords in the chapter titles might provoke you to hop
around, the description of contributions here will guide you through
the book from start to finish and could entice you to follow the path
we have laid out. After beginning with Beckett in this introduction, the
first chapter will begin with Beckett again. This time, Michal Kobialka
will present Adorno’s Beckett through the philosopher’s essay, “Trying
to Understand Endgame” (1961). Confronting the reified residue of cul-
ture in Beckett’s famous play, Adorno encounters a force of resistance
against the coercive nature of the culture industry. Kobialka engages
with what he refers to as the materiality of this encounter and, in so
doing, provides an Adornian understanding of performance that moves
away from the path of performativity charted by performance studies
scholars over the last several decades.
Adorno frequently turned the perspicacity of his philosophical
thinking from artistic and political events to his own life. Nowhere
is this self-reflexivity more acute than in his Dream Notes where he
recorded many of his own dreams over a long span of years. Karoline
Gritzner grapples with these dreams, which manifest thoughts that do
not understand themselves. Her line of inquiry commences with the
seemingly un-Adornian fact that the philosopher’s reflections show lit-
tle to no sign of interpretation; that is, despite the assiduous practice
of philosophical interpretation crafted through a lifetime of negative
dialectical praxis, Adorno’s dream notes leave interpretation aside and
expose, instead, the dream work. Triangulating this work between the
dream theories of Benjamin and Sigmund Freud, on the one hand, and
the internal movement of images within Adorno’s dreamscapes, on the
other, Gritzner composes an argument for understanding these dream
notes as a specific kind of performance in its own right, one that aligns
with the philosophical concept of redemption oscillating throughout
Adorno’s writing.
Andrea Sakoparnig’s chapter, “Performativization and the Rescue of
Aesthetic Semblance,” offers readers the first opportunity to wrestle
with the complexities of the vocabulary that Adorno develops in
Aesthetic Theory. Of particular interest in this chapter is the notion
of aesthetic semblance, which, according to Sakoparnig, can help to
unpack Adorno’s critique of performance art. Against the usual habit of
accepting this critique at face value, however, this chapter rethinks the
broader concept of performance at work in Aesthetic Theory and thus
helps to discern the dialectical underside of Adorno’s critique. Once laid

bare in all its complexity, Adorno’s critique of performance art in fact
opens the possibility of reactivating the dormant potential of Adorno’s
concept of performance, a move that Sakoparnig rehearses and for
which she advocates.
Whereas that chapter dwells on the operation of rescuing of aesthetic
semblance in and with Aesthetic Theory, the next assembles a collection
of performance events in an attempt to understand Adorno’s distinction
“between preaching an ideal and giving artistic form to the historical
tension inherent in it.” A piece of performative writing in its own right,
Twitchin’s chapter jumps between multiple instantiations of the clas-
sical Greek figure of Iphigenia. From Euripides to Werner Fassbinder,
from Goethe to Adorno’s lecture on Goethe amidst the student protests
of 1967 and Joseph Beuys’s performance at the Frankfurt Experimenta
Festival in 1969, the figure of Iphigenia appears again and again. In this
figure, and the assemblage of its various incarnations, Twitchin discov-
ers how these artists and philosophers have given form to the historical
tensions inhering within not only artistic representation but also the
social edifice of academic institutions, from the 1960s to the present day.
Adorno’s life-long preoccupation with music is duly noted by
Anthony Gritten whose chapter focuses on a recurrent metaphor in
Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction, namely what Adorno terms
“culinary music-making.” His critique of this phenomenon is unpacked
with an ear for the metaphor’s potential to act as the basis of a critical
theory of performing. Aspects of Adorno’s theory of “performing” are
contrasted dialectically with Jon McKenzie’s theory of “performance,” in
which the term “performance” is a paradigm against which all singular
actions – including those of musical performing – are measured and to
which they must contribute.
Our attention then shifts from music to theatre in the next chapter by
Ioana Jucan. Her essay stages an encounter between Adorno’s critique
of the capitalist form of life and Richard Maxwell’s Neutral Hero (US pre-
miere at the Kitchen, NYC, 2012) in an attempt to think through what
performance’s political potential might be in neoliberal times. Jucan’s
contribution explores the ways in which a theatrical performance
enacts and makes possible a mode of thinking that counters abstraction
and the instrumentalization of reason induced by the capitalist form
of life. The essay shows how Neutral Hero extends Adorno’s thought for
the times we live in.
Theatrical performance is also the focus of the next chapter in which
Stephen Robins examines Adorno’s claims for beauty via the work of La
Pocha Nostra, an international performance company noted for creat-

ing hybrid, “border art” performances. The essay considers La Pocha
Nostra’s 2007 performance, The Barbarian Collection: a performance
apposite to a discussion of beauty because of its staging of the fashion
catwalk. Robins shows how La Pocha Nostra’s fantastical and grotesque
personae amaze and productively confound their audiences while
echoing Adorno’s critique of idealist aesthetics.
The following two chapters continue a focused exploration of the
notion of the theatrical in Adorno’s aesthetic theory. Marcus Quent
argues that theatrical and performative practices enable a mutual
dependency between art and philosophy and he shows how in Adorno’s
Aesthetic Theory the theatrical space is conceived as a possibility for con-
flict-prone negotiations of the “memory trace of the mimetic impulse.”
At the ground of this mimetic process of interpretation, Quent suggests,
lies the concept of pre-imitation – an affirmative moment in the negative
truth of art. Anja Nowak’s discussion of the “theatricality of art” draws
our attention to the fact that Adorno doesn’t really treat theatre as an
independent art form, and that he has a tendency to limit his observa-
tions to the textual dimension. Still, Nowak shows how theatre does
appear as a reoccurring metaphor in Aesthetic Theory as an example to
explicate general assumptions about art. As a figure of thought, theatre
works as a potent theoretical agent and can be traced back to some of
the most essential features of Adorno’s aesthetics.
In “Adorno and Performance: Thinking with the Movement of
Language,” Birgit Hofstaetter tunes herself to the practice of Selbstbesinnung
in Adorno’s work. This phrase, crucial to the practice of philosophy as it
appears in Negative Dialectics, reveals the labor of cultivating a dynamic
self-reflexivity, which, in turn, helps individuals to comport themselves
to the singularity of works of art. The word “language” in the chapter’s
title marks the meeting point between music and philosophical writing,
a place that, for Hofstaetter, houses a notion of performance specific to
Adorno’s thought. This notion develops as a critical practice of reading
which opens itself up to a quasi-somatic resonance crucial to musical
play, but also to thinking more generally.
In “What Is Adorno Doing? Immanent Critique as Philosophical
Performance” Mattias Martinson questions the cliché that Adorno’s
thought is immensely difficult yet possible to fully comprehend in
tune with traditional philosophy. By focusing on the last aphorism of
Adorno’s work Minima Moralia – where philosophy becomes an impos-
sible task that still has to be carried through – Adorno’s writings are
viewed as radical performances, manifesting the basic obscurity of our
linguistic relations to reality. Adorno’s aesthetically informed notion of

philosophical language in “The Essay as Form” is discussed in connec-
tion to his understanding of nondiscursive forms of truth expressed by
artworks. It is argued that Adorno’s strict division between philosophi-
cal language and art is paradoxically based in a utopian (ultimately
impossible) philosophical strive toward nonphilosophical art-language,
and that this leads to a creative philosophical betrayal of philosophy.
Julie Kuhlken, in the chapter “The Vanity of Happiness: Adorno and
Self-Performance,” develops an understanding of self-performance,
according to which performance is an ethical task that resists the
temptation to adopt a readymade, social identity. She first sketches
how self-performance is Adorno’s critical response to the classical
understanding of moral action as a reflection of conscious will. Then,
using Adorno’s examples drawn largely from theatre, she looks at his
characterization of the gap between the individual’s conscience and the
aims of contemporary society. The essay shows how the instrumental-
ism of modern society turns even happiness into an organized pursuit.
The “vanity of happiness” so conditioned is the ultimate travesty to
which self-performance responds. Kuhlken concludes by looking at the
consequences, both ethical and artistic, of modern self-performance.
The final chapter in this book resonates in a frequency similar to the
reflections collected in Adorno’s work, Minima Moralia. Conventional
wisdom such as that typed on bumper stickers paired with a reference
to the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day, Oscar Wilde and Ernst Bloch
paving the way to the Book of Wisdom: this imbrication of so-called
high and low culture prepares the scene for a dialectical treatment of
life performed. For Dixon, “the categories of practicing, rehearsing, and
performing that are derivable from artistic-productive experience can be
extended to lived experience,” and lived experience finds its texture in
the practice of writing. Placing the dialectic of form and content front
and center, Dixon argues that “Writing as Life Performed” acquires tex-
ture and consistency only once we stop talking about the form-content
relation and start practicing it. But to do so would mean to finally
confront the machinery of academic writing that vouchsafes legitimacy
only to those books and articles that conform to certain standards.
If these chapters collaborate in creating a shared disciplinary home,
then that home would likely be neither Performance Studies nor
Philosophy but Performance Philosophy. Of course, as Adorno famously
wrote in “Refuge for the Homeless,” “dwelling, in the proper sense, is
now impossible” (Minima Moralia 38). Transposed to this particular con-
versation, Adorno’s reflections on emigration and the ethical necessity
of never being at home in one’s home warn us against affiliating our-

selves with any organization simply for the purpose of finding legiti-
macy. In this sense, Performance Philosophy becomes the ideal no-place
for this particular book, one that offers no lodging but, rather, motivates
a particular practice of thought. At this stage of its existence, this prac-
tice, to cite Laura Cull, derives from an
enactment of an immanent thought that does not represent perfor-

mance in ways that construe it as somehow incapable of thinking for
itself […] A thought alongside performance rather than an ontologi-
cal claim about it. (“Performance Philosophy”)
If philosophers enact thought through the discipline of philosophy,

and performers think through embodied activity, then perhaps what
performance philosophers do is pursue a dual research agenda that
participates in both of those actions while also mapping the terrain of
a hybrid practice. And thus we return to Adorno and performance: a
specific philosophical practice that tarries with performance as concept,
artistic practice, and life praxis. The book Adorno and Performance is not
confined to the disciplinary home of Performance Philosophy, but it
does aspire to the thought currently undertaken by its membership.
1
Of Adorno’s Beckett
Michal Kobialka
“Performance” and “performativity” are terms which are not necessar-

ily immediately associated with Theodor W. Adorno, but with John L.
Austin’s lectures delivered at Harvard in 1955. However, could Adorno’s
philosophical practice and insights of yesteryear, and to be more precise
his 1958 essay, “Trying to Understand Endgame,” point to a different
trajectory in how we think about “performance” and “performativity”
within the rubric of the pragmatics of language, the social sciences, or
theatre/performance studies and, as a corollary, open up our under-
standing of performance and performativity in the present moment? To
paraphrase Adorno’s comment made in “Why is the New Art So Hard to
Understand?” (1931), I am asking historiographically and sociologically,
not aesthetically.
If such a possibility is tangible, then how is it possible to think about
the term “performative” without “it” becoming part of the process
demanding that we expose its unpleasant implications (gender inequal-
ity, identity construction, or our own metaphysical illusions)? How can
we avoid the process of abstracting, should I say academic or aesthetic
abstracting (a real abstraction, as defined by Alfred Sohn-Rethel in
another context) which is blind to that history and those social pro-
cesses which produce knowledge for the benefit or the self-preservation
of academic disciplines and fields? Sohn-Rethel shows that abstraction,
other than that of thought, is produced by the social activity linked to
market forces rather than induced, historical rather than ahistorical,
economic rather than anti-economic, and can be used to account for
specific transformations or mutations within philosophical epistemol-
ogy and for specific transformations or mutations of its practical appli-
cations (Sohn-Rethel, Intellectual and Manual Labour).
23
24 Michal Kobialka
Following Sohn-Rethel’s insights, let me ask: what is the use (or use
value) of the performative today, as opposed to its use (or use value) in
speech act theory, science and technology studies, economic sociology,
and gender/queer or performance studies in the last decades of the
twentieth century? If, as we are told, the goal today is no longer the
representation of truth but performativity, how does this input/output
equation of capitalist efficiency, advanced by Jean-François Lyotard in
The Postmodern Condition (1979), participate in the act of interpellating
individuals into subjects and prescribed subject positions? If indeed, as
Michel Foucault would have it, representation is inadequate for captur-
ing the contours of, or revealing the truth about, the subject or the
object, then should the performative replace it and help us understand
a new trajectory in the production of the subject/object in various dis-
cursive formations (Foucault, Discipline and Punish)? At the same time,
how does the critique of the performative (launched, for example, by
Jürgen Habermas, Terry Eagleton, or Slavoj Žižek) transform not only
the investigation of the subject or object positioned within the forci-
ble and reiterative practices of regulatory regimes (as noted by Jacques
Derrida in Limited, Inc. (1971) and Judith Butler in Excitable Speech
(1997)), but also the historiographic encounter with the performative?1
What is the relationship between power structures and performatives,
that is, between power structures and popular or ritualistic acts that are
formed by, enhanced by, or resistant to those structures? How does one
give voice to the events and activities that maneuver or are maneuvered
toward the construction of homogeneous thinking, acting, perform-
ing, and doing? And how does one enunciate the ever-present conflict
between what is visible and invisible, seen and unseen, speakable and
unspeakable and what is permitted, when, by whom, under what
circumstances – political, ideological, economic, etc.?
The questions multiply. So do the different trajectories marking the
shifts and transformations within the performative – from the avant-
garde desire to annex modernist reality to the postmodern condition of
Jean-François Lyotard; from the cultural turn of the 1970s to the perform-
ative and ethical turn of the 1980s and 1990s; from the reorientation of
critical studies after the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 to
the current neoliberal imaginary of the new materialism in the age of
interactive media and Web technology. The proliferation of these trajec-
tories unequivocally suggests that, understood historiographically, the
performative is produced by social activity, rather than induced; that it
is historical rather than ahistorical, economic rather than anti-economic,
and has been used to account for specific transformations or mutations
Of Adorno’s Beckett 25
within philosophical epistemology since the 1950s and for specific trans-
formations or mutations of its practical applications in the present.2
Let me return to the opening gambit: could Adorno’s philosophical
practice and insights of yesteryear, and to be more precise his 1958
essay, “Trying to Understand Endgame,” point to a different trajectory in
situating “performance” and “performativity” within the rubrics of the
pragmatics of language, the social sciences, or theatre/performance stud-
ies and, as a corollary, open up our understanding of performance and
performativity in the present moment?
I am motivated by the materiality of the encounter with “perfor-
mance” and “performativity” and the kind of move one finds in, for
example, Walter Benjamin who, while writing critically about the avant-
garde and performance some 30 years before the institutionalization of
Performance Studies at New York University, exemplifies this material-
ism by drawing attention to the notion of historical materialism and the
object in the state of unrest – that object which exposes itself to reveal
what the dominant cultural or ideological formations have submerged
in it so that the object could become the narration readable and teach-
able to all (Benjamin, “Eduard Fuchs”). I am motivated by the idea of
the materiality of the encounter with “performance” and “performativ-
ity” and the kind of move one finds in, for example, Adorno who, while
talking about why new art is so hard to understand makes a clear dis-
tinction between art, which possesses a certain immediacy of effect that
makes it understandable, and the difficulty of understanding new art.
[N]amely the experience that the production of art, its material,

the demands and tasks that confront the artist when he works,
have become divorced in principle from consumption, i.e. from the
presumptions, claims, and possibilities of comprehension that the
reader, viewer, listener brings to the work of art. (Adorno, “Why is
the New Art?” 128)
“Trying to Understand Endgame” is dedicated to S.B., in memory of

Paris in Fall 1958. It opens with a statement directly inserting Beckett’s
oeuvre into the Adorno-Sartre debate about existentialism, which will
be continued over the next few years as so poignantly exemplified
by Adorno’s 1962 essay, “Commitment.” In the essay on Endgame,
Adorno’s encounter with Beckett’s oeuvre takes the form of being
shot through with reminiscences of the categories of absurdity, situ-

ation, and decision or the failure to decide, the way medieval ruins
26 Michal Kobialka
permeate Kafka’s monstrous house in the suburbs. Now and then the
windows fly open and one sees the black, starless sky of something
like philosophical anthropology. (Adorno, “Endgame” 241)
Whereas in Sartre, according to Adorno, the possibility of staring at

the black, starless sky of philosophical anthropology does not lead
to anything daring because it decays into “cultural commodities,” in
Beckett, “the form overtakes what is expressed and changes it” (Adorno,
“Commitment” 301; “Endgame” 241).
The impulse to do so operates on two levels simultaneously: on the
level of aesthetic production in the present as well as on the level of
understanding “absurdity” in a manner which clashes with the Western
pathos of the universal. This double operation allows Adorno to access
the materiality of reified categories of thought that had served as the
basis of knowledge in order to draw attention to Sartre’s failure to see
the categories of absurdity, situation, and decision, or the failure to
decide, as pieces out of aestheticized reality that Sartre attempts to deaes-
theticize. This Sartrean de-aestheticization itself is the appearance of form.
This form – this presentation itself or appearance itself – is not immedi-
ately critical. Indeed, as it has been argued, many artistic endeavors may
present the processes of commodification perfectly, but are not necessar-
ily, nor do they have the ability to be, critical of it. As Pedro Rocha de
Oliveira insists:
The point of the critical approach that is oriented by the concept

of aestheticization of reality is to neither be convinced to follow
the example nor compelled to accept the commentary, but rather
to intervene in the communication between art and reality and
inquire, among other things, what makes it possible. (de Oliveira,
“Aestheticization” 276)
Even if this critical approach is followed, one needs to be aware that

“the aesthetic representation of hope takes place according to processes
that are entirely different from those that bring about real hope in a
revolutionary process” (277). That is to say, it may promote confusion
between representation and the reality where this hope did not materi-
alize. Thus, an “empowering” ending of a play, a novel, or a devised per-
formance may be nothing more than a pseudo-activity that promotes
the importance of keeping good thoughts in one’s mind. Ultimately, the
critical approach revealing the social status of the appearing categories
is not political action. This stalemate between the critical approach and
political action can only be resolved when it is understood that if art

is able to criticize itself, it is because society criticizes it. Consequently,
“the result of formal criticism of art, therefore, should be concrete
criticism of social organizations and of the inner contradictions of that
social organization” (279).
Let me substantiate this thought with a statement by Adorno, which
not only illuminates de Oliveira’s comment but also shifts the focus
toward the technique of the work of art. It may help us to think about a
work of art not in terms of representation or presentation, but in terms of
an autonomous work of art understood as a determinate negation, point-
ing to specific contradictions between what art claims to deliver and what
it actually delivers. Art, in achieving identity or a certain immediacy of
effect that makes it understandable, suppresses differences and diversity
producing, as suggested by Adorno in “Resignation” (1968), pseudo-activ-
ity – that is, an “action that overdoses and aggravates itself for the sake
of its own publicity, without admitting to itself to what extent it serves
as a substitute satisfaction, elevating itself into an end in itself” (Adorno,
“Resignation” 291). That is, because of capitalism’s structure, and his own
insistent emphasis on art’s autonomy in the era of the culture industry,
Adorno doubts both the effectiveness and the legitimacy of agitative or
deliberately consciousness-raising art. Yet he does see politically engaged
art as a corrective to mainstream art. Under the conditions of late (global)
capitalism, the politically most effective art is that which so thoroughly
works out its own internal contradictions that the hidden contradictions
in society can no longer be ignored. Here is Adorno’s statement:
The critical relation to tradition as the medium of preservation is not

only concerned with the past but also with the quality of aesthetic
production in the present. To the extent it is authentic, this produc-
tion does not begin cavalierly from scratch, nor does it attempt to
outdo one contrived method with another. Rather it is a determinate
negation. In Beckett’s plays the traditional form of the drama is trans-
formed in all respects through parody. (“On Tradition” (1966) 80)
In Beckett’s Endgame, the traditional form of drama is transformed in

all respects through its inherent structure, in which the relationship
between Hamm and Clov cannot be understood or grasped in terms
of traditional dramatic structure, because in the most concrete form it
shows “nothing.”
At the same time, in Beckett, notes Adorno, “literary method surren-
ders to absurdity without preconceived intentions” (“Endgame” 241).
28 Michal Kobialka
Thus, absurdity is no longer a doctrinal universality; instead, absurd-

ity is that which “dismisses existentialist conformity, the notion that
one ought to be what one is, and with it easy comprehensibility of
presentation” (241). Indeed, as Adorno observes in another context,
this comprehensibility of presentation is a sign of the reification of art
which is the result of a socio-economic development “that transforms
all goods into consumer goods, makes them abstractly exchangeable,
and has therefore torn them asunder from the immediacy of use”
(“Why Is the New Art?” 128). Beckett makes us aware of this phenom-
enon by reducing to cultural trash whatever philosophy might have
provided us with in the past. “For Beckett, culture swarms and crawls”
(Adorno, “Endgame” 240). These convulsions in Endgame expose
modernism not as a literary movement or condition, not to say, yet
another turn, but as what is obsolete in modernity understood most
broadly.
What is obsolete in Beckett’s/Adorno’s modernity is revealed both
in language and in thought, two of the most prominent qualitative
categories of traditional drama. “Language, regressing, demolishes that
obsolete material” (241). It annihilates the meaning the culture once
had; the events cease to be inherently meaningful and, consequently,
perturb the aesthetic substance of what appears and “what was intended
becomes an illusion” (242). Similarly,
[t]he shock that accompanied the new artistic movements imme-

diately before the war is the expression of the fact that the break
between production and consumption became radical; that for this
reason art no longer has the task of representing a reality that is
preexisting for everyone in common, but rather of revealing, in isola-
tion, the very crack that reality would like to cover over in order to
exist in safety; and that, in so doing, it repels reality. (Adorno, “Why
is the New Art?” 142)
Thus, the thought becomes both the means to produce meaning in the
work – here, the means to reveal the very crack reality would like to
cover over – and the means to repel reality. “There is no longer any
substantive, affirmative metaphysical meaning that could provide dra-
matic form with its law and its epiphany” (Adorno, “Endgame” 242). In
Endgame, this explosion of metaphysical meaning, which, in the past,
guaranteed the aesthetic unity of the Western work of art, causes drama
and, by extension, theatre/performance, to “crumble with a necessity
and stringency in no way equal to that of the traditional canon of
aesthetic dramatic form” (242). After Endgame, there is no more drama,

unless Endgame is commodified, laid to rest, or becomes a real abstrac-
tion. Neither can there be a postdramatic theatre, unless of course,
the “post” in postdramatic signifies “not a movement of repetition
but a procedure in ‘ana-’: a procedure of analysis, anamnesis, anagogy,
and anamorphosis that elaborates an ‘initial forgetting’” (Lyotard,
Postmodern Explained 80). Assuming that Endgame is not transformed
into a real abstraction by the social activity linked to market or aca-
demic forces, it bears resemblance to Adorno’s autonomous work of art.
As argued by Adorno:
the principle that governs autonomous works of art is not the totality
of their effects, but their own inherent structure. They are knowl-
edge as nonconceptual objects. This is the source of their greatness.
It is not something of which they have to persuade men, because it
should be given to them. (“Commitment” 317)
Consequently, thought is transformed into a second-order material.

No longer is thought perceived as a guiding principle in a work of art
or the idea they could never attain. Beckett exposes that thought to be
nothing more than clichés, “fragmentary materials in the monologue
intérieur that spirit has become, the reified residues of culture” (Adorno,
“Endgame” 243). These reified residues of culture are part of dead inven-
tory. “Exhorted to play along, he responds with parody, parody both
of philosophy, which spits out his dialogues, and of forms” (243). This
parody drags and distorts thoughts until nothing remains of their invar-
iant categories but bare life. “Beckett’s Ecce Homo is what human beings
have become. As though with eyes drained of tears, they stare silently
out of his sentences” (Adorno, “Commitment” 314). The sentiment of
bourgeois progress and the possibility of philosophy are reduced to the
nausea and exaltation of repetition:
HAMM: Do you remember your father.

CLOV (wearily): Same answer. (Pause.) You’ve asked me these ques-
tions millions of times.
HAMM: I love the old questions. (With fervor.) Ah, the old ques-
tions, the old answers, there’s nothing like them. (cit. Adorno,
“Endgame” 244)
Ultimately, once thought is turned into a second-order material, the

materiality of the encounter with its bare existence reveals, for Adorno,
30 Michal Kobialka
“the irrationality of bourgeois society in its late phase [which] rebels at

letting itself be understood” (244). More important, as Endgame makes
abundantly clear, gone are the times when a critique of the political
economy of this society could be driven by its own ratio. “For since then
the society has thrown its ratio on the scrap heap and replaced it with
virtually unmediated control” (244).
Thus, it is only when language and thought become a second-order
material in the universe of unmediated control that the very possi-
bility of bourgeois philosophy is caricatured. However, it is not only
philosophy that is unmistakably challenged. So is the notion of history:
After the Second World War, everything, including a resurrected cul-

ture, has been destroyed without realizing it; humankind continues
to vegetate, creeping along after events that even the survivors can-
not really survive, on a rubbish heap that has made even reflection
on one’s own damaged state useless. (244)
In Adorno’s Beckett, there is nothing left that has not been made or
destroyed by human beings. The phase of complete reification of the
world defines the current condition in which “there is no more nature”
(245). Clov’s seeds have not sprouted. “They’ll never sprout!” asserts
Clov violently. “The violence of the unspeakable is mirrored in the fear
of mentioning it” (245). There are only euphemisms left – “they will
never sprout.” Under these conditions, progress, or individuation in
time and space, which “make existence and not the mere concept of
existence,” is not possible (246). By negating individuation in time and
space, Beckett, according toAdorno, sees history as a process of subtrac-
tion. That is, “instead of omitting what is temporal in existence – which
can be existence only in time – he subtracts from existence what time,
the historical tendency, is in reality preparing to get rid of” (246). By
extension, a human being in this history is “subtracted” into a “here
and now” – an existence in a reified world wherein “ontology comes
into its own as the pathogenesis of the false life” (247). Hamm can only
recall residues of nature – the horizon, the waves, the sun, or the night –
which, since the temporal has been incapacitated by culture, can only
be dried-up memories and gestures floating in the gray substance of
false life.
Endgame becomes a mute gesture frozen in its own solipsistic repeti-
tion in which time and space are lost because time and space would
contain hope that is no longer possible under the sign of the catas-
trophe and complete reification of the world. “The catastrophes that
inspire Endgame have shattered the individual whose substantiality

and absoluteness was the common thread in Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and
Sartre’s version of existentialism” (249).
Adorno sees Endgame as a piece that deals the final blow to Sartre’s
version of existentialism and its argument about the freedom of victims
of concentration camps to inwardly accept or reject the tortures. The
individual is seen not in terms of being an autonomous figure or an
ontological category. Rather, “the individual himself is revealed to be a
historical category, both the outcome of the capitalist process of aliena-
tion and a defiant protest against it, something transient himself” (249).
If indeed the individual is revealed to be a historical category, which
calls into question the individual’s claim to autonomy, the issue that
needs to be addressed is how art deals with the individuation of its char-
acters and with the subjectivity of perception. According to Adorno,
“art cannot break the spell of a detached subjectivity; it can only give
form to solipsism” (249). To wit: in art only that which has been ren-
dered subjective is valid – thus, a universality of material reality, which
would halt the illusion of individuation and, by extension, subjectivity,
is denied. Consequently, art can conceive of reconciliation only as the
reconciliation of what has been estranged. It would negate itself if it
could lead to the reconciliation of objects positioned within the discur-
sive knowledge of reality/the world. “An unreconciled reality tolerates
no reconciliation with the object in art” (250). Realism only mimics
reconciliation. This may be the reason why, for Adorno, “it is not the
office of art to spotlight alternatives, but to resist by its form alone the
course of the world, which permanently puts a pistol to men’s head”
(“Commitment” 304). Endgame is exemplary of this process:
It yields both to the impossibility of continuing to represent things

in works of art, continuing to work with materials in the manner of
the nineteenth century, and to the insights that the subjective modes
of response that have replaced representation as mediators of art are
not original and absolute but rather a resultant, something objective.
(Adorno, “Endgame” 250)
Endgame takes place in a neutral zone between the inner and the outer,
which draws the spectator’s attention to the unresolved contradiction
defining it. Whereas the subject matter seems to make a reference to
an inner sphere, this suggestion of something symbolic or metaphoric
ends up being empty since “the inner sphere of which it would be a
sign no longer exists and the signs do not point to anything else” (251).
32 Michal Kobialka
Hamm and Clov are examples par excellence of that which can exist in
this neutral zone.
What is left of spirit, which originated in mimesis, is pitiful imita-

tion; what is left of the soul, which dramatizes itself, is an inhumane
sentimentality; and what is left of the subject is its most abstract
characteristic: merely existing, and thereby already committing an
outrage. (251)
Their behavior is the behavior of human beings whose identities have

been annihilated after the catastrophe, which has mutilated them so
that they cannot be otherwise. Nell and Nagg, Hamm and Clov have
shriveled to bare necessity. They represent “the identity of the subject
and object in a state of complete alienation” (251). Nell and Nagg,
Hamm and Clov are waiting to be carted off to the dump.
Before, if ever, they are carted off to the dump, Hamm and Clov, unlike
Nell and Nagg, exist within a situation whose actual content is the very
irrelevance and superfluity of anything the subject is still able to do:
HAMM: I feel a little too far to the left. (Clov moves the chair slightly.)
I feel a little too far to the right. (Clov moves the chair slightly.) I feel
a little too far forward. (Clov moves the chair slightly.) I feel a little
too far back. (Clov moves the chair slightly.) Don’t stay there, you
give me shivers. (Clov returns to his place beside the chair.)
CLOV: If I could kill him, I would die happy. (cit. 256)
This irrelevance and superfluity of anything the subject is still able to do

alludes to the nonidentity operating in that neutral zone of Endgame. At
the same time, “nonidentity is both the historical disintegration of the
subject and the emergence of something that is not itself subject” (252).
As the story of Nell and Nagg unequivocally indicates, the emergence
of something that is not itself subject, Beckett’s prototypes so to say, is
historical in that the figures make us stare at such things and situations
which exhibit only the deformations inflicted upon human beings by
the form of their society. The catalog of their deformations and their frag-
mentation into nonidentical elements give us a glimpse into what else-
where Adorno would refer to as nonconceptual objects (“Commitment”
317). That is to say, the historical crisis of the individual, whose only
space is the negation of the negativity or the negative, gray zone outside
of the window, “flows on without opposition from the individuals [and]
ends in the stubborn bodies to which they regress” (Adorno, “Endgame”
257). Judged in terms of this unity, the situations are comic, hallucina-
tory. If, however, as Adorno declares in “Commitment,” the principle
that governs autonomous works of art is not the totality of their schizoid
situations, but their own inherent structure, the same situation exposes
itself to reveal, in its own inherent structure, what dominant cultural
and historical formations are submerged in it, so that it could become a
narration readable and teachable to all.
Comic situations, humor, dramatic categories, and language – the tra-
ditional constituents of drama – when used in Endgame draw attention
to the degree to which such categories were an illusory superstructure
suspended above the bourgeois existence and cultural heritage which
gave birth to the current condition. In Beckett’s drama, laughter suf-
focates the one who laughs.
This is what has become of humor now that is has become obsolete
as an aesthetic medium and repulsive, without a canon for what
should be laughed at, without a place of reconciliation from which
once could laugh, and without anything harmless on the face of the
earth that would allow itself to be laughed at. (257)
“Well? Don’t we laugh?” says Clov lowering his telescope and turning
to Hamm (257). But laughter, like everything else in Endgame, has had
its sonorous quality sucked out of it.
The same applies to dramatic categories. Even though the three
(Aristotelian) unities of time, space, and action are preserved, the relation-
ship between traditional dramatic categories and Endgame contains the
same difficulty as the relationship between traditional compositions and,
notes Adorno, the inherently antagonistic music of Schönberg. That is to
say, “what is the raison d’être of forms when the tension between them
and something that is not homogeneous to them has been abolished,
without that slowing down of progress in the artistic mastery of materi-
als?” (260). A response to this question can be found in “The Dialectical
Composer” (1934) where Adorno explicitly states that in Schönberg, the
contradiction between strictness and freedom is not transcended in form,
but becomes a force of production. Schönberg’s works do not turn the
contradiction toward harmony, but draw attention to a contradiction
within cognition – “a contradiction not inside the artist, but between
the power in him and what he found before him” – thus, a contradiction
between subject (compositional intention) and object (compositional
material) (Adorno, “Dialectical Composer” 205). In Endgame, this tension
materializes in the announcement that there are no more painkillers;
34 Michal Kobialka
its irresolvable contradiction in the rejection of drama’s traditional con-

stituents, including the language. On the one hand, “Endgame contains
rapid-fire monosyllabic dialogues like the play of question and answer
that once took place between the deluded king [in Oedipus Rex] and the
messenger of fate” (Adorno, “Endgame” 260). On the other hand, the
words in Endgame “sound like stopgap measures because the state of
muteness has not yet been satisfactorily achieved; they are like an accom-
paniment to the silence they disturb” (260). This tension is an example
of a Beckettian immanent dialectic of form exposing the aporia both in
its structure and in cognition that changes itself along with the changes
in reality, on which it knows itself to be dependent.
This immanent dialectic of form draws attention to the dilemma that
had haunted Dada and Surrealism – that is, even when language reduces
itself to pure sound as was the case in Dada’s transrational language or
sonic poetry, it cannot divest itself of its semantic element and become
purely gestural. “Instead of trying to liquidate the discursive element in
language through pure sound, Beckett transforms it into its own absurd-
ity” (262). However, this absurdity does not exist as the binary, or a cor-
rective, to realism or material reality, but rather develops out of it. In its
seeming disintegration, language becomes an ensemble of forms which
operate within a particular grid of specification giving visibility and intel-
ligibility to the object. Here, the language/object, detached from all its
original functions, reveals its objectness in the relationship it establishes
with other sounds/words/objects positioned in the space. Thus, the
resulting pattern is capricious, in flux, or scattered. This comment is remi-
niscent of Walter Benjamin’s statements about the collector articulating
the fate of the object in his Arcade Project, and in Konvolut H in particular:
What is decisive in collecting is that the object is detached from all

its original functions in order to enter into the closest conceivable
relation to things of the same kind. […] The true collector detaches
the object from its functional relations. […] The world is present, and
indeed ordered, in each of his objects. (207)
Indeed, in Beckett’s Endgame, the world is present and ordered in each

object/language in order to reveal the figure of the absurd:
HAMM: Open the window.

CLOV: What for?
HAMM: I want to hear the sea.
CLOV: You wouldn’t hear it.
HAMM: Even if you opened the window?

CLOV: No.
HAMM: Then it’s not worthwhile opening it?
CLOV: No.
HAMM (violently): Then open it! (Clov gets up on the ladder, opens
the window. Pause.) Have you opened it?
CLOV: Yes. (cit. Adorno, “Endgame” 265)
The action is senseless because it can no longer accommodate itself in

the Beckettian world of the now. The world of the now negates all the
past meaningfulness and draws attention to the nonidentical pairings
of the request based on the past logic and the response based on the cur-
rent condition. “It is not as a Weltanschauung that the absurd replaces
the worldview of rationality; rather, in the absurd that worldview comes
into its own” (265).
The world of the now, for Beckett, is the world after Auschwitz. Both
in “Trying to Understand Endgame” and in “Commitment,” Adorno
addresses the issue of what it means to create works of art at the time when
genocide becomes part of the cultural heritage these works are embedded
in, or when the production of cultural content is used to manipulate mass
society into passivity and to cultivate false psychological needs that can
only be satisfied by the products of capitalism. Nell, Negg, Hamm, and
Clov inhabit a world where the pendulum of the dialectic has come to
a standstill. In this space, people tell stories and pass judgments on their
identities. However, their identities, their selves, are only the imitations of
that which no longer exists; and there is no expectation that the situation
will change in the future. There is only this standstill which cancels the
beginning (the past) and the end (the future). And yet they go on.
Thus, there is only this standstill in which Hamm’s nonidentity
motivates the present course of action. “Everything that exists is to be
made identical to a life that is itself death, abstract domination” (270).
Negative ontology expressed by Beckett as the infinite catastrophe. “The
earth is extinguished, though I never saw it lit,” says Hamm.
And this is the condition that Adorno brings to the fore in the still-
ness of the standstill. Hamm, and Clov, for this matter, counterbal-
ance the rest of the world – the totality, which is the void. They are
determinate negations in a dramatic form, which unequivocally shows
the inadequation between subjects and those aspects of subjects which
reality would gloss over in order to assign present intelligibility to them.
They are determinate negations exposing “the curmudgeons whom
no bombs could demolish [and who] have allied themselves with the
36 Michal Kobialka
philistines who rage against the alleged incomprehensibility of the new

art” (Adorno, “Commitment” 316).
Against the curmudgeons and the philistines, Adorno posits Endgame
historiographically and sociologically, not aesthetically, as an autono-
mous work of art. It presents Endgame as a nonconceptual object, gov-
erned not by the totality of its cultural or dramatic effects, but by its
own inherent structure and the exploration of its own mediality.
Against the curmudgeons and the philistines, Adorno posits “Trying
to Understand Endgame” as a material encounter with a performative
text which offers neither an examination of flaws and imperfections
nor a set of criticisms designed to make the system better. Rather, this
encounter demands that we confront the reified residues of culture in
it. This confrontation takes place both on the level of the critique con-
cerned with the past or the present conditions, as well as on the level
of the critique of social and aesthetic production, without which the
former loses its strength by being overwhelmed by the very conventions
that brought about the existing conditions. This critique is actually the
force of resistance against the coercive nature of the culture industry.
And this is the power of Adorno’s thinking about Beckett’s Endgame.
If there is anything that Adorno can contribute to our discussion about
“performance” and “performativity,” it is that Adorno’s trajectory may
help us see today performance and performativity as nonconceptual
objects revealing what is obsolete in today’s conditions and in the qual-
ity of social and aesthetic production. In Adorno’s essay on Endgame it
is made abundantly clear that, no matter what the conditions are, there
must always exist “the possibility [that] a completely unshackled reality
remains valid” (Adorno and Horkheimer, “New Manifesto?” (1956) 36).
More than that, no matter what the conditions are, there must always
exist a project set against “the horror […] that for the first time we live
in a world in which we can no longer imagine a better one” (61).
And this might be the function of “performance” and “performativity.”
Adorno’s mandate bequeathed to us all.
Notes
1. See Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative; Butler, Laclau, and
Žižek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left;
Derrida, Limited Inc.; Eagleton, After Theory; Habermas, On the Pragmatics of
Communication.
2. Accordingly, the performative is that which is defined as it relates to
speech act theory and to the pragmatics of language in the work of John L.
Austin, John R. Searle, Jacques Derrida, or Judith Butler; as it is theorized by
Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, or Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick to describe

its functioning in social sciences and daily behaviors based on investigation
of social norms, habits, gender development, or identity boundaries; as it is
used in performance studies/art by Richard Schechner/Victor Turner, Peggy
Phelan, Amelia Jones, Shannon Jackson, or Philip Auslander to draw atten-
tion to symbolic and reflexive behavior, the ephemeral aspect of performance,
new technologies of perception and meaning construction, or technologies
of reproduction in mediatized performance. For a general introduction to the
discourse on the performative see Fischer-Lichte, The Show and the Gaze of
Theatre; Şiray, Performance and Performativity, especially Chapter 5.
2
Thoughts Which Do Not
Understand Themselves:
On Adorno’s Dream Notes
Karoline Gritzner
Adorno recorded his dreams and had plans to publish them in a sepa-
rate volume but this did not happen during his lifetime. A few of his
dreams appear in his important book Minima Moralia: Reflections from
Damaged Life (1951) which he wrote during his exile in America. He
emigrated in 1934, first to England, then to the United States (New
York and California) and returned to Germany in 1949. In the volume
Dream Notes (Traumprotokolle, published in German in 2005, and in
English in 2007) his American dreams make up the majority, but there
are also dreams from the 1930s in Germany and England, and a series of
German dreams from the 1950s and 1960s. His transcripts contain anxi-
ety dreams, torture and execution dreams, sexual and erotic dreams,
animal dreams, and examination dreams. The recording methodology
was as follows: he would write down his dreams on paper immediately
upon waking, and when preparing them for publication, he made very few
linguistic changes and added only a small number of explanatory notes.
Adorno claimed that these Dream Notes were for that reason “authentic”
(Dream Notes vi). He refused to interpret or analyse them or place them
in any kind of theoretical framework, yet one cannot help but wonder
what significance these dream records have for Adorno’s project of
negative dialectics and his analysis of individual experience in modern
society.
Adorno’s dream protocols strike the reader as disarmingly personal,
intimate, and surprisingly self-conscious offerings which ask to be
read and interpreted like works of art. The intention to transcribe his
dreams and present them as more or less authentic articulations of his
subjective unconscious, furthermore reflects and indeed enacts dialecti-
cal thought’s immanent movement, its “immersion in particularity”
(Negative Dialectics (1966) 28), whilst also showing that all thought
38
Thoughts Which Do Not Understand Themselves 39
forms, and dream thoughts in particular, command freedom because

they “tend beyond that which merely exists, is merely ‘given’” (19).
I will present some of Adorno’s dreams in this chapter and my accom-
panying reflections will be guided by two of his challenging assertions:
first, that “[w]e are not to philosophise about concrete things; we are
to philosophise, rather, out of these things” (Negative Dialectics 33); and
second, that “true thoughts are those alone which do not understand
themselves” (Minima Moralia 192). Both statements draw attention to
the central categories of immanence and contradiction in Adorno’s
theory and they propose a renewal of philosophical thinking from the
perspective of immediate, nonconceptual experience without, however,
relinquishing the “labor of the concept” (Dialectic of Enlightenment
(1944) xvii, translation modified). Furthermore, Adorno’s dream notes
enact negative dialectical philosophy in an altogether different, non-
discursive register than philosophy’s usual mode (treatise, the essay
form). They do so, as will be shown in what follows, in order to perform
a standpoint of the future in which the enigmatic quality of thought is
preserved and heightened.
In essence, dreams are thoughts which do not understand themselves,
and if we happen to remember them, however briefly, or if they haunt
us with the uncanny force of repetition, they confront us in our waking
lives like enigmatic fragments of another reality. As expressions of the
Freudian unconscious, dreams are timeless; they are not ordered tempo-
rally, they do not follow the logic of historical time, but rather suggest a
spatialisation of time (a “spacetime” – Zeitraum) in which the passing of
time comes to an elusive, momentary standstill. This can be observed in
many of Adorno’s dream notes which are characterised by spatial depth
and multi-dimensionality, an architectonic form even, which allows
for bizarre, frightening, erotic, playful, silly and other presentations of
human and non-human characters, actors and spectators, agents and
witnesses.
London, 1937:
My dream had a title: ‘Siegfried’s last adventure’ or ‘Siegfried’s last death’.
It took place on a vast stage which did not just represent a landscape but
actually was one: small rocks and a lot of vegetation, rather like in the
mountains leading up to the Alpine pastures. (Dream Notes 2–3)
*
40 Karoline Gritzner
Los Angeles, January 1942, a few nights later:

I went with my Mother to hear a performance of The Mastersingers. The
entire dream took place during the performance, although the shadowy
events on the stage had no connection with Wagner’s plot. (9)
It is interesting that Adorno’s dreams about music (opera above all)

emphasise location, space, setting, and the theatre’s phantasmagorical
ability to create an illusion. Many of his dreams are set in theatrical
environments, in concert halls, opera houses, dance halls, main halls
of universities, party venues, and involve him as spectator, audience
member, and performer (there is one dream in which he is supposed to
be an actor in a film or TV programme) on stage and in the auditorium.
In the meantime, the mood of the glitteringly dressed audience began to

turn against me and, with my mother’s agreement, I thought it advisable
to leave the box for a while. Long gap. Then, I was back in the box, but
hidden. Act Two. (9)
In his essay “The Natural History of the Theatre” (1931–1933) Adorno

hints at theatre’s resemblance with the dream when he considers the
effects of the architecture of conventional theatre and opera houses
(the auditorium, the foyer, the gallery, boxes, the dome) on the specta-
tor experience. The appeal of phantasmagoria and theatrical illusion is
particularly emphasised and justified as an effect of architecture. With
regards to the gallery and the dome Adorno writes:
The dome has long since closed over the theatre and now reflects the
sounds coming from the stage, barring a view of the sky. But those who
sit nearest to it, for a small sum of money, and at the furthest remove
from the stage, know that the roof is not firmly fixed above them and
wait to see whether it won’t burst open one day and bring about that
reunification of stage and reality which is reflected for us in an image
composed equally of memory and hope. (“Natural History” 67)
This is an interpretation of the theatrical space as a medium of redemp-

tion: it “contains the promise that whatever happens here will not be
forgotten, but will be preserved, so that one day it will return as an echo,
subtly transformed, and will welcome us in the sphere of this finite cos-
mos” (77). The theatre’s utopian, redemptive quality suggests a suspension
of historical time which is, paradoxically, the primary effect of a theatrical
performance’s time-based, processual character. “Thanks to the transitori-
ness with which it transparently makes its entrance on the stage and then
its exit, the present is made eternal. Here lies the justification of theatrical
illusion” (77). A similar mechanism involving dialectical tensions between
movement and stillness, the visible and the invisible, memory and hope,
is at work in the construction of dream thoughts. Their imagistic and pres-
entational logic captures a form of nondiscursive truth which, as in per-
formance, disappears in the moment of its appearance. And whilst dream
thoughts can reveal a relationship to the past (expressed by the dreamer’s
compulsion to repeat), they also gesture towards the future.
Los Angeles, 1 August 1944:

I was due once again to be executed – like Pierrot lunaire. This time, like
a pig. I was to be thrown into boiling water. I was assured that it would
be completely painless, since I would be dead before I realized what was
happening. I was in fact quite free of fear, merely somewhat surprised by
a technical detail: immediately after the scalding, cold water would be let
in, as with a hot bath. So I was thrown into the cauldron. To my ineffable
astonishment, however, I did not die right away, but nor was I in any pain.
However, probably because of the additional water that had been let in,
I did feel a pressure that seemed to increase inexorably. I realized that if
I did not succeed in waking up right away, I would really die. Managed to
wake up after huge efforts. (27)
Adorno’s execution dreams resemble theatrical scenes in which the

dreamer appears as an active observer, a witness to his own death and
the torture and death of others. His dream work evokes a series of
theatrical installations, perhaps resonating Beckett’s post-apocalyptic
imagination, but it might be useful at this point to examine the nature
of the dream work and its relation to waking (and reflective) thought.
Freud reminds us that “not everything contained in a dream is derived
from the dream-thoughts, but that contributions to its content may
be made by a psychical function which is indistinguishable from our
waking thoughts” (Interpretation of Dreams 629). Freud calls this the

“secondary revision” of the dream formation and distinguishes it from
the dream work itself.
This function behaves in the manner which the poet maliciously

ascribes to philosophers: it fills up the gaps in the dream-structure
with shreds and patches. As a result of its efforts, the dream loses its
appearance of absurdity and disconnectedness and approximates to
the model of an intelligible experience. (630)
Adorno’s emphasis on presenting so-called “authentic,” unrevised

accounts of his dreams seems to contravene, but not entirely contradict,
the Freudian position on dream interpretation as a form of “secondary
revision” deriving from conscious thinking. Freud’s assumption that there
is a permeable border between dream thoughts and waking thoughts
hinges on the central ideas of construction and experience which, moreo-
ver, are dramatic and performative categories.
Dreams construct a situation out of these images; they represent an

event which is actually happening; […] they ‘dramatize’ an idea. But
this feature of dream-life can only be fully understood if we further
recognize that in dreams […] we appear not to think but to experi-
ence”. (Freud, Interpretation of Dreams 115)
Adorno’s presentation method was to produce protocols of his dreams;

in other words, statements that are presumably verifiable by his own, the
dreamer’s, immediate experience; personal transcripts of the ephemeral
truth of comment c’est. Yet their semblance of immediacy is precisely this:
appearance and trace of a mediating subjectivity – the dreamer’s.
Dreams are performatively constituted in the sense that, as an uncon-
scious experience, the dream relies on the act of expression (on our ability
to give an account of the dream in a state of waking consciousness) as its
condition of possibility. But the ways in which the unconscious expresses
itself in the dream and the ways in which I articulate my fragmented
memory of the dream, become something other than what is understood
by the concept “dream.” In expressing something about the dream I
am confronted with the unsayable nature of the dream experience, an
experience that shares many similarities with performance understood
as a time-based, transient, ephemeral phenomenon. Like the dream, the
performance appears (manifests itself) in the process of its disappearance,
in other words: the condition of the dream’s (and the performance’s)
possibility is connected to its radical impossibility. There is a constitu-

tive gap in my experience and expression of the performance (or dream)
event.
Similarly, as Benjamin shows in the prologue to his Trauerspiel study
(which had an important influence on Adorno), philosophical truth is
also performatively constituted because it is dependent on the forms of its
appearance or presentation (Darstellung). “For ideas are not represented in
themselves, but solely and exclusively in an arrangement of concrete ele-
ments in the concept: as the configuration of these elements” (Benjamin,
Origin of German Tragic Drama 34). Benjamin also uses the term “constel-
lation” for the particular linguistic presentation or formation of ideas
and their ability to express more than can be said in discursive language.
This emphasis on the moment of expression and presentation suggests
philosophical thought’s proximity to aesthetic thought, which Adorno
defines as a mode of showing the unshowable, of saying the unsayable,
and of presenting the unpresentable. In doing so, Adorno’s aesthetic the-
ory employs the interrelated concepts of performance, appearance, and
presentation as modes of doing and expressing, where something reveals
itself that is more than what is explicitly stated or shown. Performance’s
aporetic power to say what is unsayable, and to express the possibility of
the impossible (for Adorno this is the possibility of nonidentical thought
which escapes the pressure of rationalisation), is an effect of time.
Performance evokes transience and the appearance of truth as a flash-like,
momentary event. In Aesthetic Theory (1970), Adorno states that art imi-
tates the experience of natural beauty in those transient moments when
the subject appears to relinquish control over the object: “natural beauty
points to the primacy of the object in subjective experience” (71).
Adorno and Benjamin are in agreement that redemption is to be
found only in the transitory, not in the fixed. The temporality of the
performance or theatre event, and of the dream, allows for the presenta-
tion of an unstable, incomplete truth. As Benjamin notes:
The dialectical image is a flashing image. Thus, the image of the past …
is to be held fast as an image that flashes in the Now of recognition.
Redemption, which is accomplished in this way and only in this way,
can always be attained only as that which in perception irredeemably
loses itself. (Benjamin in Wolin, Walter Benjamin 126)
Whilst Adorno was interested in art’s ability to evoke a sense of mes-

sianic time, his major focus was nevertheless on understanding the
pressures and possibilities of human action in historical time. His critical
appreciation of surrealism and his debates with Benjamin about the

dialectical image seem to suggest this.
Mid-September 1958:
Dream: a ceremony in which I had been solemnly installed as head of music
of the high school. The repulsive old music teacher, Herr Weber, together with
a new music teacher, danced attendance on me. After that, there was a great
celebratory ball. I danced with a giant yellowish-brown Great Dane – as a
child such a dog had been of great importance in my life. He walked on his
hind legs and wore evening dress. I submitted entirely to the dog and, as a
man with no gift for dancing, I had the feeling that I was able to dance for
the first time in my life, secure and without inhibition. Occasionally, we
kissed, the dog and I. Woke up feeling extremely satisfied. (62)
The avant-garde movement which placed the most emphasis on dreams

and dreamscapes in poetry, art, and literature was of course surrealism.
The writings of the surrealists emphasise a neo-romantic longing for free-
dom and wholeness, as expressed in Blanchot’s interpretation of surrealist
poetry as “the force of absolute freedom” (Cunningham, “A Question of
Tomorrow” 3) and in Breton’s definition of surrealism as the “final unifi-
cation” of “interior reality and exterior reality” (What is Surrealism? 116).
The surrealist fascination with dreams as symbols of the unconscious and
their utopian belief in a radically new synthesis of subject and object,
dream, and reality, is not shared by Adorno. With regards to surreal-
ism’s attention to fragmentation (montage technique) and its presumed
consciousness of freedom in the staging of unconscious desire, Adorno
states that the surrealist images are in effect “already under the spell of
the sameness of mass production,” and that they are “historical images
in which the subject’s innermost core becomes aware that it is something
external, an imitation of something social and historical” (“Looking Back
on Surrealism” (1956) 88, 89).
Whilst Adorno was sceptical of surrealism’s aim for an integration
of dream and material reality, there is a suggestion that dreams inter-
ested him as potential sites for the performance of the possibility of
the impossible; the dream, in other words, becomes an expression of
a longing for reconciliation and redemption. In the dream, the uncon-
scious ego renounces its superiority and reveals itself as a contradictory,
non-identical category that opens the possibility for a reconciliation

with the object world. Thus, the dream might suggest an incomplete
image of a future reality and become a “standpoint of redemption”
(Minima Moralia 247). However, to think and speak from the stand-
point of redemption, as Adorno encourages us to do, does not entail a
utopian flight from the real but involves a deeper engagement with the
damaged material fabric of social reality. It encourages an immanentist
interpretation of reality, a “felt contact with its objects” (247), a search
for the broken light in the cracks and fissures of social contradiction and
suffering. The dream enacts or performs a different mode of thinking, a
“turn towards non-identity”, and can be taken as a model for the kind
of “changed philosophy” that Adorno sketches in Negative Dialectics
(12, 13). It cannot pretend to “have the infinite at its disposal” (13) in
rational, conceptual terms but gestures towards an affective and intui-
tive mode of thinking, one that allows the nonconceptual to appear
where unconscious desire is released from the coercion of identity
thinking. Adorno’s attention to his dreams can thus be considered in
terms of a negative dialectical practice that emphasises the performance
of “unregimented thought,” which “as criticism of the system recalls
what would be outside the system” (31).
Frankfurt, 10 October 1960:

Kracauer appeared to me. My dear chap, it is a matter of indifference
whether we write books and whether they are good or bad. They will be
read for a year. Then they will be put in the library. Then the headmaster
will come along and distribute them among the kids. (65)
Benjamin’s theory of dreams can be considered as an engagement with,

and continuation of, the surrealist project in philosophical terms. His
reception of surrealism foregrounds his concerns with history, tempo-
rality, and the experience of modernity. In his 1925 essay on surrealism,
entitled “Dream Kitsch,” Benjamin writes: “Dreaming has a share in
history” (3), and “[d]reams are now a shortcut to banality” (ibid.) –
statements which need to be understood in the context of his his-
torical materialism and his dialectical reading of the image. Essentially,
Benjamin argues that the relation of the past to the present is not
chronological or linear, but that the past moment appears as a rupture
in the present time; the past suddenly emerges – as a dialectical image –

in the present moment, in the “now-time,” like a flash causing a rup-
ture. The moment of awakening is such a rupture of historical time; it
expresses a subjectivity that is simultaneously rooted in the mystical
and the archaic, but which also contains a utopian moment, namely
the dream’s proposition of a reality and experience that are not possible
in the false totality of the everyday life. In Freudian terms, this would
be the dream work understood as wish-fulfilment. Benjamin, however,
is more interested in surrealism’s turn towards, and reconfiguration of,
everyday objects, the mundane, banal, kitsch objects and images of
the modern world of technology and consumption. “Dreams are now
a shortcut to banality” – to the world of worn objects in our waking
life. Kitsch “is the last mask of the banal, the one with which we adorn
ourselves, in dream and conversation, so as to take in the energies of an
outlived world of things” (“Dream Kitsch” 4). And on the topic of the
relation between the dream and the conversation, Benjamin notes that
“misunderstanding” is a crucial and necessary factor in allowing “true
reality” to force its way into the conversation. When we try to interpret
a dream and thereby misunderstand it – because the language we use in
order to talk about our dream experience will inevitably betray it – we
affirm the truth of the dream as a picture puzzle, a series of enigmatic,
interrelated, and fluctuating impressions and images, which can yield
a different form of historical understanding. Following Benjamin, the
“dialectical method of doing history” means “with the intensity of a
dream, to pass through what has been, in order to experience the pre-
sent as the waking world to which the dream refers. (And every dream
refers to the waking world. Everything previous is to be penetrated
historically.)” (Arcades Project 838).
Adorno was intrigued by Benjamin’s theory of the dialectical image
but he criticised its transposition into consciousness as a dream (the
Jungian notion of the dream as an expression of a collective uncon-
scious). For Adorno “dialectical images are generated by the commodity
character, not in some archaic collective ego but amongst alienated
bourgeois individuals” (Complete Correspondence 107). Similarly, the
dream for Adorno is an expression of alienation and the dialectical
image an interruption of a consciousness, relatable to the dream’s trace
upon awakening.
In Minima Moralia, he writes:
Waking in the middle of a dream, even the worst, one feels

disappointed, cheated of the best in life. But pleasant, fulfilled
dreams are actually as rare, to use Schubert’s words, as happy music.
Even the loveliest dream bears like a blemish its difference from real-
ity, the awareness that what it grants is mere illusion. This is why
precisely the loveliest dreams are as if blighted. (§72, 111)
What does it mean to remember a dream? Benjamin said that to narrate

a dream immediately upon waking, before breakfast, signals an unwill-
ingness to come to terms with the “rupture between the nocturnal and
the daytime worlds,” which means a betrayal of sleep, the dream, and
the dreaming self (Benjamin quoted in Dream Notes, “Afterword” 81).
From this perspective, Adorno’s attempts to capture the traces of his
dreams “immediately on waking” (Dream Notes vi) may seem futile, if
not dangerous: Benjamin states that “[i]n this condition, the narration
of dreams can bring calamity” (ibid.). But Adorno’s desire to capture
a moment immediately upon waking suggests a way of spontaneous
thinking by doing, which emphasises the lure and precariousness of the
concept’s relation to time. Upon waking, when we try to remember our
dream, we tend to forget it at the same time. Often, remembering and
forgetting coincide in the very sensation of realising that one has had a
dream. It is as if the dream thought’s frustrating ephemerality and the
constitutive threat of its erasure are redeemed only when the dreamer is
overcome by a physical or emotional sensation upon waking. Perhaps
the dream note cannot be more than an attempt to give an intuitive
account of a bodily experience, the experience of having had a dream in
which we enter a scene (a performance) where the separation between
thinking and doing is temporarily suspended.
Los Angeles, 14 July 1945:

Execution scene. Whether the victims were fascists or anti-fascists remained
unclear. At all events, it was a crowd of naked, athletic young men. But they
looked just like their own busts: metallic green. The execution proceeded like
a self-service operation. Everyone went up into the automated guillotine in
no discernible order, and came out again without a head, staggered on for
a few steps and then fell down dead. I remember a younger person, a boy,
who as if in fun pushed his way forward to the entrance of the guillotine in
front of a larger man entering from the side, as if eager to be executed first.
I observed the movements of the headless men and thought that I should
try to find out whether, as seemed to me to be the case, they took care to
avoid falling down on top of one another. I watched one youth closely. After
a few steps he went head over heels several times as if he were performing
somersaults, and then fell down on top of another corpse. All without a
word or any other sound. I watched without any emotion, but woke up with
an erection. (36)
As Proust writes in Time Regained:
The truths seized directly by the intelligence in the full light of the
world have something that is less profound, less necessary than
those which life has communicated to us in spite of ourselves, in an
impression that is material because it entered by way of the senses,
but of which we can discern the spirit. (quoted in Foster, Adorno 1).
7 June 1957:
I dreamt I was in a concentration camp. I heard a group of Jewish children
singing a song with the text ‘Our good Mamme has not yet been hanged’. (60)
In his Negative Dialectics Adorno, who was half-Jewish, raises the ques-
tion whether one can go on living after Auschwitz, indirectly referring
to his own sense of guilt as someone who “escaped by accident, one
who by rights should have been killed” (363). Adorno says: “By way of
atonement he will be plagued by dreams such as that he is no longer liv-
ing at all, that he was sent to the ovens in 1944 and his whole existence
since has been imaginary, an emanation of the insane wish of man killed
twenty years earlier” (363).
The dreamer’s engagement with history through the dream, and in the
dream, opens the question of the individual’s relation to time and to objec-
tivity (social reality). Perhaps when we remember a dream, or fragments
of a dream, when we carry traces of the dream into our present moment
of presumed wakefulness, we engage with history as if from a broken illu-
mination in our present scenes of catastrophe. The dream has the ability
to rupture our waking life, our present historical moment, by addressing
us like an enigma, like a work of art in Adorno’s sense. The dream, like a
work of art, appears as a promise of happiness, but it is a broken, unrealised
happiness. We break the dream’s utopian moment upon awakening – this
gesture of promise has less to do with the dream content, be it blissful or
distressing, and more with its elusive shape, its enigmatic form.
Amongst Adorno’s dream notes there are also dreams where the
human subject seems to be absent or disappearing, seized by a
catastrophe. The appearance of the human, if and as it happens, is likely

to be problematic.
Frankfurt 18 November 1956:

I dreamed of a catastrophic fire. In the cosmic inferno all the dead
reappeared in their former shape for a few seconds, and I realised: only now
are they truly dead. (59)
Performance, understood as action, event, and becoming, emphasises

the transient, unstable nature of truth against the reifying attempts to fix
meaning and produce instrumentalised structures of experience in empir-
ical reality. What performance and the dream share with art as an imita-
tion of natural beauty is their joint evocation of a promise of “that which
surpasses all human immanence” (Aesthetic Theory 73). Performance’s
power, like natural beauty’s, is anchored in its relationship to time, and
time for Adorno means historical time. The flash-like appearance of truth
in the performance event and in the remembered fragment of a dream
invites us, spectators and dreamers, to construct our relation to memory,
history and the future differently. To use Rancière’s terms, the dream sug-
gests a re-distribution of the sensible, and that includes the imaginary.
For Adorno, one of the main problems of the culture industry is that its
processes of administration, abstraction, and mechanised consumption
create forms of alienated and disenchanted experience. In the culture-
critical aphorisms of Minima Moralia, he speaks of an “encroachment
of institutionally planned behaviour-patterns on the ever-diminishing
sphere of experience” (62) and of how even psychoanalysis, originally
conceived of as the liberator of the human psyche, has incorporated the
“principle of human domination” (63) that renders the self as an object.
Adorno’s aim is to rescue the particular and heterogeneous moments of
subjective experience from the reifying and universalising grips of con-
ceptual thinking. Extending Benjamin’s theory of the mimetic character
of language, Adorno is interested in what language is capable of express-
ing, showing, and doing, rather than what it says in purely conceptual
terms. If there is a philosophy of expression to be found in Adorno’s
writings (especially in Minima Moralia and in Negative Dialectics) it is con-
cerned with a “recovery of experience” (see Foster) – primarily spiritual
(geistige) experience as a result of the subject’s confrontation with the
force of the unsayable. First, by emphasising spiritual experience, Adorno
is not harking back to a metaphysical (Hegelian) understanding of spirit as

a category of the absolute and the harmonic. Rather, his concept of spir-
itual experience is intended as a critical opposition to the positivist reduc-
tion of human experience to “the naked affirmation of what is anyway”
(Negative Dialectics 131). Second, experience and expression emerge as
dialectical concepts in Adorno’s understanding of philosophy as the failed
attempt to say what is unsayable, and what is unsayable is, in effect, expe-
rience itself. His characterisation of philosophy as “an infinitely extended
and elevated stammer” (quoted in Foster, Adorno 55) rather than silence,
suggests that the very production of conceptual language is dependent on
that which will remain unspeakable, wordless, nonconceptual.
For Adorno the contradictory relation between dream and social
reality is significant as it echoes the unreconcilable tension between
the individual and the social totality, the particular and the universal.
Modern attempts to reduce psychological phenomena to purely socio-
logical aspects are misguided, Adorno states in his essay “Psychoanalysis
Revised” (1962), because they ignore (Freudian) psychology’s radical
focus on desire and drives. Adorno’s attention to the work of dreams,
and indeed his own dreams, can be interpreted as a defence of key
Freudian aspects. He draws attention to the importance of the concept
of damage in the Freudian analysis of the psyche which considers the
totality of contemporary (traumatised) society as a “system of scars”
(“Psychoanalysis Revised” in Soziologische Schriften 1 24). For Adorno, a
critical theory of society ought to account for the “shock-like structure
of individual experience” (ibid.) without proposing an organic, totalised
image of the self.
The dream thinks in fragments and it thinks concretely because it
is unconscious – it does not know the thoughts that it produces, the
thoughts that always miss the mark in the damaged life of those who are,
presumably, awake. The dream work refuses to signify; if it is a symbol,
then only a symbol of itself. Its elusive shape captures a promise of hap-
piness that is broken (yet remembered) in the moment of awakening.
Maybe the only comforting thought is that we eventually do wake up
from our dreams (and our nightmares) but not without sensing that the
dream experience has estranged us and the world around us; not with-
out sensing – with trepidation – that I cannot be completely restored to
myself after an experience that has taken me out of myself. The dream’s
utopian moment – its reach for another world, another existence,
another possibility – harks back and points to the concrete realisation of a
thought (in other words: to a practice) that is anchored in this world, in
“how it is.” Importantly, for Adorno the task of philosophy (conceived
of as interpretation) is to “stop there where irreducible reality breaks in

upon” thought (“Actuality of Philosophy” (1931) 132).
9 January 1956:
I remember a complex. I was in a medium-sized town and drove from the
station along a road that seemed very familiar to me. It was a quarter with
a large number of restaurants where one could eat well, but where the atmos-
phere was somewhat louche. In one of these I met a girl on the margins of
prostitution. She was dark and I found her very attractive, without actually
being beautiful. So I always slept with her. These events seemed so vivid to
me that I found it hard to decide whether I had really experienced them. That
is precisely the pattern that operates when one is gripped by madness. (58)
The dream may show us how to think against what we know. It confronts
us with the work of the unconscious. As Fredric Jameson has stated, the
notion of the unconscious “endow[s] the thinking mind with a dimen-
sion of radical otherness that […] must always structurally elude us, and
remain forever out of reach” (Late Marxism 25). Even if the force of the
dream lies in its nonconceptual nature, when we recall a dream and try
to put our experience into words, we inevitably use conceptual language
in order to say the unsayable. Language in a sense betrays the dream
experience, even if it is the spontaneous language used to record the
dream immediately upon waking. But the dream can also be an invita-
tion for language to disclose its expressive aspects. The dream does not
communicate; it expresses, and the language into which the dream is
transposed is also primarily expressive: it says more than it is able to com-
municate. The dream and the expressive language into which it filters
embrace contradiction, paradox, absurdity, exaggeration, distortion, and
meaninglessness. Dreaming, I surrender my ego to a distortion of time,
characterised by repetition, fragmentation, or an experience of timeless-
ness. Paradoxically, the dream’s loosening of the rational, conscious self
is the effect of extreme subjectification: subjectivity without an object, or
in other words: subjectivity without time and without intentionality. As
Adorno states in his essay on surrealism: [“i]n the dream, […] the subject,
absent from the start, colours and permeates everything that happens
from the wings” (quoted in Dream Notes, “Afterword” 89). The subject
can only be said to “colour and permeate” everything because it is absent
in the sense that it has no objective counterpart. The only objective

counterpart of the dream is the waking reality to which the dream refers
and into which the dream disappears with or without leaving traces.
Adorno’s materialist philosophy of history suggests, on the one
hand, that the structure of history is discontinuous, that there is no
continuous flow of time in which an absolute idea is developed, gradu-
ally unfolds, and is completed. Like Benjamin, Adorno developed a
consciousness of discontinuity, or in Adorno’s terms: a consciousness
of nonidentity and contradiction. On the other hand, world history
has revealed a continuity of oppression, injustice and suffering, a per-
manence of catastrophe, which gives the past an identity, in Adorno’s
terms, a negative identity.
Dreams have a similar dialectical structure: to remember them with-
out betraying them, as Adorno tried to do in his protocols, means
to be struck by flashes of another reality, another possibility, and to
experience time (the time that traverses our dream life and our waking
life) as discontinuous. And yet, repetitive dreams – expressions of the
continuous engagement of our unconscious self with the same mate-
rial – can give the impression of spell and reification; they can make
us feel stuck in a loop of sameness which blurs the distinction between
night and day, between dream and empirical reality. Thus, our “objec-
tive social situation” (i.e., the late-capitalist cultural context of spell
[Verblendungszusammenhang]) also has something dream-like, phantas-
magorical, and spell-binding about it. If Adorno’s dream notes can be
considered as resistant and critical of capitalism’s “perpetuation of the
status quo” (Negative Dialectics 331) then only if they allow themselves
to be discredited as “ephemeral” (ibid.). In and through his dream notes
Adorno performs a thinking which allows itself to go astray and be
illogical and which only therefore, similarly to the aesthetic thought,
appears as a broken promise of happiness. The dream resists the logic of
the antagonistic social totality by expressing the unsayable, yet it is also
an imago of the real, and therefore damaged. We can never completely
hear what the dream is saying; we can only observe how it performs.
Ultimately, the dream’s promise resides in the fact that it is what it is.
past moments old dreams back again or fresh like those that pass or things
things always and memories I say them as I hear them murmur them in the
mud. (Beckett, How It Is 3)
3
Performativization and the Rescue
of Aesthetic Semblance
Andrea Sakoparnig
3.1 Some distinctions
Following years of neglect, Theodor W. Adorno’s reflections on theat-

ricality have finally received more attention in theatre and performance
studies. Nonetheless, it is striking that almost any reference to Adorno’s
aesthetics today is accompanied by qualifying remarks expressing a sort
of unease. Clearly, appreciation of Adorno’s complex ideas on the arts,
especially the performing arts, is tainted by a certain discontent we feel
concerning his disparaging statements about 1960s performance art.
Since these ideas are not peripheral, but important in terms of his entire
philosophical system, it is not feasible to simply disregard them. For many
theorists though, these statements were reason enough to break with his
theory and to promote a new orientation in aesthetics. Rüdiger Bubner,
for example, reads them as testimonies of an obsolete and outdated
understanding of artworks as closed and integral entities (“Bedingungen”
30). According to Bubner, Adorno fails to characterize the unique quality
of avant-garde art, which lies in breaking with precisely such an under-
standing (a break largely initiated by new forms of performance prac-
tice). Bubner therefore recommends leaving Adorno’s “outdated” theory
behind us – and many theorists since have followed Bubner’s recommen-
dation. Admittedly, many of them argue convincingly against integrating
Adorno’s thoughts into an overall philosophy of art. There is indeed no
denying that Adorno’s concept of the artwork is mainly based on compos-
ers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mahler, and Schönberg and therefore fails to
provide the conceptual tools needed to grasp contemporary performance
art forms. However, as we will see, Adorno’s negative assessment of perfor-
mance practices were motivated by some reasonable concerns that have
yet to be examined in the context of a critical philosophy of performance
53
54 Andrea Sakoparnig
and which will in fact prove to be productive – even if we do not agree

with the philosophical framework behind them.
Since almost every rejection of Adorno’s aesthetics takes his question-
able statements on performance art as its starting point, a successful
reexamination and reintegration of these aspects of his theory must
also start with this “sore point.” For that reason, a reconstruction of the
locus of these statements within the Adornian cosmos will be my first
task. Since this requires a detour through some of Adorno’s most com-
plex fundamental ideas, I will provide an important tool for making our
way through the conceptual thicket: the concept of aesthetic semblance.
Armed with this concept, the first and most crucial step will be to get a
clear picture of the differences between his accounts of the performance
of art, the performing arts, performance art, and performativization in art –
differences which have until now been widely ignored. Second, by
investigating the complex conceptual relationships between these dif-
ferent definitions, we will arrive at a better understanding of his highly
critical assessment of performance art. Finally, we may then be able to
activate the dormant potential in Adorno’s ideas, which in turn will
enable us to reposition his extreme criticism.
3.2 The performance of art
In general, aesthetics aims not only to understand art’s specific char-

acteristics, but also its productivity within the whole set of social prac-
tices. Adorno can be regarded as one of the theorists most dedicated to
this project. He attempts to think about art’s autonomy as well as its
relation to society, and views these as necessarily immanently linked. In
his analysis of art’s autonomy, he explicitly argues for its productivity in
society, which he attributes primarily to its critical negativity. What is
quite unique in Adorno is that he ascribes an extraordinary and exclu-
sive function to art, an outstanding practical benefit and value due to
its capacity to change the way we think and act within a society that,
in his view, seriously compromises our ability to think and act freely.
In the course of this section, we will see that he declares this to be pri-
marily a result of aesthetic semblance. Later, we will also see that in his
opinion it is this very value that is threatened by performance art. But
first of all, we must consider the wider context: the connection between
the analysis of society, the critique of rationality and the status of art.
In the early essay, “The Concept of Enlightenment” (1944), written
with Max Horkheimer, Adorno criticizes modern rationality for its
Rescue of Aesthetic Semblance 55
self-sufficiency and errant internal dynamics, which ultimately led to

it becoming a violent and oppressive form, exemplified by its horrific
climax at Auschwitz. Originally the individual’s most effective means
for coping with their primordial fears, rationality gradually became so
powerful that it deteriorated towards its dialectical negative: it devel-
oped destructive traits by negating everything not commensurable to
and identifiable with the subject’s categorical and discursive framework.
The aim of Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique is not to denigrate the
achievements of rationality, but to secure its epistemic competence by
bringing it into a critical relation with the moments in which it forsakes
itself. For this to happen, discursive rationality must become aware that
it does not comply with its own standards. To initiate this reflective turn
towards itself, the mechanical operations of identification in discursive
rationality must be interrupted. Discursive identification claims that the
thing and the concept are identical. However, through its processes of
abstraction, discursive identification effects a qualitative reduction that
renders the notion of cognition problematic. This errant form of ration-
ality must be brought to a halt; and Adorno believes that the necessary
corrective power can be found in art’s mimetic quality. He therefore fol-
lows Walter Benjamin’s notion of the mimetic as a remedy for a blindly
operating rationality. In this sense, his notion differs from the conven-
tional Aristotelian idea of the mimetic as imitative or illusory. Instead,
he interprets it as a highly sensitive, careful, and responsive attitude
that enables a respectful and vital experience of the other (Gebauer
and Wulf, Mimesis 281–294). As Adorno writes, mimesis is “the non-
conceptual affinity of the subjectively produced with its unposited
other” (Aesthetic Theory (1970) 54; see also Huhn, Persistence of Mimesis
2–7). This mimetic quality is embodied in the artwork’s immanent
structure. As a result of their mimetically constituted structure, unlike
all other synthesizing and identifying operations, artworks preserve
the individual qualities of the particular in their way of organizing and
objectifying material elements. As nonviolent syntheses of heterogene-
ous elements, artworks do not violate individuality. They resist practical
and epistemic approaches that are oppressive. Artworks thus render the
ineffably individual more approachable, while simultaneously insisting
on its inexhaustibility. Considering the fact that Adorno views society
as being under the spell of a ubiquitous delusion, for him artworks are
the last instances of resistance and the refuge of criticism.
Before we proceed, it is worth taking a closer look at how this critical
quality of mimesis in art is put into practice. Adorno conceives of the
aesthetic sphere as constructing itself through a process of the negation

of reality. Accordingly, artworks emerge by differentiating and separat-
ing themselves from empiric (delusory) immanence by developing a
total immanence of their own (Adorno, Aesthetic Theory 4). They set
empirical elements free from their seemingly arbitrary contexts and re-
organize them according to their own impulses in new constellations
(7, 44, 111). Meaning arises through this structural re-organization by
constructing a holistic constellation of all relata, i.e. material elements
mediated by each other. Thus, every element’s meaning is function-
ally dependent upon the whole relational network and its position
within that network. Adorno introduces this quasi-holistic and infer-
ential theory of meaning in his inaugural lecture “The Actuality of
Philosophy” (1931), where he follows the ideas developed by Walter
Benjamin in the “Epistemo-Critical Prologue” of The Origin of German
Tragic Drama. Adorno challenges the idea that philosophy is capable
of comprehending reality. Instead, he proposes viewing philosophy as
“interpretation,” based on the idea that the constellation of singular
and scattered elements may finally join together in legible figurations
(“Actuality” 126–128). Similarly, he conceives of artworks as experimen-
tal arrangements in a reality deprived of any meaningful totality. Like
philosophy, the task of art is “not to search for concealed and manifest
intentions” (127), but to grasp non-intentional reality qua the con-
struction of figures and images of isolated, empirical elements. In this
way, artworks not only generate meaning but also have the capacity to
make something non-existent appear as present, thus giving a utopian
perspective to a potential practice that could and should be realized
(Adorno, Aesthetic Theory 82, 209; see also Bernstein, “Why Rescue
Semblance?” 192–209).
Artworks are semblance in that they help what they themselves

cannot be to a type of second-order, modified existence; they are
appearance because by virtue of aesthetic realization the nonexistent
in them, for whose sake they exist, achieves an existence, however
refracted. (Aesthetic Theory 109)
There is a negative ideological aspect along with this positive utopian

one, according to which artworks may to some extent “betray […]
utopia” (32). This is where our pivotal term aesthetic semblance and
its antinomy come into play. For Adorno, the semblance character of
artworks is mainly due to the pretense of being a whole, autonomous
object with immanent meaning, whereas in fact the artwork and its
meaning are produced by procedural shaping. The artwork claims to

be a self-identical “being-in-itself,” but this can only be claimed by dis-
guising its own genesis (101; Huhn, “Aesthetics of Illusion” 181). This
becomes obvious as soon as we focus our attention on particular details.
These details are mediated to such an extent that whenever we think
we have a grasp on them, they dissolve “into the indeterminate and
undifferentiated.” Under close analysis, the particular in its concretion
vanishes. We can ascribe this phenomenon to the quasi-holistic concep-
tion of meaning: deprived of context, the individual element loses its
meaning. The way in which all the elements are brought together in
synthesis in the artwork thus repels purely analytical approaches. The
mediation of these elements is present throughout, making all of them
holistically determined. No single element can therefore be analyzed
without also dissolving the whole, or vice versa, reconstructing the
whole, since every analysis of meaning necessarily results in a synthe-
sized reconstruction within the quasi-inferential theory of meaning.
In Adorno’s words: “Analysis is therefore adequate to the work only if
it grasps the relation of its elements to each other processually rather
than reducing them analytically to purported fundamental elements”
(Aesthetic Theory 176). And what holds for production also holds for
reception: artworks necessitate a mimetic approach because of their
mimetic synthetic logic. They always insist upon the re-enactment and
reconstruction of their inner logic and thus encourage reflection on all
their mediations.
In summary, the power of artworks lies mainly in two aspects. First,
the positive utopian aspect: through their mimetic construction, art-
works make what would otherwise not even appear possible appear
to exist. They thereby encourage different forms of societal order.
Second, there is the negative logic of aesthetic experience engendered
by aesthetic semblance (Menke, Sovereignty 1–15): artworks transgress
the boundaries of rationality, which usually grasps the quality of the
particular as the general. They revise the subject’s conventional attitudes
towards the object and transform the subject-object relation, thus giving
way to the “primacy of the object” – “the eruption of objectivity into
subjective consciousness” (Adorno, Aesthetic Theory 109, 245). Through
the re-enactment of their mediatedness, their pretense of being natural,
non-historical facts and immanent totalities is unmasked. However,
artworks not only contribute to our social practice in this negative
critical way. They also paradigmatically demonstrate a more appropri-
ate mode of identification – i.e. beyond the conceptual, which tends to
homogenize the particular.
By now, it should be clear that Adorno attaches major importance to

aesthetic semblance. It should also be clear why he does so. If we follow
his line of thinking, we could say that semblance in artworks works
against the so-called “ubiquitous delusional state.” When Adorno uses
semblance to characterize the artwork, he aligns himself with Hegel’s
notion of semblance as a special form of reflected immediacy:
Thus, far from being mere pure appearance [semblance], a higher

reality and truer existence is to be ascribed to the phenomena of
art in comparison with [those of] ordinary reality […] [because] the
pure appearance of art has the advantage that it points through and
beyond itself, and itself hints at something spiritual of which it is to
give us an idea, whereas immediate appearance does not present itself
as deceptive but rather as the real and the true, although the truth
is in fact contaminated and concealed by the immediacy of sense.
(Hegel, Aesthetics 9)
For Hegel, semblance has a valuable epistemological quality when it

openly reveals itself as “mere” semblance. For the same reason, Adorno
assigns artworks an elevated status. In the context of an analysis of
society that describes society as under the spell of a universal delusion,
artworks are for him the only instances of something “exposing its
own semblance” (Aesthetic Theory 250). He therefore gives the idealist
Hegelian account an anti-ideological turn by criticizing semblance in
society along the lines of Marx’s analysis of fetishism. Marx argues that
societal semblance is a consequence of reified human relations, best
epitomized in the blind and unconscious reification of human work in
fetishized commodity (Marx, Capital 125–247). Accordingly, the univer-
sal false semblance in society is a result of the invisibility of underlying
constitutive relationships and illegitimate reifications. Societal sem-
blance behaves as though it were substantial and natural, although it is
in fact a product of collective construction.
While the ambitions of the early Adorno were directed towards
destroying semblance – because of its deceptive qualities – the later
Adorno attempts to take advantage of its dialectics. He pleads for the
rescue of aesthetic semblance in order to release its potential for reveal-
ing true relationships by turning it against the universal delusion in
society (Rath, “Dialektik” 58). His argument is that since artworks do
not disguise their semblance but instead expose it, they enable us to
critically reflect on its logic. Thus “[in] the context of total semblance,
art’s semblance of being-in-itself is the mask of truth” (Adorno, Aesthetic
Theory 227). In short, aesthetic semblance has the potential to tear off
the false mask of ideological societal semblance; as such, it has anti-
illusory qualities. This is consistent with Adorno’s notion of dialectics
and immanent criticism: “With good reason the power of artworks
to reconcile is sought in their unity, in the fact that, in accord with
the ancient topos, they heal the wound with the spear that inflicted
it” (Aesthetic Theory 134). Given the power that Adorno attributes to
aesthetic semblance, it is understandable that he is concerned with
rescuing it and condemns all attempts to abolish it (he evaluates perfor-
mance art from this perspective, as we will see later).
However, the threat that applies to societal semblance also applies to
the artistic, and Adorno is certainly aware of this problem. The more
mediated a work of art is, the more the fact that it is being mediated
is hidden: “[…] everything socially existent today is so thoroughly
mediated, that even the moment of mediation is itself distorted by the
totality” (Adorno, “Late Capitalism or Industrial Society?” (1968) 246).
When artworks lack this self-reflective tendency and fail to reveal the
illusory nature of semblance, they themselves become ideological. To
some extent, they therefore inevitably tend towards the ideological.
The reason lies in an antinomy that accompanies the objectification
described above. As objectifications of a process, artworks resist any defi-
nite objectification, so that “[a]rtworks themselves destroy the claim to
objectivation that they raise” (Adorno, Aesthetic Theory 101). However, to
be objective (and only objective artworks have aesthetic semblance), the
process of mediation must be objectified. This same objectification ten-
dentiously disguises the reality of their being as a process. Consequently,
the necessary artistic thing-character of artworks has a problematic
relationship to the social thing-character they intend to oppose by their
mere existence, but which they can only oppose when they are embod-
ied in and as objects. For this reason, the performance of art is always
precarious because of the antinomies objectification brings about.
Here we touch upon the “sore point” in Adorno’s theory I men-
tioned at the beginning. In order to limit the antinomies of aesthetic
semblance, modern artworks began to rebel against it. The anti-illusory
impulse in art led to a crisis of form as conventional categories were
rejected – for example, suspense, harmony and narrative distance
(Hullot-Kentor, Resemblance 186). This in turn resulted in a “crisis of
semblance,” which worried Adorno deeply (Aesthetic Theory 100). As we
shall soon see, Adorno believes that the performing arts do their very
best to manage this crisis, while performance art (although it emerges
directly as an answer to this crisis) categorically fails.
3.3 The performing arts
Adorno’s appreciation of the performing arts stems from his view that
they have the capacity to reveal their own character of semblance.
Their very structure – that they depend on the embodied dimension of
performance or its realization – means that they are per se transparent
and reflective. For this reason, he is especially interested in the perfor-
mance dimension of all the arts and not only of theatre. As a result, all
his thoughts on the performance aspect of drama also hold true for his
understanding of artworks in general. When he says that the score or
text presents possibilities that always exceed any particular realization
in performance, he also implies that the artwork always exceeds any
given form of its performance:
That in drama not the text but the performance is taken to be what
matters, just as in music not the score but the living sound is so
regarded, testifies to the precariousness of the thing-character in art,
which does not, however, thereby release the artwork from its partici-
pation in the world of things. For scores are not only almost always
better than the performances, they are more than simply instructions
for them; they are indeed the thing itself. (Aesthetic Theory 100)
Adorno’s statement has two significant implications for our discussion.

On the one hand, each performance is only a specific manifestation
of one of many potential performances and thus does not exhaust the
complexity of the score or text it is based on. On the other, any individ-
ual performance provokes new specific manifestations that might also
realize new and different aspects and dimensions of the score or text.
To participate in a performance of the artwork therefore always means
to participate in the potentiality and the actuality of the artwork. As
every performance is a realization of the work of art without exhausting
it, there is always a tension between the actuality of the performance
and the potentiality of the artwork – a fundamental tension that is
only brought about and thus made reflective in the performance. Once
again, we encounter our pivotal concept here: Adorno believes that it is
precisely in this tension that aesthetic semblance becomes transparent
and reflective, thus encouraging its critical quality:
Art is made painfully aware of aesthetic semblance by the funda-

mental insolubility of its technical problems; this is most blatant in
questions of artistic presentation: in the performance of music or
drama. Adequate performance requires the formulation of the work

as a problem, the recognition of the irreconcilable demands, arising
from the relation of the content [Gehalt] of the work to its appear-
ance, that confront the performer. […] Since the work is antinomic, a
fully adequate performance is actually not possible, for every perfor-
mance necessarily represses a contrary element. The highest criterion
of performance is if, without repression, it makes itself the arena of
those conflicts that have been emphatic in the tour de force. Works
of art that are deliberately conceived as a tour de force are semblance
because they must purport in essence to be what they in essence
cannot be. (106)
When we take these statements as a description of performance, we see

that the dimension of performance is not exclusive to the performing
arts: in realizing the immanent process, the actor, musician, and recipi-
ent do not differ – they all perform insofar as they do not conceive of
the artwork as a fixed and stable entity, but “once again produce [it] in
its objective constitution” (125). As we have seen, this is an operation
inherent to the artwork: since its meaning is constituted procedurally,
understanding this meaning is only possible via the reconstruction of
its constitution. In a similar way, Adorno describes performance as a
mode of comprehension, since it is a re-enactment of all mediations in
the artwork and is thus, according to him, always a critical endeavor.
Indeed, Adorno values the performance aspect so much that he replaces
the problematic category of comprehensibility with it (347).
The musician who understands the score follows its most minute
impulses, and yet in a certain sense he does not know what he plays;
the situation is no different for the actor, and precisely in this is the
mimetic capacity made manifest most drastically in the praxis of
artistic performance as the imitation of the dynamic curves of what
is performed. (125)
In summary, we could say that for Adorno “performance” is a general term

for mimetic activity that revitalizes the mediation processes that consti-
tute the artwork. In this sense, performance is an essential operation for
bringing the artwork to life, showing that it is more than a mere thing.
In performance, immanent processes are unleashed and the ideology of
totality that the artwork itself enacts in its constitution is made visible.
This very process releases the critical aspect of aesthetic semblance –
its reflectivity and transparency – thus guaranteeing art’s power.
3.4 Performance art
This tension between being a thing and at the same time more than a
thing that is emphasized in performance is also examined intensely in
performance art. So why does Adorno disapprove of the new theatri-
cal forms that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s? Let us briefly review
his complaints. In Aesthetic Theory, Adorno describes happenings as a
“culmination” of the tendency towards a “renewed reification” and the
“regression of artworks to the barbaric literalness of what is aesthetically
the case” (103). According to him, performance art “explodes the decep-
tion of its [art’s] pure immanence […] [by] conspicuously and willfully
ceding to crude material” and “meaningless intention-alien element[s]”
(258). By so doing, performance art absorbs “even the negation of
art by its own force” – a negation which in Adorno’s aesthetics is the
very feature “without which no art would exist” (258). Consequently,
Adorno criticizes certain performance practices harshly for making art
“its own enemy, the direct and false continuation of purposeful ration-
ality.” Therefore, as is well known, he condemns them as symptoms of
“de-artification” (103). According to him, performance art is regressive,
because it betrays the structural organization that is responsible for the
artwork’s critical power: it refuses to develop an immanence that would
produce meaning. As we have seen, Adorno assigns great significance to
structural immanence because it underlies meaning, which in turn calls
for our active engagement and re-enactment of the artworks’ structure,
and ultimately confirms the illusory nature of semblance. Performance
art that refrains from developing a closed and immanent structure, he
argues, lacks the corrective impulse of the mimetic and therefore does
not challenge false rationality. When Adorno writes negatively about
performance art, we must therefore bear his concern for art’s critical
power in mind. Although he concedes that performance practices are
part of a rebellion against aesthetic semblance, he interprets them as
among the doomed attempts to “outlive” it. This is rather surprising. In
light of what we have discussed so far, it might be tempting to view per-
formance art as striking at the very heart of semblance’s antinomy. The
argument could be sketched as follows: the antinomy of aesthetic sem-
blance is a product of the objectification process. If we now concluded
that the rebellion of art against the antinomy of aesthetic semblance is
directed towards problems of objectification, we could interpret differ-
ent performance movements as practices that work on the problematic
aspects this objectification inevitably brings along with it – i.e. illusory
claims to wholeness and unmediated and independent substantiality.
But Adorno would not agree with the construction of this argument. He
does locate the tendency of performance practices “to put the process
of production in the place of its results” (275) at the very heart of the
rebellion against semblance. However, although performance art rebels
against semblance by striving to negate conventional forms of objec-
tification and its accompanying antinomy, in Adorno’s view it fails.
According to him, it remains “simply [the] reification of an older level”
(100) and has become even more deeply entangled in a performative
contradiction. He declares “the hope that aesthetic semblance could
rescue itself from the morass in which it is sunk by pulling itself up by
the scruff of its own neck” (103) to be nothing other than the manifes-
tation of the Münchhausen trilemma in the aesthetic sphere. Adorno’s
intention here is to show that art’s dynamics of self-transcendence are
caught up, dialectically speaking, in the even stronger trap of empirical
immanence – with disastrous consequences: art becomes “suspicious”
of itself and “its own enemy” (103). We can interpret these statements
in two ways: first, Adorno argues that performance art fails to produce
semblance because it does not produce immanence. Performance art
therefore fails to realize art’s critical capacity since this requires sem-
blance (Huhn, “Aesthetics of Illusion” 182). Read in this way, perfor-
mance art goes too far in its rebellion against semblance, by attempting
to abolish it completely. Second, Adorno criticizes the way in which
semblance is produced. It lacks the aspect that makes it productive:
it does not expose its own illusory quality. A non-reflective and non-
transparent semblance merely replicates and reduplicates the deceptive
semblance in society, without enabling critical reflection on it and its
eventual defeat. Seen in this light, performance art does not fulfill its
own aims: it does not rebel against semblance, but instead succumbs to
it. In both cases, performance art fails to master semblance, and only
serves to exacerbate the situation.
Following Adorno’s argument, the inevitable consequence is that art’s
critical capacity can only be secured by rescuing semblance and that
which ensures its critical power. However, we must remain aware that
Adorno’s claims place art directly in an irresolvable paradox: the task of
artworks is, on the one hand, to cope with the fact that “semblance is
indeed their logic,” while on the other hand, they cannot deny the fact
that the survival of art depends on “whether art can outlive semblance”
(Adorno, Aesthetic Theory 101). From Adorno’s perspective then, reject-
ing semblance entirely is simply not an option (Gritzner, “Form” 109;
Hullot-Kentor, Resemblance 248). Within his theoretical framework the
only possible effective response to the problem of semblance would be
to rescue semblance and simultaneously expose semblance as such, thus

making it transparent and reflective.
3.5 Summary
In the end, it seems that we have arrived at the same conclusions

as Bubner (“Bedingungen” 30–51) and others: in order to retain a
strong conception of critical aesthetic semblance, Adorno is obliged to
also retain an equally strong conception of the artwork. Peter Bürger
spoke of Adorno’s general “anti-avantgardism” in this context (Bürger,
“Decline of Modern Age” 120; see also Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde
55–82). But in fact Adorno neither adheres exclusively to a notion of the
artwork as a closed and integral object, nor does he misread the achieve-
ments of performance practices as a result. The idea that artworks
develop a complete, integral whole draws mainly on a notion of form
that the late Adorno himself revised. Adorno conceptualized an under-
standing of form – or rather, of formlessness – that surprisingly points
in the direction of what we now would describe as “performativiza-
tion” (Fischer-Lichte, Ästhetik 25–74). I will now examine his notion of
form and formlessness more closely, not only in order to gain another
perspective on his derogatory criticism of performance art, but also in
order to challenge the criticism that has led to the dismissal of Adorno’s
aesthetics in recent years.
Adorno’s reflections on form derive essentially from his efforts
to think about the relationship between form and matter in a non-
reductive way (Sakoparnig, “Beyond Matter” 107–117). With regard
to avant-garde art, Adorno argues that in order to realize potential
meaning, potential materials and potentials in materials must first be
discovered. This requires a certain number of formal operations and
techniques (Adorno, Modern Music (1958) 32–37, 95–103), as it is only
via form that material is mediated. We have already seen that Adorno
thinks this mediation is motivated by the impulses of the material itself.
This understanding complies with the notion of the mimetic that we
outlined at the outset. Consequently, form is nothing other than the
substantiated result of this material mediation. As a catalyst, material
necessitates the generation of new forms and formation processes. This
is why, according to Adorno, form does not supervene upon material:
“Form objectivises the particular impulses only when it follows them
where they want to go of their own accord” (Aesthetic Theory 118) – we
can therefore argue that form is mimetic. What is interesting in the
context of our discussion is that Adorno concedes that at a certain level
of material mediation form becomes formless, or, to use Adorno’s own

term, “informal.” As a congruent and legitimate form, the informal form
is a transparent or invisible form. As a result, artworks appear to be form-
less. An informal form is not to be confused with the non-formal. What
we might describe as the “disappearance” of form is only the effect of
a form that is no longer perceivable as prevalent. Generally speaking,
we can conceptualize formlessness as a certain ratio of form that repu-
diates idiomatic and pre-existing form solutions. Thus, when Adorno
speaks of the informal, he has in mind a “type of [art; Adorno is talk-
ing about music here], which has discarded all forms that are external
or abstract” (Adorno, “Musique Informelle” (1961) 272–273). In other
words: the informal indicates forms that are mimetic. Adorno correctly
observes that this directly affects the earlier kinds of objectification. In
Adorno’s view, some older objectifications may no longer convince us
(Aesthetic Theory 147). This is why – and now we arrive at the very heart
of Adorno’s argument – artworks are immanently motivated to work
against their immanence, to “wrest themselves free of the internal unity
of their own construction, to introduce within themselves caesuras that
no longer permit the totality of the appearance” (88). They accomplish
this “by employing the author as commentator, by the use of irony,
and by the quantity of detail artfully protected from the intervention
of art” (26). Along with fragmentary and paratactic forms, various kinds
of other open forms gain in importance. However – and it is important
to emphasize this – open forms legitimatize themselves only when they
are brought about by the mimetic impulses of the material. When we
consider Adorno’s own reflection on the necessity of breaking with
aesthetic immanence, we can put his criticism of performance practices
(that they do not produce immanence) in perspective. We simply need
to emphasize that form – here the ratio of an apparently invisible form –
has since developed further. Seen in this perspective, the criticism
that Adorno advocates for an outdated notion of the artwork is clearly
unjustified. What he meant to defend is not the closeness and unity
of the artwork as such, but its mimetic quality, which at a certain state
of development was expressed in an integrated artwork. Adorno never
denied that this mimetic quality, which is the very core of his apprecia-
tion of art, might also be realized in another form. His reflections on
the informal art prove this. When he criticizes the performance art of
the 1960s then, he is not primarily attacking their sacrifice of formal
immanence, but their rejection of mimetic form.
Furthermore, we must also emphasize the performance aspect
introduced above. Adorno, more than any other thinker of his time,
recognized the epistemic quality of performance. As we have seen, he

saw it as the epitome of an operation that confirmed the illusory nature
of aesthetic semblance. Moreover, Adorno was, from the very begin-
ning, completely aware of the importance of the active involvement
of the seemingly passive recipient. More than any other theorist, he
linked aesthetic objectivity to the re-enactment and reflection of the
participant – characteristics that were only placed in the foreground
later by theorists of performance studies (such as Fischer-Lichte, for
example).
Perhaps it is stating the obvious to assert that Adorno contributes
some really important ideas to aesthetics. Through him, we arrive at
an understanding of the artwork as a highly critical entity. His ideas
on the antinomies of objectifications and the reflective quality of the
performance dimension have the potential to enrich virtually all of our
conceptualizations in performance studies so far.
4
On the “Difference between
Preaching an Ideal and Giving
Artistic Form to the Historical
Tension Inherent in It”
Mischa Twitchin
This difference, concerning an ideal (which also suggests the potential

of and for a political theatre), is noted by Adorno in the course of an
essay that seeks to rescue the notion of Goethe’s “classicism” from its
received tradition (not least, by saving questions of form and art from
those of “style” and “culture”).1 Following an analysis already proposed
in the Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), an “affirmative” reading of the
relation between reason and sacrifice (or between law and power) is
critically addressed here through the example of Goethe’s play Iphigenia
in Tauris.2 This play is traditionally seen to reconcile the very antino-
mies that constitute its drama – between the humane and the barbaric,
enlightenment and myth, reason and nature – through the “progres-
sive” repression of the second value by the first; a tradition that makes
of the play, indeed, the “preaching of an ideal.”3 Adorno’s reading, by
contrast, seeks to draw out the historical tensions to which the ques-
tion of aesthetic form testifies, which itself raises a question as to the
reading of Adorno.
His exploration of the humane in Iphigenia, for example, is partly
oriented by the critical observation that, “the one to whom the work
entrusts the voice of utopia is also the one it denigrates as insane”
(Adorno, “Goethe’s Iphigenia” (1967) 167). While the question of this
“voice” concerns Orestes’ visions in Act 3 specifically, it finds a curious
echo in a later remark (made in a letter to Herbert Marcuse) concerning
student politics in 1969, about which Adorno writes:
I am the last to underestimate the merits of the student movement:

it has interrupted the smooth transition to the totally adminis-
tered world. But it is mixed with a dram of madness, in which
67
68 Mischa Twitchin
the totalitarian resides teleologically, and not at all simply as a

repercussion (though it is this too). (“Correspondence” 136)
Here the troubled relation between interpretation and praxis is itself

troubling, where dialectics, however critical, seems hardly immune
from the danger of becoming didactic.4
The relation between autonomy and heteronomy – as between claims
concerning subjective and objective conditions of experience (not least
for effecting their change) – resonates in Adorno with the particular-
ity of a twentieth-century understanding of a “damaged life.” In the
relation between theory and praxis, a question of philosophical form
is posed in the possibility of a critical distance that is traditionally con-
ceived in relation to theatre or performance (as distinct, for instance,
from a demonstration or a riot). Both critical thought and artistic form
are engaged in the tension between the utopian and the historical,
as figures for past and future possibilities of the present. What might
an identification of the utopian with madness mean, then, for con-
temporary appeals to what appears as a “classical” ideal of autonomy,
beyond the “human rights” that have come to define the narrative of
a “progressive” history (in which society is identified with the state)?5
The irreconcilability of self-consciousness with the knowledge of its
historical (political-economic) conditions of possibility is, after all, its
very defence against the insanity to which it would otherwise be con-
demned by the masquerade of power as “reality.” Indeed, could the rela-
tion between violence and resistance ever be reconcilable in a relation
between theory and practice (or, as we might say, between philosophy
and performance) – where it is precisely this resistance that makes these
relations dynamic? As a dialectical tension, articulated in the thought
of artistic form (or even as “performance philosophy”), how has this
resistance been manifested historically in the example of Iphigenia?
Within twentieth-century “humanities,” the play’s antinomies are
perhaps exemplified by the contrasting memories of its drama expressed
by the principal characters in Imre Kertesz’s novella The Pathseeker, a
contrast that can be condensed in terms of the – ostensibly opposed –
place names of Weimar and Buchenwald (Pathseeker 83–87). Here the
relation between the utopian and the insane is as unsettling as the
journey between these two sites – ideal and historical – of cultural
memory. Traditionally, an ideal of the humane (as characterised by the
dialogue between consciousness and conscience) offers an alibi for the
historical knowledge of inhumanity, even where an identification of
law and power presents itself in its utterly political violence.6 This is not
Giving Artistic Form to the Historical Tension 69
a question – for Kertesz – of what remains of the humanities (of Weimar

classicism, for instance) after Buchenwald, as if the past could be split
off from the present (any more than from its future). Rather, it is a
question of what returns in the example of Iphigenia – in the medium of
artistic form – as a possibility of the relation between performance and
philosophy within cultural memory.
The ideal of the “magnanimity of power” (as an arbitrary, or repres-
sive, reconciliation of antinomies), to which readings of Iphigenia have
traditionally conformed, is itself an insane invitation to identify with
the “reality” of power, as if this “reality” were historically inevitable and
not subject to change, least of all in the name of (if not by) its victims.
Indeed, the claim that “there is no alternative” remains one of the most
pernicious – and pervasive – claims of contemporary political economy
in a supposed legitimation of state violence. How then might aesthetic
form admit the (“humane”) voice of its own reason as art (whether as
theory in practice or as philosophy in performance) in the example of
Iphigenia? In what follows, this question will be addressed in three, con-
trasting instances from the late 1960s, with Rainer Werner Fassbinder,
Joseph Beuys, and Adorno.
4.1 Rainer Werner Fassbinder
In 1968, Rainer Werner Fassbinder offered an “anti-theatrical” view of

Goethe’s play under the title of Iphigenia on Tauris by Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe – in which, as David Barnett notes, the “inclusion of
Goethe’s authorial name already sets up an attack on such authority in
the writing by contextualising the object of criticism: Goethe and his
bourgeois humanism” (Rainer Werner Fassbinder 88). Not the least of the
paradoxes in Fassbinder’s heavily cut version of the play – underpinn-
ing a textual montage that also includes Mao and contemporary West
German court proceedings – is its very dependence upon the human-
istic reading that it opposes. By externalising the antinomies to which
it wants to bear witness, Fassbinder aims (like the tradition) to make a
virtue of “preaching an ideal” (albeit inverted).7
Concerning the education of power by the example of reason,
Fassbinder’s critique is condensed in the reflection, given to Arkas, a
servant of the barbarian king, Thoas: “In Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s
school exercise book, it says Iphigenia on Tauris is a drama about the
magnanimity of the mighty. Neues Realgymnasium, 1962” (Barnett,
Rainer Werner Fassbinder 86).8 The play’s rewriting attempts to perform
didactically the irreconcilability of enlightenment with barbarism,
70 Mischa Twitchin
reproducing the very form of authority that it is quoting. Indeed, the

play thereby attempts to stage the irreconcilability of enlightenment
with itself, through that of the characters with their own speeches, pro-
viding a model for that of the audience with the tradition to which the
performance simultaneously appeals.
However, as Adorno points out, Goethe’s play already articulates the
hope of and for an alternative to the “necessity” of tragedy through the
very paradoxes of its human appeal to reason (distinct from the arbi-
trary deliverance provided by a deus ex machina, as in Euripides).9 The
condition for the liberation of Iphigenia and Orestes from their family
curse (as the grandchildren of Atreus), and from the rites of the sacrifice
of strangers in Taurus, is the recognition of an “enlightened barbarian.”
This acknowledgment of the Other’s “humanity” (whether in nature,
myth, or madness), as the condition of the subject’s freedom, already
troubles idealist claims to the universal – in which the possibility of an
“enlightened enlightenment” remains, indeed, utopian.10
A year after the initial success of his play, Fassbinder sat in the audi-
ence for a very different performance interpretation – at the same thea-
tre that he would later become artistic director of, the Theater am Turm
in Frankfurt. Invited by Claus Peymann (the then director of the TAT) to
design a production for the 1969 Frankfurt Experimenta festival, Joseph
Beuys had instead offered to perform his “favourite play” himself.11
4.2 Joseph Beuys
The extraordinary images – or what Beuys evocatively called “radio-

graphs” – of this performance (given only twice, on 29 and 30 May, with
the second evening cut short owing to aggressive audience interventions)
were the subject of a recent exhibition (shown in Munich, 2011, and
then Paris, 2012), in which a potential relation between performance and
philosophy appears as an inscription of time in artistic form. This appear-
ance concerns not simply what of an event is remembered but how, where
the mode of existence by which the performance may be conceived of,
in – and as – its afterlife, is not only photographic, but also literary.12
How this (“radiographic”) possibility of time (as “performance art”)
enters into its – ostensibly – opposed condition (as “exhibition art”) is
not least a question for philosophical, or critical, aesthetics. In this case,
the exhibition’s curator, Jörg Schellmann, declares his own interest, pro-
posing that: “Pictures should ideally reflect the time in which we live
and when they were created: a record of art in its time” (Schellmann,
Forty 8). Here, however, we are concerned with the difference between
the time in which we live and the time when the images were created;
that is, with the time that these artistic images have themselves cre-
ated. Indeed, the thought of the performance image – as having been
“burnt into our memory” [Die Bilder haben sich in unsere Erinnerung einge-
brannt…] – with which Schellmann introduces the Iphigenia exhibition
(acknowledging the distance of “over forty years” that their light has
traveled) implicitly cites a literary appeal to its afterimage made by Peter
Handke at the time (Schellmann, Joseph Beuys 5).13
This eye-witness testimony (originally published in the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, 13 June 1969, a fortnight after Beuys’ performance)
concludes with the following thoughts:
But the further this event recedes in time, the less important do these
digressions become [referring to Beuys being occasionally distracted
by the audience], and the more strongly do the horse and the man
moving on stage and the voices over the loudspeakers merge into an
image that one could call ideal. In the memory it seems to have been
fused into one’s own life, an image that works through both nostalgia
and the will to produce such images oneself: for it is only as an after-
image that it really starts to work in one’s own mind.14 And an excited
state of stillness comes over me when I think of it: it activates me, it is
so painfully beautiful that it becomes Utopian, and that means politi-
cal. (cit. Tisdall, Joseph Beuys 182)
This ekphrasis, composing aesthetic experience in and as its afterimage

(in which the utopian touches upon the political; not least because it
is embodied), also appears clairvoyantly like an example for Adorno’s
suggestion (in Aesthetic Theory (1970)):
When stimuli are transposed into works of art, and by dint of the
works’ integrative capacity are assimilated into them, they remain,
within the aesthetic continuum, tokens of an extra-linguistic nature –
although, as their after-images, they are no longer physically pre-
sent. This ambivalence is registered in every genuinely aesthetic
experience, and is incomparably expressed in Kant’s description of
the sense of the sublime as being something that trembles within
itself between nature and freedom. (cit. Wiggershaus, Frankfurt
School 651)15
With this evocation of what there is in art that is not reducible to art,
what might be the philosophical – because artistic – questions that
72 Mischa Twitchin
attend Beuys’ performance, at least in (or as) its afterimage? If all that
can be known of the future is in the past, as its potential for interpre-
tation (if it is not thereby changed), what returns in the afterimage of
Beuys’ performance, in the very “distance” it recalls? What is still “pre-
sent” (but no longer physically) of “an extra-linguistic nature” in the
light of an image that is burnt into memory? What appeals, beyond
personal memory, to be given voice as “utopian” in the question of
ambivalence between law and nature in this example of Iphigenia?
What might be the appeal of a work of art – a “radiograph” – in so
far as it resists the attempt to reduce the past to the present (as in
the uncritical vogue for “re-enactment,” supposed to legitimate the
museum of “live art”)? Is this evocation (or citation) of the aesthetic
memory of historical time (“etched,” “burnt into,” “fused into”)
simply a figure of speech, a literary metaphor? Or is it a thought-
image of what remains present (as “extra-linguistic”) of performance
in philosophy, of that which is not thinkable in its present? In what
sense (that is not “insane”) does this question (in and of the distance
between performance and philosophy, action and interpretation)
become political?
4.3 Adorno
But why do we not also ask such questions (about an event and its
afterimage) of philosophy, with respect to Adorno’s Iphigenia lecture,
for instance? This was, after all, addressed to an audience at a particular
time and place, and also aggressively interrupted. The relations between
violence and reason, past and present, state power and individual will,
concern what all these instances of an Iphigenia interpretation from the
late 1960s may still have to teach us, with respect to the relationship
between philosophy and performance – not least as such interpretation
concerns both university education and citizenship.
Invited by Peter Szondi, Adorno’s lecture on “Goethe’s classicism”
was given at the Free University in Berlin, on 7 June 1967, only five
days after the shooting by a policeman, Karl-Heinz Kurras, of a student,
Benno Ohnesorg, during protests against a visit to the city by America’s
client-dictator, the Shah of Iran. Adorno refused a request to cancel
his talk in favour of a political discussion (given the circumstances,
as a proposed gesture of solidarity with the protesters) and his lecture
was disrupted by students who unfurled banners in the auditorium
declaring: “Iphigenists of the world unite!” and “Berlin’s left-wing
fascists greet Teddy the classicist” (Kraushaar, Frankfurter Schule 267).16
The protesters’ epithet of “left-wing fascism” mocks a reference to the

student movement current at the time, used most notoriously (and
subsequently regretted) by Jürgen Habermas in reply to Rudi Dutschke
at the conference on “University and Democracy: Conditions and
Organisation of Opposition” which was held in Hanover on 9 June,
following Ohnesorg’s funeral there.
At least, this is what one would learn from Lorenz Jäger’s biography of
Adorno (Jäger, Adorno 198). One learns from Rolf Wiggershaus, however,
that the lecture was given a month later – on 7 July – and, thanks to
Szondi’s public commitment against the prosecution of members of the
Berlin “Commune One” at the time, passed off “more or less without
interruption” (Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School 621).17 The point here is
not Jäger’s misplacing of the month but rather the reading that is given
as a consequence. The parapractic performance (simpler in German,
between Juni and Juli) consists not in a failure of editorial “fact checking”
but in the truth of the implications concerning an ideal of “classicism”
which it allows for – a truth, concerning a “historical tension,” that
precisely its falsity admits of.18
To read the subsequently printed lecture as if it were simply an
instance of the “closed” literary object, beloved of those who would
fillet out the historical tension from the question of artistic form, is to
forestall the sense in which a reading might question its own condi-
tions of interpretation.19 This applies to the example of Adorno’s con-
struction of Goethe (which discusses his “move to Weimar” precisely in
its relation to the “dark secret of a [bourgeois] revolution”), as much as
to Fassbinder or Beuys (Adorno, “Goethe’s Iphigenia” 162).20 What, after
all, could be supposed of Iphigenia as an ideal of Weimar “classicism”
in a context in which the Springer press reported the police murder of
Ohnesorg in terms of a legitimate assertion of “law and order,” with
the implied “necessity” – for the defence of the state – of a sacrificial
politics?21 The voice of Adorno’s own “classicism” may be read into
what is artful in the lecture, considering the historical tensions that it
appears not to address; specifically with respect to individual respon-
sibility in the relation between state and violence, as this testifies to
historical time.
The associations that Jäger offers for the post-war German context
are rich in ironies. By the mid-1960s, for instance, the Dialectic of
Enlightenment (a reprinting of which was continually deferred by its
authors) had been liberated from the confines of the academic library
and appeared as a call to arms – or at least as an appeal to passers-by to
pause and reflect on the “economic miracle” – when a student group,
74 Mischa Twitchin
calling itself Subversive Action, abstracted a sentence-length manifesto,

which they distributed as a poster in several cities in May 1964:
The Culture Industry has succeeded in transforming subjects into

social functions and done this so undifferentiatedly that those who
are completely seized by this, no longer mindful of any conflict,
enjoy their own dehumanisation as something human, as the happi-
ness of warmth. ( Jäger, Adorno 194–5)
This declaration was “signed” with Adorno’s name and address – an action
to which he took grave exception, especially when presented with a bill by
the University of Stuttgart for removing the posters from its walls.
For those on the left, however, the feared “subversion” was from the
proposal of the main political parties at this time to enact “emergency
laws” protecting the privileges of the state from the extra-parliamentary
opposition, of which the student movement was a key part. This
attempt to amend the constitution (eventually passed in May 1968) was
characterised by Jürgen Habermas, in the Frankfurt student magazine:
“not so much that the safety of democracy will be ensured during the
state of emergency as that a state of emergency will be imposed on
democracy” (cit. Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School 598).
Where a “state of emergency,” representing an extreme of the antinomies
repressed by the “magnanimity of power,” is today being enacted in fiscal
terms in the name of “austerity,” the concomitant questions (both her-
meneutic and practical) concerning citizenship and public space, protest
and education, the university and democracy remain as urgent as ever.22
The question of “resistance” (posed in the relation between performance
and philosophy) concerns what of the humane may yet be sacrificed on
the altar of power in the name of “necessity.” The long march towards the
privatisation of English universities, for instance, continues a consumeri-
sation of citizenship in which a university’s value (to remain “open” as a
public space) becomes increasingly a matter of its commercial viability.23
Indeed, the university as an institution valuing citizenship and social
responsibility seems to be officially recognised now only when its rooms
are revealed to be the site of potential occupation by its own “workers.”24
The protest for an alternative to the sacrifices demanded by economic
“reality” is politically denigrated as at best utopian and at worst insane.
Here the student protests in relation to which interpretations of Iphigenia
in the late 1960s may be contextualised still pose the question of their
“contemporary” meaning today, not least in terms of the responsibili-
ties of university managements for the material conditions of and for
an engagement with such questions of cultural memory.25 This is not
simply a matter of how the past becomes intelligible in terms of the

present (hermeneutics); but of how such cultural memory is itself a
medium in which the present may appear in the future (praxis). Even
if not revolutionary, the question of “alternative” voices that are not
simply denigrated as “insane” – as if (“without reason”) they were to be
sacrificed to the law (in the name of “necessity”) – concerns what it is
of the politically and culturally repressed that returns with the example
of Iphigenia.
4.4 Counter-Violence
In the run up to the founding of the Green Party in West Germany,

Beuys published an “Appeal for an Alternative,” in the Frankfurter
Rundschau (23 December 1978), in which he noted, with respect to “the
aim […] to break through into a new social future […]”: “In response to
the question ‘What can we do?’ we have to explore the question ‘what
must we think?’” (cit. Beckman, “Causes” 105). This question is at the
heart of what Beuys means when he calls his work “social sculpture,” in
an understanding of art as a material expression of the life of forms, as
themselves modes of thinking.26
The relation between doing and thinking, between praxis and theory
(or, even, between performance and philosophy) – as variations on the
vexed question of the relation between interpretation and the world –
was addressed by Adorno, reflecting specifically on the politics of
the extra-parliamentary opposition (the self-proclaimed “Iphigenists
of the world”), in an essay titled, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis”
(1969).27 There Adorno mordantly identifies, in the student activism of
the 1960s, “a sure sign” of “the petit bourgeois disdain for all spirit,”
characteristic of the “opiate of collectivity”:
the question “what is to be done?” as an automatic reflex to every

critical thought before it is fully expressed, let alone comprehended.
Nowhere is the obscurantism of the latest hostility to theory so flagrant.
It recalls the gesture of someone demanding your papers. (276)
Rejecting the “direct action” of student protest (not least as a curtailment

of his academic freedom to teach, alongside the potential consequences
of institutional “reforms” by university managements28), Adorno notes:
What imposes itself straightaway is the bourgeois supremacy of means

over ends, that spirit actionists are, at least programmatically, opposed
to. The university’s technocratic reforms they, perhaps even bona fide,
76 Mischa Twitchin
want to avert, are not even the retaliation to the protest. The protest
promotes the reforms all on its own. Academic freedom is degraded
into customer service and must submit to inspections. (274)29
The contemporary resonance of these remarks concerning the potential

consequences of praxis (and more generally the sense that ends and
means are not, least of all “technocratically,” separable) is curiously
deformed by the suggestion that the demonstrators are as responsible
for the behaviour of the bureaucracy (and, perhaps, even the police) as
for their own. University managements, after all, are hardly concerned
with students’ actual academic interests – increasingly alienated today
as the supposed “consumers” of a choice of “student experience” –
whilst implementing “reform” policies that serve only to promote the
continuing marketisation of higher education.30
In a strange twist to questions of historical time and artistic form, con-
servative critics like to invoke “1968” to denounce the consequences of
an era in which the Student Movement was part of a significant, extra-
parliamentary political opposition. In contrast to such demonising of
“Iphigenists,” Peter Handke (in his testimony to Beuys’ performance)
evoked the question of the utopian event (as, perhaps, performance in
theory and philosophy in practice). These relations are glimpsed in the
potential of a “distance” that remains political as it engages with the
antinomies that appear to constitute it; above all, with respect to that
“alternative” to state violence which begins, in Ulrike Meinhof’s phrase,
as “counter-violence” and is then identified with “terrorism” (Meinhof,
“Protest” 242). Handke writes, in terms that still resonate today:
The demand for spectator-participation becomes hypocritical and

infamous in the theatre, when by participation is understood, not
the cool clear reflection of a distanced and exerted audience, but
the mechanistic activism of merely physical, unaware reflexes. It has
to be said clearly: the more distant and hermetic the events on the
stage, the more possible it becomes for the spectator to apply them
concretely to his own situation but if everything is presented to him
as a finished product with defined content, then he is deprived of the
most important effort of making the concrete connection. (cit. Tisdall,
Joseph Beuys 182)31
To preach an ideal is to attempt to extract practice from its participation

in the antinomies of its own thought (or “philosophy”), from a distance
the interpretation of which (as of any “freedom” of action) is critical in
being “concrete” (understood in terms of its mediation and contradic-

tions). Here we might ask: what is it of performance that finds its mode
of existence in the critical distance – or potential – theorised by philoso-
phy in an example of artistic form? What is it of the past that has yet
to occur in its future? What is still to be understood in the example, in
the event, of Iphigenia today?
Notes
There are two kinds of footnote to this chapter: one for references and one that
evidences the failure to include material in a synoptic form (in which these parts
would find their expression in relation to the whole). However, it is perhaps this
failure that is the real lesson of the material, especially in attempting to address
the ongoing war on claims for (particular) autonomy against a (universal) com-
modification in the context of current higher education policies. As an example,
therefore, these notes could be read separately, returned to after the main text.
1. Adorno, “On the Classicism of Goethe’s Iphigenia,” 157. A fragmentary sum-
mary of the lecture can also be found in Adorno’s preliminary outline, pub-
lished in Volume VI of the Frankfurter Adorno Blätter (Tiedemann 118–119).
2. For a historical review of German reception of Goethe’s play, see Hall,
Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris and Wagner, Critical Approaches to Goethe’s
Classical Dramas.
3. One could compare this with Adorno’s reading of Brecht, where “the artistic
principle of simplification not only purged politics of the illusory distinc-
tions projected by subjective reflection into social objectivity, as Brecht
intended, but it also falsified the very objectivity which didactic drama
laboured to distil” (Adorno, “Commitment” 309). While Adorno cautions
that Brecht’s political efficacy consists in “preaching to the converted,” he
also cautions against this same view where it is a consequence of separating
the political from the artistic, as if the historical tensions of the one could
be isolated from those of the latter (310).
4. This might be the very scenario within which Jacques Rancière’s essay on the
“emancipated spectator” has gained such widespread popularity.
5. At the end of the Cold War, “human rights” were declared to constitute the
“end” of history (as if the abstract had indeed become concrete, or as if a
“humane law” had come to power). This claim has since been subsumed by
the legitimation of continual imperialist wars as “humanitarian interven-
tions.” The sophistry (or perhaps cynicism) offered by military code names
for such operations – like the presciently ambivalent “Enduring Freedom” in
Afghanistan – could not be thought up by even the most subtle dialectician
(pace Adorno, “Warning: not to be misused” in Minima Moralia 244–247).
6. This is the essence of Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the Eichmann trial (which
we could perhaps re-name “Kant in Jerusalem”), addressing the totalitar-
ian formation of conscience by law within a criminal state (pace Arendt,
Eichmann 136–137).
7. Peter Szondi made a similar observation on the occasion of Adorno’s Goethe
lecture in Berlin, referring to those protesters “who go around quoting Mao’s
78 Mischa Twitchin
sayings in much the same way that their grandfathers quoted the sayings of
the Weimar ‘Greats’” (cited in Müller-Doohm, Adorno 455). The tensions of this
situation are given exemplary artistic form in Godard’s 1967 film, La Chinoise.
8. In Barnett’s account of Fassbinder’s version:
The lack of development of Thoas through humanistic education and the

unremitting nature of his cruelty is felt at the play’s conclusion. Arkas tries
to remember the final words of Goethe’s play, in which Thoas speaks of his
admiration for Orestes, who is supposed to depart with his sister Iphigenia,
and bids ‘farewell’ to the Greeks. But their reconciled ending is not permit-
ted in Fassbinder’s version, and Arkas, Orestes, […] Pylades and Iphigenia
simultaneously deliver despondent monologues before the lights go out.
(Rainer Werner Fassbinder 87–88).
9. Aristotle gives a plot summary of Euripides’ play in the Poetics (Kassel,

Aristotle’s Ars Poetica 1455b).
10. The construction of the barbarian as a founding myth of the classical
Greek legacy of, for instance, “democratic freedom” is the subject of Hall’s
Inventing the Barbarian; and, with respect to Goethe’s Iphigenia specifically, of
Geyer-Ryan’s “Prefiguring Racism in Goethe’s Iphigenia auf Tauris.”
11. Peymann had seen Beuys’ installation at Documenta IV (in 1968) and, “una-
ble to get the image out of his mind,” phoned Beuys to invite him to make a
stage design at Frankfurt – which Beuys, however, declined. “The conversa-
tion was effectively over when Peymann said that it was for Iphigenia. ‘But
that is my favourite play!’ Beuys exclaimed. ‘Have you already got someone
to play the main role?’ Although there had been a long standing commit-
ment to Ulrike Laurence, with Beuys’ offer to perform everything changed”
(Koberg, Claus Peymann 97).
12. In “looking at the photographs [by Ute Klophaus] from the show [in this
case, the 1976 installation Show Your Wound], Beuys had the idea of mounting
such negatives as ‘radiographs’ on a sheet of opalescent glass” (Schellmann,
Forty 38). Presented as a multiple “edition,” this image – as a “radiograph”
of the performance or action – becomes, afterwards, what the “original” title
appears to refer to. A similar work was made with Klophaus’ Iphigenie/Titus
Andronicus photographs in 1985 (44–45), consigning Abisag Tüllmann’s pho-
tographs of the event to the status of documentation. Tüllmann’s images are,
however, used by Eva Beuys in her book, Joseph Beuys Iphigenie, which accom-
panied the 2011 exhibition Joseph Beuys: Ich (Ich Selbst Die Iphigenie), with its
own catalogue edited by Jörg Schellmann (Munich: Schellmann Art, 2011). In
the photo credits in the catalogue for the subsequent showing of this exhibi-
tion at the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, Tüllmann’s images are described
as being from a rehearsal (Schellmann, Beuys Iphigenie 108). Needless to say,
these images can be found on the Internet (searching for “Beuys Iphigenie”).
13. The ambiguities of the German Bild – meaning both picture and image (and,
indeed, metaphor) – introduce a further level of complication into this
discussion.
14. “In der Erinnerung scheint es einem eingebrannt in das eigene Leben, ein
Bild, das in einem Nostalgie bewirkt und auch den Willen, an solchen Bilder
zu arbeiten: denn erst als Nachbild fängt es auch in einem selber zu arbeiten
an” (Handke, “experimenta 3” 105).
15. Robert Hullot-Kentor’s translation is slightly different:
By the transposition of impulses into artworks, which make them their

own by virtue of their integration, these impulses remain the plenipo-
tentiary in the aesthetic continuum of extra-aesthetic nature yet are no
longer incarnate as its afterimage. This ambivalence is registered by every
genuine aesthetic experience, and incomparably so in Kant’s description
of the feeling of the sublime as a trembling between nature and freedom.
(Adorno, Aesthetic Theory 113).
16. The banners were, however, pulled down by other students present
(Tiedemann, Frankfurter Adorno Blätter 123).
17. This is not, however, the impression given in Kraushaar’s “chronology” of
the Frankfurt School and the Student Movement, op cit., Frankfurter Schule
vol. 1 (Chronik), 264–265.
18. Adorno “in fact” later spent an afternoon in discussion with students in
Berlin before returning to Frankfurt, about which his only regret was that he
had to leave early. This comes from Adorno’s letter to Helge Pross [13.06.67],
in which he also describes the Berlin events as “the Berlin Happening”
(Kraushaar, Frankfurter Schule vol. 2 (Documents), 271).
19. “Closure for its own sake,” Adorno observes in Aesthetic Theory, “independ-
ent of truth content and what this closure is predicated on, is a category that
in fact deserves the ominous charge of formalism” (159).
20. Adorno’s lecture had been commissioned by the Goethe Society the previ-
ous year and had initially been called “Against crudeness” [Gegen das Rohe]
(rather than “On Goethe’s Classicism”), which Tiedemann explicitly makes
a key to his own reading of the subsequent “events” of its reception by
evoking the 1930s (Tiedemann, Frankfurter Adorno Blätter 124–125).
21. The agitation of the Springer Press was also widely regarded as contribut-
ing to the charged atmosphere in which an assassination attempt was
made on Rudi Dutschke by a neo-Nazi, Josef Bachmann, in April 1968
(Müller-Doohm, Adorno 459; Wiggershaus, Frankfurt School 626).
22. That the violence associated with a “state of emergency” is currently masked
by legislation concerning “deficit reduction” does not make it any less
victimless, punishing the poorest in society to protect the privileges of the
richest. The anti-democratic premise of such policies is perhaps most explicit
with the “troika” dictatorships in Greece and Portugal. What political party,
for instance, could fight an election with a policy advocating over 25 per
cent unemployment, rising to over 60 per cent amongst the under 25s?
A recent letter to The Guardian (27 September 2013) makes this appeal on
behalf of Greek universities, for instance:
The University of Athens, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and

the Athens Polytechnic have been forced to halt all activities as a result
of Greek ministry of education proposals to suspend unilaterally 1,655
university administrative workers. The impact on teaching, research,
clinical work and international collaboration is unparalleled and the
threat to higher education in Greece as a result of stringently imposed
EU austerity measures is a cause of great concern far beyond Greece’s
shores. As academics, university workers, students and others, we call on
80 Mischa Twitchin
the EU and the Greek government to protect the status and staff of Greek
universities, to ensure that they remain able to engage in education and
research and to recognise that these institutions are more important now
than ever. They are and must remain beacons of critical thinking in a
Europe whose social structures are being eroded by massive cutbacks and
over which the shadow of far-right extremism looms. (Adamson et al.)
23. The Daily Telegraph, for instance, reported on the results of “PA Consulting
Group’s annual survey into higher education” under the headline “University
leaders fear a third will go bankrupt”: “The survey says that several of the
university leaders who were questioned predicted up to 30 higher education
institutions could become ‘unviable’,” in a situation of “increased competi-
tion among universities for students” (cit. in Anonymous, Daily Telegraph).
Indeed, according to the Times Higher Education, the UCAS End of Cycle Report
for 2012–2013 notes that “while higher tariff institutions [those expecting
A-level grades of AAB or above] expanded by 10 per cent this year, taking on
another 10,000 students, about 20 per cent of universities that suffered fall-
ing recruitment in 2012–13 experienced a second year of declining student
numbers” (Grove, “Student recruitment” 7).
24. The increasing attempt by university managements to criminalise such
protest is analysed by the campaigning organisation “Defend the Right to
Protest,” whose website can be accessed at: www.defendtherightotprotest.
org. See also Cooper et al.
25. To acknowledge here but one example of support for current student protests
in the UK, the following letter was published in The Guardian (22 June 2013):
Students at Warwick are occupying the university’s council chamber

in protest against further marketisation and managerialism in higher
education … The university is now threatening legal or disciplinary action,
and it would appear it is embarrassed by the prospect of the occupation
being visible during open days this weekend. What Warwick University
managers should be embarrassed by is the £42,000 pay rise awarded to
the vice-chancellor, Nigel Thrift, and the role they have played in lobby-
ing for fee rises and other measures which have attacked the public and
accessible nature of education. The actions of students at Warwick are a
legitimate response to the recklessness of university managements across
the country. (McCluskey et al.) See also Bailey and Freedman
26. As Beuys writes (amplifying the relation between his terms, “thinking
forms,” “spoken forms,” and “social sculpture”): “My objects are to be seen
as stimulants for the transformation of the idea of sculpture, or of art in
general. They should provoke thoughts about what sculpture can be and
how the concept of sculpting can be extended to the invisible materials
used by everyone” (cit. Tisdall, Joseph Beuys 6). Beuys’ sense of the work of art
comes to include the founding of an anti-political party and involvement in
projects of “direct democracy.”
27. The question of theory and praxis concerns the possibility – or otherwise –
of a revolutionary situation, which was not the least of what was in dis-
pute between the student movement and Adorno (for whom the term
“regressive” seemed more applicable). Unpublished in the original (1969)

edition of Adorno’s Critical Models, the essay was included in its reprinting
as part of the Complete Writings in 1977. By the end of that fateful year in
Germany, the figure of Iphigenia in performance was linked to the memory
of Ulrike Meinhof in Claus Peymann’s production in Stuttgart, this time
with Kirsten Dene in the title role (while a revival of Fassbinder’s play at the
TAT, however, was poorly received, seeming to have become “outdated”).
28. This is at the heart of his letters to Marcuse concerning the occupation of
the Institute for Social Research in January 1969, the subsequent police
intervention, and trial of Hans-Jürgen Krall.
29. Stefan Collini observes of the “fallacy of uniformly measurable perfor-
mance” underpinning current HE policy to make universities “conform to
market ideology”:
The logic of punitive quantification is to reduce all activity to a com-

mon managerial metric. The activities of thinking and understanding are
inherently resistant to being adequately characterised in this way. This
is part of the explanation for the pervasive sense of malaise, stress, and
disenchantment within British universities. (“Sold Out”)
As a critic of the mediation between art and audience, not least by academia,
Claire Bishop remarks of her own experience (“when working at Warwick
university”) of two forms of such “measurement,” the Research Assessment
Exercise and the Quality Assessment Audit, that: “The question of criteria of
judgement in relation to academic activities had become crushingly remote
from the motivations that first led me into this profession. When I encoun-
tered artists speaking of education in creative and liberatory terms, it seemed
perplexing, if not wilfully misguided: for me, the university was becoming
one of the most bureaucratic and stiflingly uncreative environments I had
ever encountered” (Bishop, Artificial Hells 245).
30. This neoliberal project has been dubbed a “gamble” by Andrew McGettigan,
who observes that:
The move to a generalised fee and loan regime is part of a more profound
transformation of higher education and the public sector in general. The
agenda is to create a lightly regulated market of a diverse range of private
companies with direct public funding to institutions diluted to homeo-
pathic levels. An experiment is being conducted on English universities;
one that is not controlled and that in the absence of any compelling evi-
dence for change threatens an internationally admired and efficient system.
(McGettigan, Great University Gamble 2)
While the attempt to privatise the Student Loan Book offers the most obvi-
ous index of this policy, its corrosive effects in the understanding of culture
and public space demonstrates the “freedom” of capital to define politics in
its own terms.
31. On the historical, political-economic degradation of the idea of “participation”
in art, specifically as it relates to Beuys, see Bishop, Artificial Hells 243–245.
5
Cooking up a Theory of
Performing
Anthony Gritten
In amongst some miscellaneous notes for a seminar on “New Music and

Interpretation” that Adorno taught with Rudolph Kolisch and Eduard
Steuermann at Darmstadt in the summer of 1954, there appears a list of
“Various problems” marked out for further attention. The third of the
problems is this: “3) Against culinary music-making, beauty as an end in
itself. Atomistic music-making. Smoothing out. Colour, tone as means
of representation” (Adorno, Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction
231). This pithy collection of phrases and mnemonics summarises a
fair amount of the terrain that Adorno wished to cover in his study of
performing, the extensive aphorisms, notes, schemata and drafts for
which are published as Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction (here-
after TTMR). In this third “problem” alone there arises the critical stance
against configuring the physical sound of music as the primary goal of
performing; the failure of some performances to grasp properly the task
of structural interpretation and in particular the relation between part
and whole and between surface and depth; the misguided tendency of
some performers and schools of interpretation (aided and abetted by
the culture industry) to settle on medium, median, mid-point, and in all
senses “average” levels of intensity, dynamics and articulation; and so
on – and all of these are refracted by Adorno’s usual negative dialectical
framework (mostly not on show).
This chapter focuses on a single issue identified in these “Various
problems,” namely the critique of “culinary music-making.” Adorno’s
employment of phrases that incorporate the adjectival metaphor
“culinary” is explored with an ear for the metaphor’s critical phenom-
enological potential; less attention is given over to its historical and
82
Cooking up a Theory of Performing 83
cultural significances as a metaphor, important though these are. The

phrase “the culinary” is used, hypostasising the various manifestations
of the idea (culinary performing, culinary listening, culinary interpre-
tation, culinary appreciation, culinary aesthetics, and so on) into a
more or less crude but convenient category. This chapter thus takes a
somewhat perverse and partial approach, taking up a relatively minor
metaphor and attempting to cook up a theory of performing centred
(inasmuch as a constellation is ever simply centred) on this single word.
At issue is whether there is any critical mileage in the culinary metaphor
for describing, modelling, and perhaps even theorising performing. The
methodological decision means that the actual word “culinary” is given
excessive attention, isolated and fetishised at the expense of a more
useful and broader disquisition on Adorno and Performance. All the
same, while Adorno does not use the metaphor systematically, he does
use the term quite a lot and he talks about the “culinary sound-ideal”
in several places in TTMR, even proposing it as a draft section heading
(see 105, 143, 146, 225). Hopefully it will have become clear by the end
of this chapter that there is something to be said for lingering a while
and savouring the word.
It should be noted at the outset that this chapter is about “perform-
ing” rather than “performance.” Of course, these two phenomena
are dialectically related. However, the underlying assumption is that
focussing on the moment of performing in Adorno’s nascent theory of
performance shifts the conceptual focus towards the action of musical
interpretation, towards the pragmatics of musical praxis, thus highlight-
ing the immanent criticism required of performing qua action. In con-
trast, as will become clear from the various references below to the work
of Jon McKenzie, the term “performance” can be usefully understood
as a paradigm against which all singular actions – including those of
musical performing (though this is not McKenzie’s explicit focus) – are
measured and to which they must contribute.
Without wishing to open up a vulgarly statistical approach to Adorno’s
texts or to overly essentialise the word itself, it is fair to say that phrases
incorporating the culinary metaphor are used more frequently in TTMR
than in other major texts. The word is employed in Aesthetic Theory
(1970, also incomplete), the long essay “On the Fetish Character of
Music and the Regression of Listening” (1938, written in response to the
second version of Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age
of its Technical Reproducibility”), and in essays on Schönberg (“Arnold
Schoenberg: 1874–1951,” 1953) and Toscanini (“The Mastery of the
Maestro,” 1958) in Prisms and Sound Figures respectively – and in at least
84 Anthony Gritten
a few other places where performing music is at issue. Perhaps surpris-

ingly, the culinary metaphor is absent from Minima Moralia (1951, com-
pleted just before Adorno began the major tranche of work on TTMR),
though the basic idea certainly appears within several sections in the
published book, and there are thematic similarities between the two
projects. Notwithstanding its incompleteness as a project, TTMR can
be read as a book of advice, like Minima Moralia (see Norberg; Foster;
Nealon), albeit one that tends to give examples of how not to do things
musically, just as Minima Moralia expends most of its energy unpacking
the multifarious problems and failures of “damaged” contemporary life.
This axiological position underlying TTMR – its imbrication within a
specific network of values – informs (without determining) the way in
which the culinary metaphor should be read when Adorno uses it in
specific connection with performing and listening to music.
In the critical literature, several commentators fall in line and adopt
phrases that use the metaphor (Paddison, Adorno’s Aesthetics 257,
259; Leppert, “Music ‘Pushed to the Edge of Existence’” 122; Leppert,
“Commentary” 516, 522; Witkin, Adorno on Music 62; Witkin, Adorno
on Popular Culture 56, 61, 119, 129; Hoeckner, Programming 5), but there
is no detailed discussion of what it might presuppose and imply either
culturally or aesthetically; an exception is Tia DeNora, who alludes to the
wider context briefly (After Adorno 20). This is the case despite the fact
that the basic idea behind the metaphor and its critical content as Adorno
configures it are of course central to Adorno’s thought. Max Paddison,
for example, though without using the term, defines the culinary as a
quality of the less valuable of two categories of music: “This manifests
itself in an atomiszd and passive form of musical experience – a kind of
theme-tune listening – which only registers isolated musical events: for
example, easily memorable melodic fragments, striking instrumental
colour, repetitive rhythms, etc.” (Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture 88).
Adorno’s wider strategy with regard to performing is directed against

at least two standard positions. The first of these is cultural, the second
logical. The cultural position is the more contentious for Adorno, for it
concerns the ideology of the culture industry, which he disparages in
TTMR as “galvanised, spirited and culinary, all at the same time” (111)
and in Minima Moralia as “journalism, spectacle, calculation” (§137,
215). The logical position is that of the process of quasi-academic
abstract negation and the excessive pursuit of objectivism – which
is no better than the subjectivism that it claims to be realigning and

rehumanising. His intention is to argue that “Music’s purpose is not
absorption by the industry (through functioning), or to be obscured
(through smoothness, harmonisation, culinary matters), but rather a
determinate resistance through its immanent consistency” (TTMR 108).
The origins of Adorno’s use of the culinary metaphor lie beyond the
scope of this chapter. Suffice it to say by way of indication that they
encompass cultural practices in the America of Adorno’s exile, including
the rapidly expanding leisured middle class; a long-standing Viennese
tradition of bitter satire epitomised in different ways by Karl Kraus and
Bertolt Brecht; aspects of the logic of “displacement” (taking this term
in its classic psychoanalytical sense); and the historical antagonism
between philosophy and aesthetics (simplistically, between pure and
applied thought). Brecht is a key figure behind Adorno’s use of the
culinary metaphor: an acquaintance of Adorno’s from their years in
Berlin and a recurrent figure in the later Aesthetic Theory, Brecht is less
explicitly present in the post-war notes of TTMR (98, 131; Paddison,
Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music 321; Adorno, “Commitment” (1962) 90),
except insofar as Adorno had quietly picked up on Brecht’s critique of
“culinary theatre” – of theatre as mere bourgeois refreshment (escap-
ism, a chance to relax and charge the batteries) – and begun to think
through the critical potential of the term, less with a view towards his
own theory of “epic performance” in the wake of Brecht’s “epic theatre”
(see “The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre”), more with an ear for
how the potentially more subtle subterranean coursing of musical “sub-
cutanea” (more on this term below) might resonate with critical truth
content when performing.
The beginning is in silence, far removed, as will become clear, from
all things culinary. For a thinker who so consistently forces ideas to be
counted, who forces ideologies to speak more loudly than they might
otherwise wish (ideology is silent and silencing: or the other way around,
silence is always ideological), who forces cultural practices to submit to
critical assessment in the cold light of day, and whose epistemology
has the starkness of the Roman amphitheatre, Adorno’s employment of
silence in his theory of musical performing is obscure and perplexing.
As Paddison argues (see “Performance and the Silent Work”), it is more
than just “the pockets of silence that develop between people moulded
by anxiety, work and undemanding docility” (Adorno, “On the Fetish
Character of Music” 30) and more than just the notion that silence is
music’s saviour, that “[t]he silent, imaginative reading of music is made
by the reading of written material; such a practice could at the same time
86 Anthony Gritten
save music from the abuse inflicted upon the compositional content by
virtually every performance today” (Adorno, “Arnold Schoenberg” 169).
Given that for Adorno life is supposed to be more than mere survival, it
is not surprising that he retreats into the silent work, for it is here within
the comforting world of silent reading, with Wagner’s ideas confined
to the turntable, that the threat, mortality, and general contingency of
performing can be bracketed out of mind and a route envisaged towards
critical self-reflexion. His concept of performing lacks redemptive power,
this being deliberately held back away from the body and kept in reserve
for cognition and the higher faculties of civilised thought. Indeed, the
intractable problem of performing – its Achilles heel – is that it is always
forever undecided between what Adorno terms “x-ray” and “subcuta-
neous” performing on the one hand (more on this second metaphor
below) and culinary performing on the other. The “process between it
[the subcutaneous] and the surface” (TTMR 231) sounds off as an oscil-
lation between the two, and now and again it slows down and reifies
into either subcutaneous or culinary events, in the process affording the
possibility of evaluative judgements about specific instances of perform-
ing such as Adorno makes throughout TTMR. This process and its evalu-
ation can be read, for example, in the statement about
[t]he true danger of the virtuoso: his perfect control. Through being
above the works, having them at his disposal, he no longer journeys
all the way into them or takes their immanent demands quite so seri-
ously any more. Sloppiness as a correlate of mastery. For example the
blurring of phrases by great virtuosos, also vocal ones. – Preferable
to work with young, unfinished musicians who are not yet fully in
control. (TTMR 158)
The danger is basically that the virtuoso might become a chef.

Notwithstanding the link to contemporary thought and art (the
planned symbolic dedication of Aesthetic Theory to Samuel Beckett, for
example), and ignoring any empirical problems with the deployment of
silence as a metaphor, Adorno’s Beckett-influenced retreat into the silent
work is somewhat contra to the historical and epistemological scenario
traced out in recent Performance Studies. McKenzie’s Perform or Else: From
Discipline to Performance is a challenging representative of one particular
strand of thought. Unlike Adorno, McKenzie is concerned less with per-
forming (verb, adverb) in an aesthetic sense and more with performance
(noun) as the state of contemporary discourse. McKenzie’s analysis of
contemporary performance under the regime of performativity is of a
drift towards ever louder and prouder self-articulation, self-identification,

and self-definition. This is in tension with Adorno’s position, as will
become apparent below. Adorno’s retreat from, critique of and predict-
able dialectical resistance to the loudness of performativity (the logic of
performing become its culture, and the logic of performing displaced by
its culture; the two sides of performing displacing each other in the pro-
cess of becoming a Moebius strip) can be read through his comments on
culinary performing. In this respect “the culinary” is employed as a way
of describing the insistent infantilisation by the culture industry of music
that could have meant something, of music that could have worked
critically upon itself, of music that retreats from its critical potential as
a truth revealing event and instead becomes mere surface, momentary
rather than momentous: glossy glamorous shiny smooth sound surfaces.
What is culinary performing? The culinary metaphor seems not to have

grown into a full-blown term in Adorno’s philosophical vocabulary,
let alone a concept in his critical theory; it is mostly used in passing.
However, ignoring this methodological difficulty and the fact that,
naturally enough, Adorno never really pauses long enough to define the
word explicitly because he is always busy looking ahead for the bigger
picture, there are some consistencies in his employment of the word.
For example, components of culinary performing include the following:
physical sensuousness (see Adorno, “Schreker” (1959) 137–138; “Vienna”
213; Philosophy of New Music (1948) 14, 111; “Arnold Schoenberg” 169;
“The Mastery of the Maestro” 45–46; Introduction to the Sociology of Music
(1973) 9; “On the Fetish Character of Music” 33); beauty (TTMR 5, 99,
231, 255 n 148); and passivity (TTMR 97; Aesthetic Theory 333; Philosophy
of New Music 14; Prisms (1955) 154). At one point Adorno describes
culinary sound as a “‘chemically pure’ tone” (TTMR 112). This section
unpacks these phenomenological consistencies with an ear for their
potential generalisation at an appropriate moment in the future.
Oscillation. Adorno seems to use the culinary metaphor as a kind of
oscillating connective link between performing and listening; as a means
of talking about performing in terms of listening (what the listener makes
of the performance) and vice versa. This makes the culinary metaphor into
quite a powerful critical tool, for it immediately ensures that the socially
mediated nature of performing is inscribed explicitly into discourse. Of
course, given that the activities of performing and listening are contigu-
ous but not coterminous, the culinary metaphor means certain things
88 Anthony Gritten
when determined as a predicate of performing and certain other things

when determined as a predicate of listening. Adorno’s uses of the meta-
phor to refer to acts of listening outnumber those that refer to performing.
They can be distinguished heuristically from acts of simple perception,
since, notwithstanding his work on the Princeton Radio Project in the
years before he began making notes for TTMR, Adorno is less interested
in the empirical substrate of musical engagement; his examples seek to
determine acts of good and bad, true and false listening and to prescribe
what true listening should be – indeed, what it must be. His uses of the
metaphor to refer to performing are less frequent and generally refer
to errors in conception rather than execution (insofar as these are ever
separable) on the performer’s part. One example is where he writes, only
superficially paradoxically, that “Concerning the B flat major Trio by
Beethoven, performance by Heifetz-Feuermann-Arthur Rubinstein. – ‘Too
beautiful’. Here that means: the sensual euphony of the sound eclipses the
realisation of the construction. Everything is smoothed out” (TTMR 75).
Isolation. Conceived in culinary terms, sound isolates itself in a false
autonomy, and “[a]s soon as it [tone] begins to relish itself, the musical
context suffers” (TTMR 158). He writes similarly in “Vers une Musique
Informelle” that “[t]hrough its autonomy the sound regains a culinary
quality which is irreconcilable with the constructive principle” (313).
This, for Adorno, represents a failure of performing to engage fully with
its true task, which is to produce “the x-ray image of the work. Its task is
to render visible all the relations, all aspects of context, contrast, and con-
struction that lie hidden beneath the surface of the perceptible sound –
and this through the articulation of precisely that perceptible manifesta-
tion” (TTMR 1). What culinary performing misunderstands, then, is the
status of the individual sounds that it produces: “What is therefore being
opposed here is every sound or tone that is presented in its own right and
stands apart from the composition […]. In interpretation, it necessarily
corresponds to an atomistic form of music-making” (TTMR 100).
Typology. Culinary listening has its place in Adorno’s infamous typol-
ogy of listeners. It scores little credit and cashes in near the bottom,
probably somewhere within the category of “entertainment listener”
but above the lowest of the low: the indifferent, unmusical or anti-
musical listener who is “the ‘sensuous’ listener in the narrow sense of
word, the culinary taster for isolated sonic stimuli” (Adorno, Sociology of
Music 9, 61, 126). In several places Adorno notes that the culinary is a
“pre-artistic” quality of an object (TTMR 158, 161; Aesthetic Theory 347).
Fetish. The culinary metaphor encompasses a psychological obses-
sion with and relief in the pleasure to be had at the musical surface,
and an obsession with surface denotes performing, or at least a central

component of performing; or the other way around, performing is tied
up with the musical surface, and the surface is a culinary matter. Thus
the culinary is intimately related to the “fetishism of the musical text”
(TTMR 67), with second nature perceived as first nature: “moments of
sensual pleasure in the idea, the voice, the instrument are made into
fetishes and torn away from any functions which would give them
meaning” (Adorno, “Fetish Character of Music” 37; Sociology of Music
126). There is a Freudian component of Adorno’s theory of perform-
ing here. In his two schematas for TTMR Adorno places discussions of
the culinary next to critiques of fetishes (225, 227). In “On the Fetish
Character of Music and the Regression of Listening” Adorno analyses
how music-making in thrall to the culture industry has got itself back-
to-front and got its priorities upside-down, partially in response to
the changing presence, function, and reception of “aura,” partially in
response to the recognition (encouraged by the culture industry, ironi-
cally, albeit for different reasons) that performing and listening are,
by virtue of music’s physical (auditory) constitution, always already
in thrall to the physical force of sound on the body. In this respect,
if fetish is in part about the misperception and misunderstanding of
part and whole, surface and depth, appearance and essence (or the dis-
traction of the latter by the former), then music makes a natural case
study from a phenomenological perspective, for its core constitution is
as a continual oscillation between part and whole, surface and depth,
appearance and essence.
Intensity. Adorno’s configuration of performing is nothing if not all
or nothing. Successful performing is true, authentic, critical (which
for Adorno himself invariably means Rudolph Kolisch and Eduard
Steuermann), and involves a commitment to intense, extreme, exces-
sive musical engagement in pursuit of subjectivity at all costs. So it is
no surprise that anything approaching, say, mf in the dynamic domain
is keenly rejected. For example,
Concerning dynamics: against mf as the norm (Rudi [Kolisch] says that

Beethoven knows no mezzo-forte). If there is a standard level, then it
would be the one lacking all force, namely p. The basic mf stems from
the misguided culinary notion of the full, rich sound. But probably
the very idea of a standard level is wrong in itself. (TTMR 105)
Such, in fact, is Adorno’s commitment to intensity and extremity

that, malgré lui, this particular element of his theory of performing
90 Anthony Gritten
tends towards an uncharacteristically black-and-white series of proto-

cols and imperatives for the performer:
Rule: go towards extremes. The expansion of the dynamic scale

through new music is of benefit to everyone. The wider the scale, the
greater the possibilities of modelling the structure through dynamic
degrees, of constructing it dynamically. And in conjunction with this
the possibility of attaining extreme characters. This applies not only
to ppp, but also to fff. (TTMR 146)
In these cases, Adorno is clear that aiming for and accepting a culi-
nary sound comes at a high price and that important things are left
unperformed and lost underneath the fetishisation of the sonic surface:
even “[t]he culinary single sound corresponds in the whole to the ten-
dency to smooth over, to even out, to avoid extremes, to mediate. This
always occurs at the expense of the characters – of clarity in the higher
sense” (TTMR 101). And there are tragic and far-reaching consequences
to accepting the culinary ideal, about which Adorno is quite bleak:
“Sensitivity to noise is the musicality of the unmusical. Conclusion from
this: no fear of dynamic extremes, even a triple fortissimo. The zones in
which music becomes inaudible or unbearable are those in which it ter-
minates all consensus. Nothing is more harmful than mf as the measure
of all things.” (TTMR 82, 105, 146). One of these consequences is the
loss of the possibility of performing being socially critical: “No longer
do the partial moments serve as a critique of that whole; instead, they
suspend the critique which the successful aesthetic totality exerts against
the flawed one of society” (“Fetish Character of Music” 33). In short, for
Adorno anything that “smoothes out” (TTMR 75, 101, 108, 143, 231)
or “streamlines” (TTMR 4, 6, 257 n 166) expressive differentiation and
distinction between musical elements – anything that de-characterises
music and results in “the standard level and the standard tone” (TTMR
108) – must be resisted in the name of truth, which is itself all or nothing.
Adorno uses the culinary metaphor in a negative way to make various

related points about, for example, the regression of listening. It might
be asked whether his use of the metaphor is harsh on “taste.” Taste, after
all, is the concept behind Adorno’s culinary metaphor, and its double
meaning is what affords Adorno the poetic licence for metaphor in the
first place. That is to say, the double meaning of taste stems from its
use in the discourses of food and aesthetics, and the fact that the latter
meaning was originally grounded in the same gustatory sensation as the
former before a particular strand of enlightenment rationality wrenched
it apart in a fit of suspicion. Now, “[a]esthetics today therefore begins by
diverging from what it treats, having become suspicious of the passive,
possibly even culinary, pleasures of spectators” (Aesthetic Theory 333).
Now, the culinary metaphor can be used by Adorno to describe, for
example, Beethoven’s late works as “bitter and spiny” fruit (“Late Style
in Beethoven” (1937) 564). In this context there is a sense that Adorno’s
negative use of the culinary metaphor bites the hand that feeds, chas-
tising performers and listeners for doing what they cannot help doing:
namely, engaging with the music’s surfaces and its passing moments;
there is an aporia in his configuration of listening. Obviously this is a
typically Adornian paradox (success in failure, failure in success), and it
gives plenty of pause for thought.
Civilised thought (for Adorno a bitterly ironic idea, an oxymoron,
even) developed on the back of a self-imposed and increasingly reified
and rarefied separation of the two senses of taste. Its starting point was an
essentialised aesthetic sense of taste as more valuable than mere empiri-
cal sensation and digestion. Adorno’s complaint about this increasingly
shrill self-assertion of a particular ideology of taste is that the culture
industry leads mankind backwards (it is a regression) (see TTMR 158)
towards a new union of these two senses of taste and a new cultural
assumption, namely that engaging with the musical work through
performing can happen, and according to this ideology perhaps should
happen, without the vital critical moment that ensures that the two
senses of taste remain contiguous but not coterminous.
But what, anyway, is the problem with the culinary metaphor? Surely
beautiful sound is good. It is certainly central to the ideological and
day-to-day workings of instrumental (especially vocal) pedagogy, as
Adorno notes (TTMR 99). Adorno is passionate that beauty as such
deceives and distracts from more important goals. Hence he approves of
“the anti-culinary element in Schönberg, his hostility towards pleasant,
sensuous sound” (“Vienna” 213), and he defends the Wind Quintet on
these grounds against its own medium, “which, more than any other,
seems culinary, mere sensuous excitation this side of intellectual activ-
ity” (“Arnold Schoenberg” 169). One of the paradoxes of the culinary
metaphor is that, on the one hand, in order to produce a culinary tone,
the performer needs a good technique (fetish is by design, and design
in performing requires intention), yet on the other hand the same tech-
nique is designed to lead instead to subcutaneous and x-ray performing.
92 Anthony Gritten
Culinary sound comes with the potential for distraction, the temptation
to linger only on certain surface details, to fetishise sound over struc-
ture. Indeed, with an adequate technique, the production of distracting
culinary sound can become self-perpetuating, since culinary sound itself
generates further distraction (and potentially culinary listening – another
success story for the culture industry) which in turn creates more culi-
nary sound and culinary listening, ad infinitum.
How should the listener respond to performing? Adorno uses the culi-
nary metaphor as a means of chastising the listener for taking the easy
way out of the dilemma of modern listening, for being distracted by “the
sluggish habits of culinary listening” (“Arnold Schoenberg” 154), and for
being focused on the “culinary sound-ideal at the expense of the musical
sense, lack of clarity etc” (TTMR 143). (As it happens, Adorno is com-
menting here on the role of the sound engineer in the recording process,
but, given Adorno’s use of the culinary as an oscillating connective link
between performing and listening, it is relevant as the technologically
most advanced – prosthetically aided – act of listening to, and literally
constructing, performing.) His criticism is less that the listener is not
doing anything at all; she is at least hearing the music qua sensation. It is
more that she does not – or cannot – self-reflect intensely enough to real-
ise, first, that true, authentic listening is impossible and, second, that she
must incorporate this impossibility into her listening: impossibility must
become immanent to aesthetic perception, and listening must cease
to be configured as a triumph of attention. But he does acknowledge
the necessary corollary of this (TTMR 5, 99, 161; Aesthetic Theory 276),
namely that “[a] critique of the ‘culinary’ element of musical interpreta-
tion should be carried out dialectically. It is not simply to be negated,
but is only captured as something negated. The negation of the ‘beauti-
ful tone’ is the true achievement of all musical mimesis – this is what
‘characteristic’ means” (TTMR 5). The culinary quality of sound, in other
words, must sometimes be embraced in order to be overcome. There is
no way of resisting the gradual creep of the metaphysics of listening
without some pragmatic gritting of teeth and an acceptance of music’s
sensuous – dirty, even – culinary qualities (music as surface, moment,
physically sensuous, beauty, passive). The culinary must be worked
through, rather than merely posited in a heavy-handed manner as in
opposition to logic, in opposition to musical synthesis, in opposition to
active perception, in opposition to true form and shape, in opposition
to all things intellectual, and so on (which is superficially what Adorno

sometimes seems to do) (Philosophy of Modern Music 14; “Fetish Character
of Music” 32, 33; Aesthetic Theory 333; “Schreker” 137–138).
The logic of the opposition in Adorno – the negative dialectic – is
subtle. It is far removed from what Minima Moralia describes as “the
whole ideal of adjustment” in the culture industry (§129, 201). Apropos
of what he terms “determinate negation,” he writes that “[t]he point is
not to strive for the opposite of sound, but simply that sound is a means
of representing sense, a means of shaping, and one that becomes all
the more important with the increasing avoidance of more superficial
means of articulation such as tempo modifications etc.” (TTMR 99).
Nevertheless, although TTMR does accommodate the more subtle dia-
lectical approach, a fair proportion of the rhetoric remains unnecessarily
militaristic in tone. For example, “[i]n some Mahler and Schönberg, also
Strauss, it is necessary – for the music’s sense – to overstep the boundary
of what is bearable dynamically: a declaration of war on the culinary
ideal” (TTMR 146). Elsewhere, “[t]one ‘in itself’, the ‘beautiful voice’, is
music’s enemy” (TTMR 100). And in Prisms he writes about music that
“declares war on colour” (“Arnold Schoenberg” 169) – all statements
that seem to imply a certain kind of programmatic and interventionist
schedule for the performer: get tooled up and join the fight. Adorno is
certainly well aware of the necessity of the dialectical manoeuvre, but
in TTMR he seems not to work systematically through the culinary this
far, focussing instead on other things. Adorno sometimes uses culinary
metaphors in an apparently unguarded moralistic manner, for example,
attributing what he considers to be Bruno Walter’s artistic misjudge-
ments to “fear” (TTMR 83), and veering in such sermonising moments,
of which there are a fair few, towards ad hominem sniping (TTMR 4, 32,
104, 124, 155, 159, 160, 162).
Given this dialectical framework, it is natural that in TTMR the culi-
nary metaphor is always found in close proximity to another metaphor,
namely that of “the subcutaneous.” The former denotes an obsession
with surface, with “skin” (TTMR 109, 228), while the latter brings with
it the demand to cut through the skin into the musical body beneath;
the former is associated with failure, while the latter is associated with
success. More specifically, culinary engagement fails to “liberat[e] the
subcutaneous” (TTMR 105), which is defined by Adorno as “the fabric
of individual musical events, grasped as the ineluctable moments of
an internally coherent totality” (“Arnold Schoenberg” 153, 160). He
writes in his essay on Schönberg that the composer “had turned the
subcutaneous outwards, discovered and taught a mode of presentation
94 Anthony Gritten
that rendered the subcutaneous structure visible, making the perfor-

mance the integral realisation of the musical construction. The ideal
of interpretation converges with that of composition” (165). The point
is that “the culinary” and “the subcutaneous” form a dialectical pair
within the constellation of terms that Adorno uses in his proto-theory
of performing, with the latter valued higher than the former: he is clear
that subcutaneous performing aims for “a higher, constructive form of
clarity based upon analysis” (TTMR 100). Talk of culinary performing is
talk of subcutaneous performing (or its absence), as Adorno says: “the
subcutaneous does not exist in itself, but only as a negation of the other,
and this dialectic, this relation, must be shown. This does not mean:
playing the weak beat and dropping the strong, but rather clarifying
the process that connects the two” (TTMR 74). And elsewhere: “This
rule of going against all things schematic in music-making, of bringing
out the subcutaneous, playing weak beats and dissonances etc. must
not be understood in a mechanical and undialectical manner” (TTMR
80). And he makes a provocative comparison between Beethoven and
Schönberg that deserves detailed comparison with the Schoenberg essay
in Prisms: “In Beethoven the tension between the subcutaneous and the
surface must be realised. In Schönberg the subcutaneous has devoured
the skin” (TTMR 228).
Given perplexing and ambiguous statements about the importance of
music “lingering” (though not listening to itself) (TTMR 104, 232; “Mastery
of the Maestro” 46–47) it is worth noting that lingering is precisely what
happens in culinary performing; engagement remains with and at the sur-
faces, sounds, and moments. It hesitates (sometimes distractedly) before
cutting into the subcutaneous, before looking at what is underneath
(x-ray). This hesitation Adorno seems to read as a failure of performing to
engage with what matters (the whole, the form). But perhaps it is also a
mark of an ethical responsibility in performing; the hope for a better situ-
ation and time in which to pass over dialectically to the subcutaneous – a
time that of course never arrives. This lingering could be the result of work-
ing through the culinary (rather than rejecting it outright).
The sense of the concept of “performing” that Adorno assumes in TTMR

is located ideologically within the theatre of representation: simplisti-
cally, a musical work is presented for performance to the listener by the
performer whose task it is to present the work adequately. There is, how-
ever, a second, broader sense of performing at play in a particular strand
of Performance Studies, one that by implication presents the culinary

in a different light. This second sense of performing is described well in
Perform or Else. McKenzie analyses three modes of performance, which
he describes as organisational, technological, and cultural, and against
each of which failure to perform leads to redundancy, obsolescence, and
normalisation respectively. Each mode of performance is “challenged”:
to be efficient, to be effective, and to be efficacious respectively. The
three modes of performance overlap and all three “valorise the testing
and contesting of norms” (McKenzie, Perform or Else 132). The para-
digm shift has been from a culture in which discipline is maintained
by regulations towards a culture in which global performances are con-
tinually and fluidly challenging, contesting, and testing what counts as
performance and as performing – “Is this performing?”
As noted above, Adorno’s nascent theory of performing (for him,
a mere subset of performance) and the world of global performance
articulated in McKenzie’s particular approach to the discourse of
Performance Studies are not obvious bedfellows; there is a mutual dis-
trust in the air. Consider the core claim of Perform or Else: “Performance
will be to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries what discipline
was to the eighteenth and nineteenth, that is, an onto-historical
formation of power and knowledge” (18, bold emphasis in original).
Adorno shies away from fully accepting all the terms and conditions
of this principle in numerous texts, such as the various notices against
speed dotted throughout Minima Moralia (e.g. §102, 162) and the posi-
tion articulated a decade or so before TTMR in “The Fetish Character
of Music and the Regression of Listening,” where certain modes of per-
forming come under sustained attack: to wit,
[t]here is iron discipline. But precisely iron. The new fetish is the
flawlessly functioning, metallically brilliant apparatus as such, in
which all the cogwheels mesh so perfectly that not the slightest hole
remains open for the meaning of the whole. Perfect, immaculate
performance in the latest style preserves the work at the price of its
definitive reification. (44)
Adorno’s resistance to the displacement of discipline by performance

is unsurprising for at least two reasons. First, as Paddison helpfully
summarises it, the goal of the process of performing in Adorno’s sys-
tem is “the revelation of the ‘problem’ of the work, as tour de force,
and the making possible in performance of the impossibility which
lies at the heart of the work” (Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music 198). Global
96 Anthony Gritten
performance as phrased by McKenzie, by contrast, faces outwards away

from its heart (merely one of its organs) and is happily all surface, all
skin (there is nothing to reveal). The second reason is Adorno’s unshak-
able faith that “[t]he seriousness of high art is destroyed in speculation
about its efficacy” (“Culture Industry Reconsidered” (1963) 98–99).
Global performance, by contrast, is all speculation: godless and rhizo-
matic, sprouting anywhere and endlessly contesting and reinventing
itself as it goes along.
Yet, notwithstanding these substantial differences of outlook
between Adorno and Performance Studies, between discipline and
performance, there is something to be said about the function of “the
culinary” in this performing context. To criticise, as Adorno does, a
performance or a perception as culinary or as having culinary qualities
is to associate it with a particular mode of performing: Adorno has to
label this as a failure, but Performance Studies remains more open-
minded. What Adorno (following the precepts of his system) criticises
the culinary for failing to do is stabilised by Performance Studies
and assimilated into a central component of performance. Adorno
and McKenzie agree that “[i]nterpreting means: unlocking music as
a force field” (TTMR 231), that performance is premised upon “an
onto-historical sedimentation of forces” and “fields of subjectivity”
(Perform or Else 53, 209), but they differ on the question of whether or
not “unlocking” requires a subject. Adorno’s focus is on rehabilitating
the post-Enlightenment subject, which remains sovereign throughout
performance (if no longer so self-assertive), while McKenzie is more
interested in the cross-domain Performance Systems within which
subjective effects might be inscribed and felt. They also agree (with
differing emphases) that “[t]he liquidation of the individual is the real
signature of the new musical situation” (“Fetish Character of Music”
276), that “[t]he performance stratum […] constructs and proliferates
decentered subjectivities and highly unstable object fields” (Perform
or Else 179), but they differ on how “liquidation” is to be interpreted.
Adorno reads it as a disappearance, while McKenzie reads it as a
dispersal. Adorno obsesses about the threat of failure, that “[o]nly one
who does not simply feel music, but also thinks it, can feel it properly.
[…] this is the argument against culinary listening and playing, ‘easy
listening’, and against any passive attitude. Whoever simply surrenders
themselves falls short of whatever they are surrendering to” (TTMR 97).
McKenzie relaxes, acknowledging that “there is no performance with-
out challenge, without claims and contestations, demands and accusa-
tions, field tests and identity checks, as well as the occasional untimely
dare” (Perform or Else 171). This means that Adorno is forced back into
a wholesale reinvention via dialectical critique of a new subject that
(note the tense) will have been able to perform, and that McKenzie
finds a new subject scattered but still operative and still performing.
For Adorno, performing can never really get started (hence his pre-
ferred solution, as mentioned above, is to locate truth in silence); for
McKenzie, performance is everywhere.
What does this all mean for performing and performance? It seems
unlikely that a full-blown theory of performing can be extrapolated
from “the culinary” on its own as it is employed by Adorno as part of
a critical metaphor for describing acts of and attitudes towards music-
making. For one thing, Adorno’s idiosyncratic use of the concept of
“mimesis” has been ignored. Focussing on “the culinary” is more likely
to generate an understanding of when and how performing fails and to
yield a sense of what not to do, but fewer practical insights into what
must be done in performing; TTMR is far from being a pedagogical
textbook for the teaching studio. This chapter will have been successful,
though, if its lingering with the word has suggested something of the
outlines of such a theory, or if it has provided some insight into a minor
corner of Adorno’s complex critical theory of music, and in particular
the location and function of the subcutaneous resistance to culinary
sound that marks out true performing – a resistance that might not have
to fall silent in order to afford itself critical self-reflexion.
By way of conclusion, the last word can go, appropriately enough, to
Adorno himself. Prolix and gnomic in equal measure to the last, this
reminder to himself dates from October 1963:
Concerning the reproduction theory. My hypothesis that the perfor-

mance is the x-ray photograph of the work requires correction in
so far as it provides not the skeleton, but rather the entire wealth of
subcutanea. In relation to this, the manifest façade is precisely an
abstract element, as impoverished as the 17th century. (TTMR 160).
6
Thinking Performance in
Neoliberal Times: Adorno
Encounters Neutral Hero
Ioana Jucan
This chapter seeks to redeem and reclaim an Adornian remark: that

thinking can neither be reduced to a psychological process, nor to a
formal logic; rather, it “is a mode of comportment” (Notes to Literature
(1958) 130). This statement will be examined in relation to perfor-
mance, which I will explore as a specific way of thinking. I will ques-
tion whether and how performance can acquire a political dimension
within the late capitalist – or neoliberal – form of life. The focus will
be primarily on theatrical performance, predicated upon the central-
ity of mimesis and the presence of a stage within a certain framework.
Specifically, I will look at Neutral Hero, written and directed by Richard
Maxwell (world premiere at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels,
2011; US premiere at the Kitchen, New York City, 2012), as it intersects
with Adorno’s philosophical thought, while also inquiring how it may
extend Adorno’s thought for the times we live in.
What are “the times we live in”? I call them “neoliberal” – a designa-
tion that requires some clarification, beginning from Adorno’s charac-
terization of the capitalist form of life. As Axel Honneth points out, this
characterization is not a hermeneutics but a physiognomy, which pos-
sesses a “meaning connected with Adorno’s conviction that mental abil-
ities are reflected in the corporeal nature of human beings” (Pathologies
of Reason 63). In “the administered world,” both living and thinking
have become damaged.1 The capitalist form of life – with the processes
of “operating, planning, having one’s way, subjugating” (Adorno,
Minima Moralia (1951) 157) that define it – thrives on “pathologies of
reason” (to borrow Honneth’s expression), such as the deformation of
the imitation-based capacity for reason due to the instrumentalization
of reason under the pervasive conditions of commodity exchange.
The spirit of capitalism, which is linked to what Adorno (and Max
98
Adorno Encounters Neutral Hero 99
Horkheimer) termed “the enlightenment,” has at its core a process of

exchange-oriented reification that presupposes the separation of subject
and object, with the mastery of the former over the latter; “the rule of
computation and utility”; “the reduction of thought to a mathematical
apparatus”; – in other words, “the leveling domination of abstraction”
(Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) 159, 168, 164). This logic of calcula-
tion and abstraction seeps down to the level of subjectivity, bringing
on the stage what Adorno (and later also Foucault) called “the homo
oeconomicus incarnate” (“Subject and Object” (1969) 141).
In the capitalist form of life, “everything is business” (Adorno, Minima
Moralia 41), also in the sense that everyone is busy making profit all the
time so that there’s no time to be given, as a gift, to (thinking) what
is and to how anything is. This phenomenon has consequences at the
level of two relations: that between the subject and the object, and that
between the general and the particular. The subject has no time to give
thought to the object and to the encounter with others: in the capital-
ist form of life, the object is constantly subsumed under the principles
of interchangeability and fungibility. Dissimilar things and contradic-
tory ideas are made equivalent for the sake of profit, their use value
subsumed under their exchange value. Made equivalent, anything can
be co-opted in the system – from food products that are supposed to
nourish (but instead are used to bring profit, their substance altered to
yield more and last longer) to concepts such as friendship and critique.
What gets lost along the way is the qualitative dimension of things –
“the things which through their difference and uniqueness cannot be
absorbed into the prevalent exchange relationships” (Minima Moralia 120).
Countering this requires a yielding to the object, in a loving way. “To yield
to the object means to do justice to the object’s qualitative moments” (43).
To recuperate the object in its qualitative dimension means to love it in
a non-possessive way, which takes time.2 But in the capitalist form of life
there is seldom time to give love, as a gift, non-possessively, just as there
is seldom tenderness in relationships between people.3 For, Adorno notes,
“tenderness between people is nothing other than awareness of the possi-
bility of relations without purpose” (41), without the expectation of profit.
This problem recurs at the level of the other relation mentioned
earlier – that between the particular and the general (at certain points
termed “the universal”). In Adorno’s words, “love uncompromisingly
betrays the general to the particular in which alone justice is done to
the former” (Minima Moralia 164). But oftentimes in the capitalist form
of life justice is done to neither the particular nor the general. Adorno’s
concern lies primarily with the particular, to which there is no time to
100 Ioana Jucan
be given in an administered world, and so it gets quickly, automatically

perhaps, subsumed under a predetermined generality. This is a process
of abstraction that Adorno identifies both in Western philosophy (in
idealist philosophy, for instance) and in a society predicated upon the
exchange of anything and everything for the sake of profit.
Yet, there is another aspect of abstraction that is specific to the neolib-
eral stage of the capitalist form of life, which Adorno does not address
explicitly but to which Adornian thought has the potential to extend.
The neoliberal is characterized by a distinctive mode of production
often described as post-Fordist. At its core is a notion of immaterial
labor based on “the productive mobilization” of language and of “the
cognitive faculties” (Virno, Grammar of the Multitude 55), as well as on
the prevalence of software. As Alexander Galloway observes, “economy
today is not only driven by software (symbolic machines); in many
cases the economy is software, in that it consists of the extraction of
value based on the encoding and processing of mathematical informa-
tion” (“Poverty of Philosophy” 358).4 Under these conditions, practices
of living increasingly have to do with the use of “abstract intelligence”
and the seemingly never-ceasing manipulation of “immaterial signs,”
which “are deeply affecting contemporary structures and mentalities”
(Virno, Grammar of the Multitude 7).
What gets lost in such processes involving the incessant manipula-
tion of abstractions is not necessarily contact with the particular, but,
rather, contact with the concrete in its relation to the general. The
literal, etymological sense of the concrete, from the Latin concrescere,
is that of “growing together” (Online Etymology Dictionary) – of things
growing together in time, defining a historical situation. As Adorno
conceived of it (through Benjamin; Notes to Literature 226), concrete-
ness refers to an “orientation to the historical,” where the historical
plays out within a specific form of life in all its material and immaterial
dimensions.5 To do justice to the concrete in thinking means to attend
to the complexity of the situation in which things grow together in
time and also to its possibilities of becoming (otherwise). And this hap-
pens in the direction of the general, which outgrows the concrete thing
without subsuming (that is, dominating) it. For, in contradistinction to
the universal, the general can allow for an exception to materialize; or,
to extrapolate an Adornian expression, the general “lacks the aspiration
to possession” (Minima Moralia 79). More in this respect will come in
what follows, for the main claim of this chapter will be that theatrical
performance may be a way of thinking in what I call concretely general
terms. So, back to performance now.
Neutral Hero is a performance of its times (world premiere in 2011; US

premiere in 2012), attuned to the spirit of the times and grown out of
at least a sense that something is not quite right with the world today.
However, it is not a form of what Adorno termed “committed art.” In
Adorno’s words, “committed art […] is not intended to generate amelio-
rative measures, legislative acts or practical institutions […] but to work
at the level of fundamental attitudes” (“Commitment” (1962) 78). It is
a vehicle for the transmission in embodied form of a conceptual, often
philosophical, program. Adorno’s main example of committed art is
Sartre’s plays, which are “bad models of his existentialism” (ibid.).6 The
problem with committed art lies in its “high level of abstraction,” in
the way in which it is made the bearer of “an extractable idea” at the
expense of everything else (79). Abstraction here refers to a process of
thought predicated upon a separation from concrete existence. It is a
production of ideas severed from their material dimensions, in which
the subject matter is subsumed under a predetermined principle with-
out regard for the complexity of the situation where it grows. In this
case, thinking does not comport itself tenderly, lovingly in relation to
the subject matter. It does not give time to its object.
Neutral Hero is not a piece of theatre intended to generate ameliora-
tive measures, legislative acts, or practical institutions. Nor is it a piece
of committed art. Although it is engaged in working at the level of
changing fundamental attitudes, it shows rather than tells (to use a
Wittgensteinian distinction): it gives time for (re)thinking different
situations, ways of being, and attitudes, rather than seeking to impose
an idea become principle or dictum. Set in an American Midwestern
town and enacting Anonymous’s coming-of-age story told by a cast of
12 performers, the piece gives time for thinking about what it means to
live and to be human in neoliberal times.7
Notwithstanding this, Maxwell is interested in “making clear state-
ments” (in Del Signore online). In a recent interview (in Del Signore
online), he declared that, in an attempt to support the Neutral Hero
performers who were affected by the fact that audience members were
walking out of their performances in Brussels, he told them: “Look
I don’t care if people walk out, as long as we’re making clear state-
ments.” But what does “making clear statements” mean? What are these
statements about?
Here is a possible answer: making a clear statement means insistently –
or, to use a word that appears repeatedly in Adorno, emphatically –
asserting the being there of various things (be they animate or inanimate)
of the world, producing an intensity of being within a certain
102 Ioana Jucan
framework. In Maxwell’s work, this framework is the theatre; the state-

ment is about the reality that there is a script, that there are performers
performing on stage, that there is an audience, that “we’re watching a
play” (Maxwell cited in Oswald, “House Lights” 105) in a theatre. This
has been a constant preoccupation in Maxwell’s theatre work over the
years: it is an affirmation of the concreteness of the theatrical situation
in which the performers and the audience find themselves in the pre-
sent moment of the performance. My claim is that Neutral Hero acquires
a political dimension precisely through its peculiar insistence on being
primarily about the theatre, on being a manifestation of the theatrical
condition, as much as it is and in order to be also about something else –
specifically, about possibilities of thinking and being under neoliberal
conditions. It is thus by way of its self-referential, aesthetic dimension
(as performance) that Maxwell’s piece opens itself up to the world, to a
specific socio-historical situation.8
Here are a few ways in which Neutral Hero insists on being theatre
at the formal level. The set of Neutral Hero is the stage: a nearly bare
stage, lined at the back with 12 wooden chairs, with a few musical
instruments (drums, a miniature violin, a banjo, a piano, a mini-organ)
on either end and in the middle for the cast to play. It can be argued
that the bare stage is more a necessity than it is an artistic choice in
this day and age: Maxwell’s theatre, like a large part of New York City’s
experimental theatre scene, is produced on low resources, dependent
on donations and grants. Like other New York-based theatre companies,
New York City Players (Maxwell’s company) lacks a permanent theatre
space. Maxwell’s theatre relies on touring, on circulation – more outside
of the United States than nationally.
Given its cast of 12, one of the largest of Maxwell’s performances to
date, and its low budget, making the bare stage the set seems a wise,
pragmatic, solution (since a large part of the budget must go towards
paying the actors, opting for a lavish set is out of the question). The
mode of production and circulation of Maxwell’s theatre is thus in
the spirit of these neoliberal times – admittedly, out of necessity. Yet,
I want to suggest that there is more to Maxwell’s decision to keep the
stage nearly bare and make it the set in Neutral Hero than just financial
necessity. The stage of Neutral Hero is an almost bare stage framed by a
large, seemingly oversized, wooden proscenium arch. This proscenium
arch does not belong in the black box theatres in which Neutral Hero has
been shown (for example, at The Kitchen; or at Hebbel am Ufer 2 black
box theatre in Berlin), and it does insistently look like it does not belong
there. Seemingly a remnant from another time, its insistent presence
on the stage makes clear statements: “Neutral Hero is theater;” “You are
watching a play that takes the theatrical condition seriously.”
Neutral Hero begins with an act of description, in exquisite detail,
which instantiates both the concreteness and the generality – or, what
I call the “concrete generality” – that are distinctive of the theatrical
condition. It begins when a bearded man called James (played by James
Moore) emerges from the wings and takes his position (almost) center
stage. Facing the audience seated in the house, James speaks in what
critics and reviewers of Maxwell’s performances have repeatedly called
a “deadpan,” “flat,” “affectless,” or “unemotional” style.9 After giving
a description of the sky that ends with “it [the sky] doesn’t belong to
us,” James begins to describe “the town” – a dry description, almost like
Google Maps. This is a town that “has roughly two and a half thousand
inhabitants” (Maxwell, Neutral Hero 1). It remains unnamed throughout
the performance, but, being richly described, it is relatively easily locat-
able somewhere in the Midwest, possibly in Minnesota.10 James sits in
one of the chairs upstage. Andie, a woman in her thirties with dark hair
(played by Andie Springer), appears on stage and follows suit:
You find yourself at the second stoplight where the road has come
to a T. […] Take the first right, heading north again and crossing
the tracks you see the skyway painted blue that is the Tuffy’s ® Dog
Food company. […] Downtown you can find a White Drug®, at least
2 gift shops including Ma’s Red Barn Floral Shop, SOPRTSPORT sport-
ing goods, a tourist info booth, another gas station, the King Coin
Laundromat, Karvonen’s furniture and appliance store, Accents Floral
and Décor. (Maxwell, Neutral Hero 2)
If he had chosen to represent, to materially stage, this description,

Maxwell would have run up against the limits of the stage. In any way
he might have gone about it, he would have arguably had to engage
in some degree of abstraction. For example, he could have chosen to
build a few actual facades of buildings representing some of the retail
establishments mentioned. Such an option, however, would surely
not have been cost-efficient. Or, he might have chosen to put placards
on the stage with some of the names of the retail shops mentioned
inscribed on them. Either way, the resulting scenic situations would
have been abstractions. Instead, Maxwell chose to stage the begin-
ning of Neutral Hero on the nearly bare stage framed by an oversized
proscenium arch, with actors standing center-stage speaking a detailed
description of the city.
104 Ioana Jucan
The details chosen are significant; they show something about the
times we live in. They are mostly names of retail establishments and
different other businesses, all of which have a familiar ring. Intriguingly,
some of these names in fact help us identify (locate) the particular town
that is being described: a quick Internet search reveals that Karvonen’s
furniture and appliance store, Overland Insurance (and others) are all
located (solely) in Perham, Minnesota. Others, which are intriguingly
marked in the playscript by a registered trademark symbol (“®”), are
chain stores that can be found in different cities in the United States.
The combination of the two gives a sense of concrete generality, which
the nearly bare stage reinforces. The town being described in the begin-
ning of Neutral Hero is thus a “whatever town,” a sort of “anytown” in
the United States (and, possibly, beyond).
The description at the beginning of Neutral Hero is an impossible
description: in the absence of any material (necessarily abstracted)
representations of the town on stage, the audience members inevi-
tably fill in the visual gaps by drawing on their own memories and
imaginations. At the same time, being identified primarily through
different businesses, through different (physical) places of the (now
predominantly virtual) market located in it, the “anytown” of this
impossible description – any town that might be filled in from mem-
ory and the imagination – is inescapably of this time, of this neoliberal
age. Such a town – says one of the characters, Janet (played by Janet
Coleman), early on in the performance – “does not belong to us.” It
does not belong to us just like time does not belong to us (anymore).
For, as Keith (played by Keith Connolly) tells us immediately after
the description of the town, “there isn’t time – endless time to pine
and be bored with time. Now it’s a thing, something to capture and
cherish – to own each day, slipping away” (Maxwell, Neutral Hero 3;
emphases added).
The town does not belong to us (anymore) because most of it (if
not all) is private property owned either by different businesses or by
the “citizens” that Bob (played by Bob Feldman) refers to in the bit of
monologue following Keith’s intervention. And time does not belong to
us (anymore) because, under neoliberal conditions, it is a resource – a
scarce resource, in fact. It is a resource to be bought and sold, as though
it were “a thing, something […] to own each day” – except that most
people cannot afford to own it, and so they sell it as though it was theirs
to begin with. It does not belong to us because we keep running out of
it: rising time pressure is key to the functioning of neoliberalism as a
regime of accumulation.
Through its insistence on (being) theatre, Neutral Hero does not so

much seek to reclaim the town or time by calling for the redistribution
of property or some legal measure. Rather, it seems to resist the notions
of possession and possessing(s) – principles at the core of the neolib-
eral form of life – altogether. The nearly bare stage of Neutral Hero is a
situation in which the question of possession and possessing(s) does
not arise, or, if it does, then it presents itself as impossible or absurd.
It would be strange for an audience member to wonder during the
performance: to which character does the left part of the stage belong?
A strange, out-of-place thought, indeed. Neither is a spectator likely to
ask her/himself which one is the house that Anonymous’s parents own
on the stage, for Maxwell insistently refused to physically represent the
town and any house on stage. It would seem quite strange for an audi-
ence member to even think to her/himself that the chair on which each
actor sits upstage belongs to her/him, for all the chairs are alike and
they insistently resist any representations: the chair is a chair to be sat
on; it is not a stand-in for anything. And the actors sit on them when
they watch the other (non-seated) actors on stage perform. Playing spec-
tators, the seated actors mirror the audience in the house (the patrons
who themselves do not properly own their seats). The stage in Neutral
Hero is a possibility (I resist calling it a place) of being there and passing
through, of coming and leaving – that is all.
There is something peculiar about this description of the town, of
absent objects, especially when considering objects as possessions as
part of a character’s subjectivity in an enlightenment model of selfhood
that has persisted to this day. The (absent) town, the (absent) objects
described, are withdrawn from the circle of exchange, from the domi-
nation of the “equivalent form” (to use Adorno’s expression, borrowed
from Marx, in Minima Moralia 227); their qualitative, phenomenal
dimension is potentially redeemed (reclaimed) in and through perfor-
mance. The effect is not far removed from that of objects in a child’s
play, as Adorno insightfully describes it:
In his purposeless activity the child, by a subterfuge, sides with

use-value against exchange value. Just because he deprives the things
with which he plays of their mediated usefulness, he seeks to rescue
in them what is benign towards men and not what subserves the
exchange relation that equally deforms men and things. The little
trucks travel nowhere and the tiny barrels on them are empty; yet
they remain true to their destiny by not performing, not participat-
ing in the process of abstraction that levels down that destiny, but
106 Ioana Jucan
instead abide as allegories of what they are specifically for. Scattered,

it is true, but not ensnared, they wait to see whether society will
finally remove the social stigma on them […] The unreality of games
gives notice that reality is not yet real. Unconsciously they rehearse
the right life. (228)
Withdrawn from the circle of exchange, the (absent) objects described

on the stage of Neutral Hero can be said to rehearse the right life – a life
that is not reduced to the fungibility on which the system of profit-
making runs. The description performed on the stage of Neutral Hero
invites audience members to fill in the (visual) gaps from their experi-
ence, thus calling forth the qualitative dimension of objects that is lost
when objects are treated (merely) as exchangeable, as means to the end
of profit. In this way, a different relation between subject and object
potentially emerges, one that does not consist in the domination of the
subject over the object.
Such a relation can be called mimetic (in one sense of the term) – it is
a relation of assimilation rather than of domination.11 Adorno refers to
this mimetic element of thinking (and knowing) in terms of an “elective
affinity between the knower and the known” (Negative Dialectics (1966)
45). It marks an instance in which thinking “initially surrenders itself to
its subject matter,” in which it “snuggles up to an object” (to extrapo-
late Adorno’s expressions, modified; Notes to Literature 130). This is an
instance in which thinking “exercises an emphatic influence” (132)
rather than an aggressive one. It comports towards its subject matter
tenderly, in a loving way.
Yet, for such a mimetic relation to come into being and endure, the
subject needs to be reconfigured. One direction of this reconfiguration
that comes into play in Neutral Hero is that of the subjectless subject, of
the subject absent from her/himself, one who leaves one’s self behind.
This is the kind of subject involved in mimesis (in the other, related,
sense of the term), as Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe remarks in his reading
of Diderot’s insights into “The Paradox of the Actor”:
One must oneself be nothing, have nothing proper to oneself except

an equal aptitude for all sorts of things, roles, characters, functions,
and so on. The paradox states a law of impropriety, which is also
the very law of mimesis: only a man without qualities, the being
without properties or specificity, the subjectless subject (absent from
himself) is able to present or produce the general. (Lacoue-Labarthe,
“Diderot” 258–259)
In and through the gesture of imitation (mimesis), the actor becomes

one (of us all) – a (concrete) being in general. At play here is a finding
(of oneself) that is also a leaving (an absenting from one’s self, from
one’s subjecthood) – a being without having, a being without the will
to possess.
Admittedly, this conception of mimesis as the law of impropriety
differs slightly from Adorno’s, despite the many points of convergence
between the two.12 Adorno understands mimesis primarily in terms of
expression – of “objective expression, far removed from psychology”
(Aesthetic Theory (1970) 164). This is not a matter of art and the artist
“expressing something” (ibid.). The artist only contributes to expression
her/his “ability to mimic” (ibid.), that is all. Lacoue-Labarthe, on the
other hand, conceives of mimesis in terms of self-affection and plastic-
ity (Magun, “Negativity” 126). In Magun’s words, “Lacoue-Labarthe
understands mimesis, rather, from the side of its subject (and not what
he or she identifies with)” (127), whereas Adorno approaches it primar-
ily from the side of the object. But these two directions are possible
simultaneously, and both of them come into play in Neutral Hero.
In Neutral Hero, the law of impropriety is summed up by Andrew, the
man wearing a mask (played by Andrew Weisell): “No more I no more
me no more mine. And that has to be real, too” (17). Yet, for that to
be real, the not-I and not-mine, the actor who is nothing must be able
to present or produce the general insistently, and concretely, by assert-
ing her/his being there on the stage in the moment of the theatrical
performance. The modality of the law of impropriety is in fact that of
concrete generality.
The actors of Neutral Hero assert the law of impropriety, produce the
concretely general, in several ways. In many cases, the actors play them-
selves. For example, Bob Feldman plays Bob Feldman. When I saw the
performance at the Kitchen, I – along with other audience members who
knew that the “real” name of the actor playing Bob is Bob Feldman –
burst into laughter as we heard Janet saying: “He [Anonymous] drifts
and continues. He comes upon Bob Feldman in this void” (Maxwell,
Neutral Hero 10; brackets added). I know that it was hearing Bob
Feldman called Bob Feldman on stage that made us burst into laughter,
but I am not sure why we had this reaction. Perhaps it was because of
the tension we sensed in that moment between the concreteness of this
name and of Bob’s insistent being there, standing still center-stage, and
the generality of the figure of Bob, the affectionate older man who talks
about friendship, within the story of Anonymous that unfolds during
the performance.
108 Ioana Jucan
Yet another way in which the law of impropriety plays out in Neutral
Hero has to do with Maxwell’s staging of humanity: through the figure
of Anonymous and of the other 11 actors engaged in telling what I take
to be a complex story told in concretely general terms. As I have begun
to suggest, these personages are intriguingly both general and concrete.
They are instantiations of a concrete generality that is distinctive of
theatrical performance and that differs markedly from the abstraction
characteristic of the neoliberal condition.
Thinking about the human, in the 99th aphorism of Minima Moralia
(“Gold Assay”), Adorno provocatively writes: “The human is indissolu-
bly linked with imitation: a human being only becomes human at all
by imitating other human beings” (154). Not only is the human inextri-
cably linked with imitation for Adorno but so is also the human capac-
ity for reason. From an Adornian perspective, human reason develops
through imitative behavior, originally associated with an affect of love.
Engaging the capacity to reason thus means being reasonable, tender
in one’s being with others, be they animate or inanimate. But the
capitalist way of life has led to the instrumentalization of reason that
extinguishes “our gift for imitation” (to borrow Honneth’s expression,
Pathologies 62). As Honneth explains, “the pressure to act according to
the action schema of exchange in ever more spheres requires people
to concentrate their capacity for reason on the egocentric calculation
of economic utility” (61–62). Under the domination of the standard
of exchange of everything there is, one “unlearns how to perceive the
world” (to borrow Honneth’s expression, 62) by being attuned to a
qualitative dimension of what there is, by surrendering to the object in
a process of assimilation rather than domination.
Now, if Adorno is right, the human seems to be a strikingly theatrical
figure: the human becomes human by imitating, by having nothing
proper to oneself. In their concrete generality, the people inhabiting the
nearly bare stage of Neutral Hero are indeed such theatrical figures. And
despite their seeming affectlessness, they are engaged in some touching
moments of love and tenderness. One such moment that stuck with me
is that of Anonymous’s brief encounter with his father, before he (the
father) leaves again:
ANONYMOUS: So here you are. What happened.

FATHER: Time got away from me. I don’t know. I left you, you grew
up though. All that time. Can we make that up?
ANONYMOUS: No.
FATHER:
ANONYMOUS: You can do a lot with time. But not that. […]
ANONYMOUS: You know, you let me down. I – feel really tight in
the chest. Really – weak. But I. And I can’t swallow, my throat feels
parched. And. That’s – awkward. And. Tense. As. […]
ANONYMOUS: I’m trying to talk but you’re not listening!
FATHER: Speak!
ANONYMOUS: I need you to help me. Then I can speak!
FATHER: You’re not anything! (21–23)
The Father’s last line in this exchange brings to mind Lacoue-Labarthe’s

definition of the actor – as a nothing who is able to imitate every-
thing.13 Following this line, Anonymous lifts the Father in his arms and
carries him along the imaginary line demarcated by the proscenium
arch, in-between two mask-wearing men standing at the opposite ends
of the stage.
This is an instance of imitative behavior – a somewhat humorous
though touching reversal of the usual gesture of the father carrying
the son. When this moment comes to an end with a song about “the
world/That’s yours and mine” (23), Anonymous lies down on the stage,
facing up. Bob Feldman comes to sit next to him and, taking him in his
arms, utters:
BOB: Hold that child – hold it through the night and hold it till
dawn and hold it till you can’t stay awake. And you decide that being
a friend is the thing that matters. (23)
These words, “you decide that being a friend is the thing that matters,”
constitute one of the three statements around which the story that gets
told in Neutral Hero grows. The other two are: “friendship is important
to try;” and “not a lot of people care, so I thank you for listening” –
which the Mother addresses to the audience and to the actors on stage
towards the end of the performance (23, 27).
Keeping all this in mind, I would like to suggest that the political
dimension of Neutral Hero can be understood in the sense of Jacques
Derrida’s conceptualization of “the work of the political” (Politics 8):
“the properly political act or operation amount to creating (to produc-
ing, to making, etc.) the most friendship possible.” And “friendship
consists in loving” – it is “to love before being loved” (ibid.), to love
without the will to possess. For, as Adorno notes, possessiveness, the
desire to possess the other, “forfeits the person whom it debases to
‘mine’” (Minima Moralia 79). By contrast, friendship becomes a matter
110 Ioana Jucan
of production, of a giving of time for being insistently there and being

there together in order to figure out a way of thinking and being
together in these times. It is a matter of love not as a strictly private
affair, as it is most often conceived today, but as a political concept.
And, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri remark, when “love is con-
ceived politically,” the ultimate act of love comes to be the “creation
of a new humanity” (Multitude 356). Adorno makes a related point in
“Education after Auschwitz” (1967), where – through Charles Fourier –
he suggests that love (as warmth and attraction) must first “be produced
through a humane societal order” (Critical Models 202).
Neutral Hero can be said to engage in the creation of a new humanity
undergirded by a humane societal order by redeeming (reclaiming) the
concept of being human in the ways I have suggested above. But there
seems to be a remainder to this gesture of redeeming. The remainder
lies in the “neutral hero” of the title, which hearkens back to the lib-
eral conception of the (universal) human subject with its roots in the
enlightenment.
Central to the liberal humanist conception of the human subject
that goes back to John Locke, “the greatest teacher of Enlightenment”
(Taylor, Sources 174), is a separation of the public political self (the citi-
zen) from “the private individual with feelings, connections to others,
and even love” (Heckman, Private Selves 39). In the liberal humanist
conception, the citizen is neutral in the sense that he (it is always a he)
is abstract and disembodied; “[h]is [sic] personal concerns and iden-
tity are not relevant to his public political self” (Private Selves 6). This
conception of the citizen is coupled with a notion of the individual as
a “disengaged self,” capable of objectifying not only the surrounding
world but also his emotions and inclinations, fears, and compulsions,
achieving thereby a kind of distance and self-possession that allows him
to act “rationally” (Taylor, Sources 21). This autonomous individual who
has “his property in his own person” (Locke, Two Treatises 79) becomes
the subject of human rights, foremost among which is the right to prop-
erty.14 At play in this conception of a self-possessed subject who can lay
property claims to the things of the world (which thus become posses-
sions) is an enlightenment model of the subject. Behind this model of
the subject, behind the neutral liberal subject and citizen, hides “a very
distinct identity: the white, male property owner of the liberal tradi-
tion” (Heckman, Private Selves 6). With this in mind, the question that
now arises is how Neutral Hero deals with this ideology.
It bears noting that Maxwell casts a black actor (Alex Delinois) to
play the neutral hero – a decision that undercuts the hero-citizen-white
man associations. What is more, Anonymous is not the sole hero of

the piece. Maxwell’s hero is in fact multiple. For, all of the figures
onstage make up the (impossible) neutral hero, whose complex story
they tell throughout the performance. The neutral hero is one of us
all – concretely general. Being “one,” they are multiple. Also, as shown
in this chapter, the neutral hero emerges as one (of us all) that is essen-
tially (in fact, theatrically) propertyless. And, in contradistinction to the
liberal citizen, the (multiple) neutral hero of the performance is not an
abstraction. Instead, they appear as instantiations of the concrete gener-
ality at the core of the theatrical performance. This concrete generality
makes possible an engagement with the complexity of a contemporary
situation. It concerns a way of thinking that, while remaining anchored
in its times and historical conditions, is also removed from it, “even
though by a hair’s breadth” (to extrapolate an Adornian expression,
Minima Moralia 247).
The two gestures at the heart of this way of thinking are, as I have
hinted so far without explicitly identifying them as such, those of
calling into question and of redeeming (reclaiming). “Yearning back-
wards and forwards” (to extrapolate an expression from Neutral Hero 9)
between a liberal age and the contemporary neoliberal times, Neutral
Hero calls into question an enlightenment model of the subject and
the will to possess that are still at the heart of the neoliberal form of
life. To be clear, my claim does not intend to suggest that not much
has changed since the liberal humanist age. Though an enlightenment
model of the subject has persisted to this day, in neoliberal times it has
become coupled with a new mode of production (often called Post-
Fordist) – one predicated on the structural precarity of all forms of life
and the notion of “immaterial labor.” This is a form of labor performed
at the level of subjectivity, for “the ‘raw material’ of immaterial labor is
subjectivity and the ‘ideological’ environment in which this subjectiv-
ity lives and reproduces” (Lazzarato online). Under neoliberal condi-
tions, this “‘ideological’ environment” thrives on the manipulations
of abstractions (at least partly) dependent on software (which is thus
different from the liberal humanist “‘ideological’ environment”).
Yet, immaterial labor is not new to the theatre: theatrical labor has
always consisted – at least to some extent – in the theatre worker’s
“capacities to make something out of nothing” (to borrow Rebecca
Schneider’s expression for “immaterial labor” [“It Seems As If”] 157). At
play here is a seemingly unbounded potentiality of becoming, akin to
that of the subjectless subject who asserts the law of mimesis. If deter-
mined by the will to possess, this potentiality is likely to be actualized
112 Ioana Jucan
in the neoliberal subject. If oriented towards tenderness, which always

takes time, maybe there is a chance to resist its actualization into the
neoliberal subject. As I have sought to show in this chapter, Neutral Hero
belongs to the latter case.
The gesture of calling into question that Neutral Hero enacts is differ-
ent from an overt critique, for it does not consist in openly denouncing
or pointing the finger. Rather, it consists in treating the subject matter
tenderly, with patience, which Adorno calls “the virtue of thinking”
(“Notes on Philosophical Thinking” (1965) 130). This gesture of calling
into question gives time for (re)thinking – in concretely general terms –
different situations, ways of being, habits of living and thinking. Such a
mode of engaging with and responding to the spirit of the times that is
not properly speaking a critique is noteworthy if we take seriously Luc
Boltanski and Eve Chiapello’s provocative claim that “critique is one
of the most powerful motors” of “the new spirit of capitalism” (New
Spirit 42). The kind of critique (as a gesture of calling into question)
made manifest in Neutral Hero differs from the critique Boltanski and
Chiapello refer to in that the latter is predicated upon the separation
of the subject exercising the critique over the object of the critique. It
is yet another instantiation of the domination of the subject over the
object. What gets lost in the separation is the possibility of understand-
ing a given historical situation in its complexity. The gesture of calling
into question, by contrast, is in line with Adorno’s notion of thought
(critical thought) as a mode of comportment, as a kind of mimetic
behavior – in a loving way and in concretely general terms. In this way,
Neutral Hero can be said to extend Adorno’s thought, expressed primar-
ily as a critique, for these neoliberal times.
At the same time, Neutral Hero seeks to emphatically redeem (reclaim)
humanity and friendship in a neoliberal age in which capitalism is the
system of co-option par excellence – of everything and anything (think
only of how notions of friendship and “sharing” have been co-opted
by Facebook, for example). In the “Finale” of Minima Moralia, Adorno
defines the task of thinking as “the attempt to contemplate all things
as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption”
(247). Such a task seems impossible “because it presupposes a stand-
point removed, even though by a hair’s breadth, from the scope of exist-
ence” (ibid.). At the same time, it requires that thinking grow within
and out of a specific form of life. But, under capitalist conditions, this
is a form of damaged life, and so any act of thought that grows out of it
“is also marked […] by the same distortion and indigence that it seeks
to escape” (247). Seemingly impossible, the movement of thought at
play here must therefore be dialectical: concretely general. The task of

thinking to contemplate all things from the standpoint of redemption
is a demand that it (thought, that is) grows “from felt contact with its
objects” (247). Beside this demand, as Adorno notes, “the question of
the reality or unreality of redemption itself hardly matters” (247).
If thinking is indeed a mode of comportment, then taking up this
demand, contemplating things from the standpoint of redemption,
ultimately becomes a gesture of redeeming. This is a gesture of treating
the object (subject matter) of thought tenderly, lovingly, giving it time
in order to withdraw it from the circle of perpetual exchange of any-
thing and everything for the sake of profit. It is a gesture of recuperating
the object in its qualitative, phenomenal moments – those moments in
which the encounter with the object is lived so fully (in a way that does
not reduce life to the fungibility on which the system of profit-making
runs) that it contributes to the very constitution of the subject (a sub-
jectless subject having nothing proper to itself), which assimilates itself
to it. It is such a gesture that the theatrical performance of Neutral Hero
appears to enact.
Notes
I am grateful to Patricia Ybarra, Rebecca Schneider, and Timothy Bewes for their
feedback to earlier drafts of this chapter. I would also like to thank the editors of
this anthology for their very helpful comments and suggestions.
1. This expression recurs in Adorno’s writings. In the essay “Culture and
Administration” (1972), for instance, Adorno refers to “the world as it is” as
“the administered world” (108).
2. In Negative Dialectics, Adorno writes in this regard: “Things congeal as frag-
ments of that which was subjugated; to rescue it means to love things” (191).
3. Adorno writes about “a loveless disregard for things which necessarily turns
against people too” (Minima Moralia 39). At another point in Minima Moralia
he remarks that “[w]e are forgetting how to give presents [gifts],” for “real
giving” means “choosing, expending time, going out of one’s way, thinking
of the other as subject” (42).
4. Galloway’s exemplification of how “the prevalence of software” plays out in
today’s economy is worth citing at length: “Monsanto, Equifax, or Google –
they are all software companies at some basic level. As one of the leading
industrial giants, Google uses the pure math of graph theory for monetary
valorization. Monsanto translates living organisms into bioinformatic gene
sequences, thereby subjecting them to information processing. Equifax, in
the sphere of consumer credit, leverages complex algorithms to extract value
from databases. But what is software? Software consists of symbolic tokens
that are combined using mathematical functions (such as addition, subtrac-
tion, and true-false logic) and logical control structures (such as ‘if x then y’)”
(Poverty of Philosophy 358).
114 Ioana Jucan
5. Adorno repeatedly emphasized the importance of concreteness to thinking. In

Negative Dialectics, for instance, he writes: “We are not to philosophize about
concrete things; we are to philosophize, rather, out of these things” (33).
6. Brecht’s Lehrstücke are also a case in point. They are attempted literalizations
of a political-philosophical program.
7. According to the New York City Players website (online): “Undertaking the
utterly impossible feat of portraying neutrality,” Neutral Hero “offers itself to
the ancient stream of humanity.”
8. In this respect, Maxwell’s piece has affinities with Beckett’s theatre works, as
Adorno understands them.
9. To give but a few examples in this regard, a 2006 New York Times article
about the theatre of Richard Maxwell is entitled “Playwright’s Trademark Is
Deadpan. Now He Wants to Tweak It” (McKinley online; emphasis added).
Another article published in The Guardian writes: “Richard Maxwell’s plays
have been called robotic, flat and unemotional – and that’s just the way he
likes it” (Ellis online; emphases added). In his recent review of Neutral Hero,
Ben Brantley (online) rehearses this characterization of Maxwell’s theatre:
“As a director of his own work, he is known for coaxing flat-line perfor-
mances from actors (often amateurs) that suggest that they have recently
been lobotomized.”
10. In a recent interview, Maxwell disclosed that the town he described in
Neutral Hero is Perham, Minnesota, where his parents have a farm, and
which he has visited yearly since 1977.
11. Adorno writes in this regard: “Mimetic behaviour […] assimilates itself to
that something [that is the subject matter of mimetic behavior]” (cited in
Jay, “Mimesis and Mimetology” 122).
12. For an account of these points of convergence and also of differences in
Adorno and Lacoue-Labarthe’s conceptualizations of mimesis, see Martin
Jay’s “Mimesis and Mimetology” and Magun’s “Negativity (Dis)embodied.”
13. Admittedly, Maxwell might not have had in mind Lacoue-Labarthe when he
wrote this line, but I think this association is nevertheless consistent with his
insistence on the theatrical condition in this performance.
14. Here is Locke’s formulation in this sense: “The reason why men enter into
society is the preservation of their property; and the end why they choose
and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as
guards and fences to the properties of all members of society” (Locke, Two
Treatises 138).
7
Pleasing Shapes and Other Devilry:
An Adornian Investigation of La
Pocha Nostra Praxis
Stephen Robins
Beauty, for Adorno, if it can exist at all, will not be created out of the
(failed) idealism of society, rather it will be born of contradiction. In
his Aesthetic Theory, Adorno rejects idealist aesthetics because it offers
false consolations to a society that is inherently corrupted. Yet despite
the “uncertainty over what purpose it serves,” art “is condemned to
provide the world […] with a consolation that […] strengthens the spell
of that which the autonomy of art wants to free itself” (Aesthetic Theory,
Adorno 2). Art is expected to do the one thing that it cannot and must
not do, namely to offer consolation. Only autonomous beauty can suc-
ceed and it does so by not serving society at all: it succeeds as it fails
to produce an illusion; this, he says, is the true goal of the beautiful.
This paradox, however, does not suggest that the beautiful ought to be
abandoned altogether “because the concept of the beautiful is not a
mere intellectual error but is itself closely bound up with the dialectic
of enlightenment” ( Jarvis, Adorno 110). A cancellation of the concept
of beauty would neglect Enlightenment’s failed universal values, and
thus “it is only on the basis of redemption, rather than liquidation, of
[beauty and art’s] illusion, that it becomes possible to imagine freedom
from illusion” (116).
The aim of this chapter is to examine Adorno’s claims for beauty in
the specific case of the international performance company and arts
organization, La Pocha Nostra. Founded by Guillermo Gómez-Peña in
1993, La Pocha Nostra create hybrid, intercultural, cross-border perfor-
mances in collaboration with performance artists from across the globe.
In what follows, my consideration of “border art” will seek to open up
a conceptual space for the practice of a critical aesthetics.
The chapter revolves partly around an examination of La Pocha
Nostra’s 2007 performance, The Barbarian Collection (Arnolfini Gallery,
115
116 Stephen Robins
Bristol) in which I participated: the performance is apposite to a discus-

sion of beauty first because of its staging on a fashion catwalk, perhaps
the quintessential setting for the parade of idealized beauty, but also
second, in relation to Adorno’s wished-for redemption of the beautiful
which explodes the false idealism of the enlightenment project. What
is displayed in The Barbarian Collection is of course anything but the
ideal; rather, La Pocha Nostra’s fantastical and grotesque elaborations of
human beings amaze and confound their audiences and prompt con-
siderations of what a beautiful performance might be. What it must not
be is an image of utopia; if utopia is to be approached at all it must be
done so negatively and immanently (see Jarvis, Adorno 100). Obliquely
referencing Arthur Schopenhauer,1 Adorno writes:
If thought is in any way to gain a relation to art it must be on the

basis that something in reality, something [behind] the veil spun by
the interplay of institutions and false needs, objectively demands
art, and that it demands an art that speaks for what the veil hides.
(Aesthetic Theory 18)
In his essay “New Global Culture” Gómez-Peña gestures toward the

“veil” as he critiques the allure of the exotic other. “Corporate multicul-
turalism” (12), Gómez-Peña writes, trades on ethnicity and difference
to sell its products and the pick and mix approach produces chic, sexy,
and deadening images to be consumed. However, this
mainstream bizarre has effectively blurred the borders between pop

culture, performance, and “reality”; between audience and performer;
between the surface and the underground; between marginal identi-
ties and fashionable trends. (13)
The mainstream bizarre then has the potential to render activism and
marginality anodyne, and yet La Pocha Nostra resolutely engage in
creating radical, experimental performance work. The “mainstream
bizarre” to which Gómez-Peña refers, seems to me to be an evolu-
tion of idealist aesthetics, a series of perfect and appealing relations to
the emptied-out (non-autonomous or heteronomous) objects of the
culture industry. The solution to this problem might be via recourse
to a Kantian autonomy of the aesthetic object which serves not soci-
ety but itself: “heteronomous art […] affirms rather than challenges
society” (Hamilton, “Adorno” 398). Their continual undermining of
conventional beauty (as promoted and authorized by popular culture)
Pleasing Shapes and Other Devilry 117
is established in the performance moment investigated through hybrid-

ized identities.
Elements of subjective responses to the object of beauty are particu-
larly useful to the analysis of La Pocha Nostra’s performances. Adorno’s
hopeful and ambitious plan for autonomous art is premised on the
idea of aura and owes much to the earlier work by Walter Benjamin,
in particular “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
(1936). In “Adorno’s Aesthetic Concept of Aura,” Yvonne Sherratt sets
out the ways in which Adorno’s work agrees with, and diverges from,
Benjamin. It is not necessary for my purposes to rehearse Adorno’s argu-
ment with Benjamin but I will elaborate the ideas that are productive
to a discussion of performance, and in particular how these relate to La
Pocha Nostra.
The act of aesthetic engagement, for Adorno, ordinarily would

always consist of both interpretation and receptivity. However, in
the particular case of aura, the Subject is stimulated to interpret the
Object but unable to do so. In this instance for Adorno something
quite distinctive occurs. (Sherratt, “Adorno’s Aesthetic Concept” 166)
The concept of distance is important. Benjamin’s principal objective

in his essay is to welcome the loss of aura in artworks in the modern
age. The auratic object for Benjamin followed three historical tracks, in
the first instance via ritual where the object of art produces distance by
the dint of its untouchability (157–158); second, the autonomous art
object, placed for example in a gallery, appears distant to the subject
because of its unique temporal and special placement. Finally, in the age
of “reproducibility” the art object loses its aura: “Even the most perfect
reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in
time and space” (Benjamin, “Work of Art” 214, in Sherratt, “Adorno’s
Aesthetic Concept” 158). Art’s “enigma is the capacity simultaneously to
‘communicate’ to and ‘conceal’ something from the observer” (Sherratt,
“Adorno’s Aesthetic Concept” 162). The subject is driven yet thwarted
by the desire to apply concepts to something which cannot have such
interpretations applied to it (see 164). Bypassing its thwarted intel-
lectual function, the subject’s aesthetic engagement with the auratic
work of art, in fact, becomes solely one of intensified receptivity (see
166). Analyzing Adorno’s relationship to the concept of aura, Sherratt
remarks that through immersion, in Adorno’s language, there is a loss
of self, which occurs as a result of the desire to understand something
which cannot be understood by the subject. The quality of the artwork
118 Stephen Robins
in this case is enigmatic (see 164). Autonomous art in this way devel-
ops an interest in the subject which it refuses to explain: the artwork
remains a thing-in-itself in the same way that an autonomous person
exists for him/herself. Sherratt suggests that this intensified receptivity
explains Adorno’s assertion regarding the subject’s “pain in the face of
beauty” (Aesthetic Theory 73): it captures the sense that the artwork can-
not deliver what it appears to deliver and this is felt as pain; it produces
a visceral response. This is of particular interest in live performance
where a direct engagement and feedback exists between the audience as
subject and the performer/performance as object.
The unstillable longing in the face of beauty […] is the longing for
the fulfilment of what was promised. […] Idealist aesthetics […]
reduces the artwork to what it in theoretical terms symbolizes and
thus trespasses against the spirit in that artwork. (Aesthetic Theory 82)
Additionally for Adorno, beauty remembers an ancient fear: produced

originally out of a reaction to death. Bearing in mind this dual nature of
beauty, the disappointment of the broken promise of idealism and the
ancient fear, it follows that the reaction to beauty is one of, at the very
least, agitation. Beauty is therefore the echo of the very thing which abne-
gates it: a rose which anticipates decay is plastic; the sunset, only briefly
holds back darkness. With the idea of “intensified receptivity” and “pain
in the face of beauty,” I move on to refer directly to La Pocha Nostra.
La Pocha Nostra is a touring Chicano2 performance art company
under the direction of Guillermo Gómez-Peña, with fellow members
Roberto Sifuentes and Violeta Luna. In addition to the three core
members, La Pocha Nostra works regularly with non-Chicano/Latin
American artists. For example, Rachel Rogers, Alex Bradley, Rajni Shah,
and Persis Jade Marvala provide a stable of core associates in the United
Kingdom. Working with local producers, La Pocha Nostra recruit artists
to perform in works created in a particular city. La Pocha Nostra pre-
sent performances to linguistically mixed audiences across the world,
combining modulating linguistic address – first English, then Spanish
as well as paralanguage. This linguistically mixed composition is also
reflected in their approach to costume, which borrows from different
cultures and fashion styles to assemble what Gómez-Peña refers to as
hybridized personas (such as Sifuentes’s Cyber Vato) and develops what
I am calling a pull-and-push aesthetic, which captures the dual aspects
of border performance. The pull half of the aesthetic I argue La Pocha
Nostra employs, draws the subject into an immersed position within
the performance; the push part develops a distanced subjectivity; I will

engage with these concepts in the performance examples and in relation
to Adorno’s aesthetic theory.
As one of the founding members of BAW/TAF in San Diego – the
English acronym stands for, Border Arts Workshop (in Spanish, Taller
de Arte Fronterizo) – Gómez-Peña cemented his place as an important
figure in performance art, as well as elaborating a political stance in
relation to US/Mexican border relations. Jo-Anne Berelowitz has written
that BAF/TAW’s “revolutionary dream of a borderless world of multicul-
tural exchange, mutual respect and peaceful cooperation was imbued
with belief in the transformative power of art” (Berelowitz, “Conflict”
71).3 Gómez-Peña’s evolved position is different from the one espoused
by BAW/TAF; he is not so much concerned with the physical and
national boundaries which control flows of people and money, rather
he sees the border as a zone of reflection and contested identities. Ila
Nicole Sheren notes photographer David Taylor’s reflection on the word
“border” which for him possesses subtle but important differences in
English and Spanish (Portable Borders 21). In English it denotes a fram-
ing device, the margin between one area and another; a buffer zone,
or in the anthropological discourse of Victor Turner, a liminal zone.
In Spanish there is a strong sense that the border is a barrier; it is not
so much mysterious as impregnable (David Taylor in Sheren, Portable
Borders 21). Developing my idea of the pull-push aesthetic, I want to
suggest that the border/frontera, operates as both a set of conditions
for performance as well as a set of strategies by La Pocha Nostra. So, as
well as a zone of intrigue (the English inflected “border”), which pulls
them into an immersed subjectivity within the performance, La Pocha
Nostra also create a site for barriers (in the Spanish inflection of frontera)
erected to keep out the visitor, constituted as audience. Sheren, reading
Walter Mignolo, elaborates the idea of the borderland as a place where
the theorist comes with his or her (Western) assumptions and where
objectivity is challenged. Accordingly, “border thinking is the genera-
tion of knowledge from the borderland, rather than from an imagined
exterior, looking at the region from a distant perspective” (Portable
Borders 128). In Mignolo’s formulation, border thinking ought to be an
ambitious reimagining of the relationship between subject and object.
The goal is to erase the distinction between the knower and the
known, between a “hybrid” object (the borderland as the known)
and a “pure” disciplinary or interdisciplinary subject (the knower),
uncontaminated by the border matters he or she describes. To
120 Stephen Robins
change the terms of the conversation it is necessary to overcome the

distinction between subject and object. […] Border thinking is the
space in which this new logic could be thought out. (Mignolo, Local
Histories 18)
I want to make an argument for considering border thinking as a cri-

tique of “identity thinking,” the problematic form of subjective reason-
ing examined by Adorno and Horkheimer in Dialectics of Enlightenment
(1947). They suggest that “identity thinking strives to eliminate all
otherness by suppressing the nonidentical with the categories of formal
identity” ( Johnson, “Aesthetic of Negativity” 54). I suggest that identity
thinking here accords with Mignolo’s “‘pure’ disciplinary or interdisci-
plinary subject,” whose “distant perspectives” qualify him/her as the
“knower.” Mignolo’s subject sounds like the Enlightenment subject that
Adorno and Horkheimer have identified, whose “distorted rational fac-
ulty, seeks to absorb his/her environment, the world of nature and fellow
humans, into the categories of his/her own subjective reason” ( Johnson,
“Aesthetics of Negativity” 54). If a border is a place and time where border
thinking may happen, that challenges the relationship between subject
(as knower) and object (as that which is to be known) then it seems to
me that Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra are strenuously engaged in
such a challenge. In the context of a La Pocha Nostra performance, the
relationship between the object (the performance) and the subject (the
spectator) is in a state of flux. The altered state of relations between
the object of art and the subject is of crucial importance to Adorno too
in his aesthetic theory. I want to consider La Pocha Nostra’s performance
modes as a series of invitations to think and experience the border as
constitutive of a new way of thinking the subject and object, and will do
so by paying attention to their 2008 performance, Divino Corpo, at the
National Review of Live Art (NRLA). Additionally, I argue, Divino Corpo
is an invitation to consider and experience the beautiful and the ugly.
Earlier I discussed how the subject/audience member’s receptivity to an
artwork comes about involuntarily following a desire to apply concepts
to an artwork, but where the artwork appears to actively thwart such an
application. More than in the case with play-based theatre and a lot of
live art, La Pocha Nostra performance depends on, or is facilitated by, an
evolving audience relationship to the performance. Indeed, documenta-
tion of La Pocha Nostra performances has a strong focus on audience
responses to action, or audience intervention in action.
In this analysis of La Pocha Nostra’s Divino Corpo (NRLA, 2008) I want to
focus on audience engagement, as an example of “intensified receptivity”
of the subject in relation to the autonomous art object, in this case the
performance. I want to return to the idea of a pull-push aesthetic which
I floated earlier; I will deal with the push aspect in due course, but here
I want to suggest that “intensified receptivity” is an example of pull in
the pull-push aesthetic. Presented in the round in the main space of The
Arches in Glasgow, Divino Corpo sees Gómez-Peña, Sifuentes and Luna
team up with collaborators Rachel Rogers and Alex Bradley. The three
core members of La Pocha Nostra – Gómez-Peña, Sifuentes, and Luna –
were on separate elevated staging areas ten feet apart. The three per-
formers’ action sequences occurred simultaneously over one hour, the
audience moving freely between stations according to what attracted
their attention. Rather than describe each action in detail I will account
for some specific audience interactions with the performance. The core
members were assisted by other performers to execute their action
(for example in the case of Luna’s final action, she was bound head to
foot in metres of heavy-duty rope by performance assistants). While
Sifuentes and Luna stayed on their individual stations, Gómez-Peña
occupied two, moving between them, one with a chair only and the
other a lectern with microphone, from which he addressed the audi-
ence. Luna’s actions were characterized by high energy, which included
stabbing an ox heart taped to her abdomen and sticking pins into false
breasts that she wore over her chest. In the execution of her actions
she encouraged the audience to make a noise and at times the station
became crowded and rowdy. In one particular action she enlisted the
help of a young man to swab a small area of her bottom with antiseptic
before injecting herself with a liquid. The same young man agreed to
being injected into his bare bottom by Luna. He never left Luna’s sta-
tion the entire time. Over at Sifuentes’s station, seated in a dentist chair
with medical paraphernalia on a trolley at his side, the performer’s
principal action was to have a dozen leeches placed over his bare torso
by an assistant in a lab coat. This very quiet action was halted when the
leeches were engorged and could be taken off easily; upon their removal
blood ran down Sifuentes’s chest. I noticed one audience member who
remained almost motionless by Sifuentes’s station, watching avidly.
Like the other young man, he stayed at this one station the whole time.
I spoke to one of them afterwards who movingly spoke of being unable
to move away, of being captivated. These two audience members’ avid
attention appears to me evidence of intensified receptivity, an aspect,
I argue, of “pull” aesthetics.
The idea that autonomous art effects a kind of control over, or pull
on, the subject is elsewhere addressed in philosophy. According to Kant,
122 Stephen Robins
the pleasure that one feels in relation to beauty is an intellectual one:

we know that we recognize that something has a design but we cannot
fathom a purpose; in Kant’s terms, beauty has “purposiveness without a
purpose” (Burnham, Introduction 62). The pleasure is a bitter-sweet one;
on the one hand we delight in our success in recognition but on the
other are kept in an agitated state of desire to know more (even though
we understand this is impossible). Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just
(1999), paraphrases Simone Weil in her essay “Love in the Order of the
World” (1953), calling the moment of engaging with beauty a “radical
de-centering” wherein an altered subject position is felt in the body
as a dizzying relocation. Beauty can “lift […] us up […] so that when
we land, we find we are standing in a different relation to the world
than we were a moment before” (On Beauty 112). Accordingly, Scarry
states that the demotion of self in this engagement with the beautiful
object suggests that we take on the subjecthood of a “lateral figure”
or, in the language of the folk tale, a “donor figure” (113): we literally
become a bystander when we engage in a moment of beauty. Thinking
of this moment through a theatrical analogy, the subject experiences a
demotion of the self from center-stage to the wings, which promotes
a feeling of equality, a sense that they are equal to, not greater than,
the object in question (113). In a similar way, Iris Murdoch argues that
beauty is a readily available way of engaging the good. What Murdoch
calls “unselfing” is a moment where the ego is downgraded because of
our attention given to a beautiful object (Murdoch, Sovereignty 10). In
this generous way, facilitated by beauty, a more capacious mental act
is possible, such that “all the space formerly in the service of protect-
ing, guarding, advancing the self (or its ‘prestige’) is now free to be in
the service of something else” (10). Pleasure in beauty here is described
from the perspective of masochism, or at least a diminution of the ego.
Kantian recognition happens at the same time as Weil and Murdoch
determine the ego’s relegation, felt in the body as a “dizzying reloca-
tion:” in other words the intellectual pleasure is bought by a certain
bodily discomfort, or agitation.
In relation to the subjective response to beauty, we find almost simul-
taneously an intellectual engagement, which when thwarted is replaced
by a physical response, characterized by “intensified receptivity” but
one which does not collapse the desire to understand more, to know
more. The response to the ugly is at first an intellectual one reinforced
by revulsion. The ugly rejected in aesthetics reflects a wider societal
distaste for the messy, contingent, and degenerate; but also for the false
and untrue, the unbelievable, the dishonest.
Feelings of being in the presence of beauty are akin to an assault on

the ego, which is utterly overwhelmed, albeit briefly. Plato talks in the
Phaedrus of the man in the presence of the beloved as being utterly inca-
pable of controlling his body – he sweats and trembles. Adorno, too,
argues that the response to beauty is one of pain and that:
[i]nvoluntarily and unconsciously, the observer enters into a contract

with the work, agreeing to submit to it on condition that it speak. In
the pledged receptivity of the observer, pure self-abandonment […]
survives. (Aesthetic Theory 73)
Pain in the face of beauty is conditional on the subject communing

with the object. While the beautiful delights and intrigues them, the
audience know they want to understand but they cannot do so. This is
the pull of beauty.
I want to turn now to the push aspect of La Pocha Nostra’s aesthetics (and
briefly repeat the dual sense of the border/frontera in English and Spanish,
as both a zone of intrigue and a barrier, hence, pull and push). A key per-
formance mode is Gómez-Peña’s use of Spanglish, a hybrid of English and
Spanish, where part words and part sentences create fractures in smooth
linguistic communication, facilitating new modes of engagement and dis-
engagement for the audience. Eduardo Mendieta proposes that:
A […] noteworthy virtue of Gómez-Peña’s work is its linguistic carni-

valization, in which Nahuatl, Spanish, English, French, and the slang
of the United States all participate. There are no pure languages, only
languaging. (Mendieta, “Latino Philosopher” 542)
Another feature of a La Pocha Nostra performance is the frequent inter-

ruptions to the smooth flow of proceedings. Interruptions are instigated
by Gómez-Peña frequently in the form of suspending music, freezing a
performer’s action to speak his own performance texts, or asking them
to “go again,” “repeat.” I argue that these interruptions by Gómez-Peña
break the subjective immersion (the intensified receptivity) and re-erect
the boundary.
In examining La Pocha Nostra’s Barbarian Collection (2007) I will be
developing the idea that the push aspect of La Pocha Nostra aesthetics
purposefully works in opposition to the pull of beauty to create a chal-
lenging environment for the subject. The Barbarian Collection engages
directly with the sold-by-sex marketing of the fashion industry but
presents awkward and uncomfortable images of people to consume.
124 Stephen Robins
We’re no more beautiful or fit than anyone else, but neither are
we average looking. Actors, dancers and models are better looking;
sportsmen and martial artists are in much better shape, and porn stars
are much sexier. In fact our bodies and faces tend to be a bit awkward
looking; but we have an intense look, a deranged essence of presence,
an ethical quality to our features and hands. And this makes us both
trustworthy to outlaws and rebels, and highly suspicious to authority.
When people look into our eyes, they can tell right away: we mean it.
This, I may say, amounts to a different kind of beauty. (Gómez-Peña
in Heathfield, Live 82)
La Pocha Nostra’s Barbarian Collection (Arnolfini, Bristol, 2007) engages

with the ultimate popular symbol of notions of beauty and culture,
the fashion catwalk. Using a loose narrative framework to the effect
that the models on the catwalk were exhibiting themselves for sale, the
framework set the scene firmly within a cash economy where fantastic
persons are available for consumption. The “barbarians” of the collec-
tion were La Pocha Nostra core members Sifuentes and Luna, joined by
some regular contributors and local Bristol performance artists, includ-
ing the author. La Pocha Nostra’s notion of the barbarian as coarse and
anti-cultural has been established over many years of performance.
The Barbarian Collection was split into three parts: in the first, an invita-
tion in a press-release was made to the public through Arnolfini networks,
to come dressed for a catwalk. On the night there was an opportunity for
the audience to be professionally photographed with the performers in
full costume. This pre-show then moved into the auditorium, where the
most strikingly dressed audience members were invited to take to the cat-
walk. In the second part, as the stage show started, the performers came
on one by one and did a solo catwalk; duos emerged (sometimes with
performers in different costumes). The third and final part was a decon-
structed auction of several naked performers. Throughout the show, the
action was suspended and restarted via interjections by Gómez-Peña’s
monologues and interventions by La Pocha Nostra associate artist Rachel
Rogers who functioned as auctioneer and MC.
The space was dominated by a two-metre long catwalk at head height
to the front two seated rows, and at the top of the catwalk there was
a small stage area leading to the wings; on the center of the stage and
raised on a dais was an enormous cross upon which the performers
placed themselves in mock crucifixion.
Within La Pocha Nostra’s framework for the piece, artists performed
hybridized identities, so we were dressed in costumes which exhibited
either multiple or incongruous personae simultaneously; an otherwise

entirely naked woman in white stiletto ankle-boots, a man painted blue
dressed as Shiva; a woman in bondage rope wearing a Condoleezza Rice
rubber mask; a man dressed as a bride; a woman covered only in human
hair. The performers were mixed in terms of heritage – Chicano, Chinese,
Indian, Irish, Mexican, Romany, Welsh, Yemeni – and sexuality.
In Peggy Phelan’s analysis, queer, racial, transsexual and other identities
are rendered, as per the title of her seminal text, Unmarked (1993) and
unremarked under modernism by dint of not being heterosexual white
Eurasian males (5). Masochist and narcissist performance attempts to
undo this not by attempting to recover representations as such, but by
delivering performances which shake the basis of subjectivity per se (see
also Jones, Body Art). La Pocha Nostra’s personae in this sense do not fall
into representation because in their plasticity they continually morph
appearance into yet more ciphers with which to address the plurality
of being Other.
La Pocha Nostra’s personae in their practice are multiple, but a key
term which offers me access to them is “disidentification,” coined
by José Esteban Muños (1999) in his publication of the same name.
Muños’s project examines “Queers of Color and the Performance of
Politics” and aims to investigate performance practices of queer artists,
whose work does not invite identification, but rather its opposite. By
doing so, therefore, it throws into relief the real-life context from which
it is drawn:
Through the “burden of liveness,” we are called to perform our live-

ness for elites who would keep us from realising our place in a larger
historical narrative. [We are] cultural workers, and activists who are
not content merely to survive, but [who] instead use the stuff of the
“real world” to remake collective sense of “worldness” through spec-
tacles, performances, and wilful enactments of the self for others.
[We] the minoritarian subject [employ] disidentification as a crucial
practice of contesting social subordination through the project of
worldmaking […] Our charge as spectators and actors is to continue
disidentifying with this world until we achieve new ones. (Muños,
Disidentifications 200)
La Pocha Nostra’s approach, as seen in the photo-shoot in the foyer

and in the invitation of the audience onto the catwalk, sets up close-
ness to an action that proves to be increasingly dissonant. Expectations
established in the invitation to the audience are thwarted in terms of
126 Stephen Robins
the merged and hybrid personae on display; the catwalk with a differ-
ence becomes a catwalk of difference, where vaguely familiar yet oddly
behaving persons disturb an iconic stage for identity thinking, the cat
walk. Crucially, the Barbarian Collection does not deliver the coherence
that an artwork is supposed to achieve. Folake Shoga, who created
a video collage for the performance and documented the rehearsal
process, thought that it was significant that the audience became
increasingly less animated during the performance. Shoga notes that
a subtle anxiety crept in, with the early cheers, shrieks and whoops
becoming replaced by an uneasy silence.4 The invitation to engage with
the culturally familiar fashion catwalk is undermined by the “disiden-
tificatory” tactics of the artists. Sarah-Jane Norman’s Condoleezza Rice
rubber mask nude in bondage rope; Persis Jade Marvala’s sexually mili-
tant militia-woman; Jiva Parthipan’s queer bride; Shi Ke’s replica-gun
toting, roller-blading, cross-dressed cocktail “waitress” in Stetson and
Rayban sunglasses: none of these constructions invite a sympathetic
response, or identification, nor indeed are they particularly titillat-
ing. Tom Huhn’s reading of Aesthetic Theory provides some Adornian
perspective on the deepening confusion Shoga notes in the audience.
Huhn writes:
The artwork is not the occasion for the subject to complete it;
instead, what Adorno calls its truth content is the open-endedness
of an object at rest within its lack of completion. Its content is not
something, especially not some truth, to be deciphered by the sub-
ject. The artwork is instead an occasion for the subject to liken itself
to a state of unfinishedness. (Cambridge Companion 8)
The loud music and the parade of models were repeatedly interrupted
by Gómez-Peña’s spoken interventions from above the catwalk, stop-
ping us mid-action to speak his own text, or to encourage spectators
onto the stage to perform their own improvised actions. Or Sifuentes,
acting as stage-manager, calling on the models to “go again” and repeat
their catwalk: all these actions unsettled the reading of the stage scene
as coherent. The event of the Barbarian Collection was an additive one,
therefore, building not toward a crescendo, which would be akin to a
work of art under control, but more to an aporetic dissolution. This
additive (though more accurately degenerative effect) worked on per-
formers as well as on the spectators and spectator-contributors, includ-
ing Gómez-Peña, Sifuentes, and Luna. The performance took on a life of
its own – the artists backstage were shocked at the event as it unfolded;
that it was unfamiliar to us, compared to the elegant and controlled

rehearsals, added to a sense of being part of an event which exceeded
our artistic inputs, indeed, “add[ing] up to ‘more’ than [its] production
or reception by a human subject” ( Jarvis, Adorno 102).
“It is the fatality of all contemporary art that it is contaminated by
the untruth of the ruling totality” (Adorno, Aesthetic Theory 57). For
Adorno, the completeness or finishedness of a piece of art reveals a dis-
turbing complicity with society. La Pocha Nostra’s oeuvre, allergic as it
is to hegemony, presents the faulty finish, which unmakes the totality.
The final gesture of the Barbarian Collection is a mock auction: naked
performers return to the catwalk and their heads are covered with hes-
sian sacks as the auctioneer begins to take bids from the audience now
constituted as buyers. Of course the bemused audience does not actu-
ally bid at all, Rogers merely works through her script “Lot number 1:
Caucasian Performance artist, male” taking bids that no-one makes and
“sells” them (who are not really for sale of course) to people who have
not bought. The idea of the suspension of disbelief is utterly broken as it
becomes clear that we are not following the theatrical convention that
was purportedly set up: as the occasional cat-call attests, the audience is
disgruntled. The theatrical device of the faux auction is acknowledged,
but, because they refuse to do it right, it breaks down, awkwardly: it
is a sham (and one that doesn’t even pretend that it isn’t one). As a
piece of theatre it seems to have a weak ending and the piece unravels
to an unsatisfying finale: it is an ending suffused with the theatrical-
ity it refuses to complete. As a piece of live art, however, it succeeds in
dislocating and wrong-footing its audience.
The totality which is refused in this performance is the “untruth” that
Adorno warns against and La Pocha Nostra want nothing to do with
it. In the Barbarian Collection, when Sifuentes and Gómez-Peña tell the
models to repeat their catwalk, to “go again,” and when Gómez-Peña
frequently uses the textual devices of “hold that,” “stop,” and “delete,”
the action decelerates – the pull of beauty is undone and the subject
is pushed away. I read this dramaturgy of reversals, disruptions, and
repetitions as calculated to uncouple the theatrical moment from the
“mainstream bizarre.” The catwalk-as-auction is a stage for different
kinds of bizarre performances: nothing and no-one is being sold here
and the very denial of the economy of high fashion and style icons is
highlighted as a result of the interruptions of the audience’s desire for
immersion.
Adorno’s complex relationship with beauty can be understood as a
political project to unveil a more truthful relationship to the vagaries
128 Stephen Robins
of ideologically-driven society. Beauty is always complicated by its

previous relationships to embittered hegemonic forces which co-opted
it into the ideal, so the kind of beauty that Adorno demands reveals
the contradictions that idealized beauty has always glossed. There is
recuperation of those considered ugly as beautiful, in the sense that the
beautiful “prevails” (Adorno, Aesthetic Theory 53). In Adorno’s dialecti-
cal negation, the only way to imagine “better” is to reveal the falseness
of what is happening now. La Pocha Nostra cannot present a utopian
vision of the world precisely because they reject the principles on which
such a utopia might be built. Likewise, a dystopian vision of the future
would fail for the same reason. Instead, their wry and kinky sci-fi-
counter-cultural events mock society which spawns the image-language
they adapt to their own vision. Gómez-Peña has repeatedly referred to
La Pocha Nostra and himself as border artists: the border is a place from
which the trouble with (popular and wilfully uncritical) idealist aesthet-
ics can be articulated. Adorno was concerned that the culture industry
has co-opted autonomy (art’s independent life); similarly, Gómez-Peña
is concerned that “corporate multiculturalism” renders the power of the
margin weak; its homogenous and persuasive beauty obliterates critical-
ity: only a careful pull-push approach can nuance its insidious grasp. It
is this recovery from the appealing but uncritical “mainstream bizarre”
which I have argued liberates beauty and ugliness from what Adorno
refers to as “idealist aesthetics.”
A final thought. According to Stephen Ross in his publication The
Gift of Beauty: The Good as Art (1996), a key facility of beauty is its
capacity to disrupt hierarchies and distribute equalities. Ross’s con-
ception of the good “does not oppose the bad or beautiful, does not
war with evil, but interrupts the authority of choice and judgment,
giving us responsibility for making and unmaking categories” (Gift of
Beauty 2). Gómez-Peña’s frequent soliloquies disrupt the smooth flow
of action, sometimes seeming flatfooted, as though he were willfully
breaking the spell of the performance. Read through Ross however,
Gómez-Peña’s interruptions take up Adorno’s demand of making the
mute eloquent (see Aesthetic Theory 101). “To give in art is to interrupt
by giving: here […] art is interruption, not preservation, consistency or
repetition” (Ross, Gift of Beauty 20–21). In Adorno’s sense too, who saw
the “artwork … [as] an occasion for subjective dissolution and recon-
stitution” (Huhn, Cambridge Companion 8), beauty as interruption (and
interruption as beauty) depends on an active dialogue with the audi-
ence spectator. In the case of La Pocha Nostra this is achieved through
a pull-push aesthetic.
Notes
1. Schopenhauer’s concept of will was a quest for timeless reality (and close to
the Advaitic concept of Maˉyaˉ), which desired separation from the world in
order to throw off all masks of unreality (Sarin, “Schopenhauer’s Concept of
Will” 138).
2. “Chicano” describes people of Mexican origin living outside of Mexico,
usually across the border in the United States.
3. Berelowitz has written extensively on BAF/TAW and its evolution from
Chicano political activism, through art activism, to art. Her writing also
engages with the group’s schism which precipitated most of the founding
members leaving between 1987–1990. See “Conflict over ‘Border Art’.”
4. In conversation with Stephen Robins, Kingswood, March 2011.
8
Thinking – Mimesis –
Pre-Imitation: Notes on Art,
Philosophy, and Theatre in
Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory
Marcus Quent
The process of thinking results neither in the production of objec-

tive thoughts nor in the kind of spontaneity which Kant considered
a hallmark of subjectivity. In his 1965 essay “Notes on Philosophical
Thinking” Adorno proposes that thinking is conceivable “only in
the reciprocal mediation of subject and object” (129). He argues that
thinking is “according to its own form […] bound to what is not itself
properly thinking” (129). Thinking is to be understood as a mode of
constructing and producing, which involves processes of adoption and
assimilation, maybe even permissive reception. It is an activity inscribed
by a passivity. In order to understand the nature and development of
this relationship between the active and passive moments of thinking,
between the subject and object of thought, one must consider the dia-
lectical relationship between rationality and mimesis, which lies at the
heart of Adorno’s philosophy and aesthetic theory. As Adorno states,
thinking mimetically needs to “snuggle up to an object, even when it
does not yet have such an object” and in this process “the ego models
itself on the non-ego” (129). Noticeably, Adorno invokes images of the
corporeal in order to describe thinking as a form of behaviour and he
employs metaphors of the body which imply movement and motion.
It therefore does not come as a surprise when Adorno argues that the
relationship between the process of thinking and the objectification of
thought is “not unlike so-called artistic inspiration” (130).
Adorno’s “Notes on Philosophical Thinking” lead to reflections about

the broader context of the interdependent relationship between art
130
Thinking – Mimesis – Pre-Imitation 131
and philosophy, which he mainly unfolds in his Aesthetic Theory. The

first sentence of his 1970 posthumously published fragment introduces
aesthetic theory with reference to the uncertainty and precariousness
of contemporary art. For Adorno, the fragility and vulnerability of
art form the basis for contemporary aesthetic experience and are the
results of at least three factors: the historical catastrophe and the failure
of culture; the mass production of art in the culture industry; and the
increasing spiritualisation (Vergeistigung) of art as a form of negation
of the arts. These factors concerning history, society, and art are –
especially with regards to art – phenomena of what Adorno termed
de-aestheticisation (Entkunstung). The “triumph of spiritualisation”
(Triumph der Vergeistigung) in modern art indicates an ever-increasing
dissociation of spirit (Geist) from the artwork’s sensual material which,
however, provides the foundation for the principle of construction and
spiritualisation in the first place (“Art and the Arts” (1966) 372). For
Adorno, spirit’s move towards independence signifies the groundwork
for the decline of art. In the course of Aesthetic Theory, the impossibility
of art in the present historical moment emerges as a forceful concept.
Yet, art in its aporetic form proves to be the starting point for philosoph-
ical thinking as an activity, and it evolves as the chaotic-constructive
core element of Adorno’s philosophy.1
Philosophy and art converge as concepts that are distinctive without
standing in rigid opposition to one another. Their relationship cannot
be reduced to conventional dichotomies such as theory/practice, idea/
representation, or rationality/mimesis. Works of art are not limited
to an accumulation of percepts, and they do more than realise sensual
events or represent and express emotional states. The relationship
between art and philosophy is highlighted by the artwork’s ability to
think. Importantly, the spirit of artworks emerges from their materiality,
from “the nexus of their elements” (Aesthetic Theory 104).
Adorno specifies this relationship between philosophy and art by
describing philosophy as a logical-discursive activity which reaches for
the truth without, however, being able to catch it in its entirety. Art,
on the other hand, holds the truth – but only in a veiled form, which
means it is unable to speak or show the truth on its own accord (161).
Through their formal aesthetic unity, artworks produce a more; they
transcend their own immanence and open themselves up to reflection
which they need in order to achieve as well as articulate this more in
the first place. This illusory more of art – the truth which emerges from
art’s transcendental moment but which does not manifest itself in the
form of metaphysical content – grounds the epistemological character
132 Marcus Quent
(Erkenntnischarakter) of art, although art does not participate in merely

discursive or logical knowledge.
Hence, there is a strong affinity or even interdependence between
the artwork and philosophical reflection. Adorno arranges both, philo-
sophical analysis and the artwork, around the enigmatic concept of the
truth content (Wahrheitsgehalt): “Philosophy and art converge in their
truth content: The progressive self-unfolding truth of the artwork is
none other than the truth of the philosophical concept” (172). Truth
emerges as a negative category that is antithetical to society. The truth
of artworks, “which is also indeed their social truth” (298), remains – in
the context of existing society – necessarily opaque and has no positive,
palpable content. To locate this determinate negation in them and to
make it commensurable for discursive logic is one of the main tasks for
a philosophy understood as critique. “By reading the spirit of artworks
out of their configurations and confronting the elements with each
other and with the spirit that appears in them, critique passes over into
the truth of the spirit, which is located beyond the aesthetic configura-
tion” (116). The artwork’s reach “beyond the aesthetic configuration”
is of particular importance because without this moment of transcend-
ence art would be obsolete and the artwork simply a thing among other
empirical things.
Consequently, philosophy defined as a critical analysis of soci-
ety must be open to aesthetic experience. Historically, philosophy
finds itself in a precarious position. In their Dialectic of Enlightenment
(1947), Horkheimer and Adorno have highlighted that the historical
catastrophe – which has found its terrible proper name in “Auschwitz”–
was not a violent and shock-like break with humanistic culture; rather,
Enlightenment rationality itself contains a “substrate of domination”
and “the germ of the regression which is taking place everywhere
today” (Dialectic of Enlightenment 6, xvi). The philosophical thought
devotes itself to art and aesthetic experience because only in artworks
can images of identity appear freed from conceptual coercion, as
Hartmut Scheible has argued (“Sehnsüchtige Negation” 238). Thus,
aesthetic experience sensitises philosophy to the dominant and violent
character of the concept.
Such a form of philosophical thinking that is open to aesthetic expe-
rience is distinct from the traditional image of (idealist) philosophy
as a discourse of abstraction which occupies an external position of
domination. For Adorno, philosophy is not the sovereign articulation
of theoretical positions – indeed, the inadequacy of such an approach
is reflected in and through philosophy’s own conceptual procedures.
What makes aesthetics such a powerful discourse is its ability to

critically reflect on what philosophy misses (Aesthetic Theory 341). As
Adorno puts it, the aesthetic “yields to what its object, like any object,
immediately seeks” (341). One could even say that aesthetics reflect
the misery of philosophy: philosophical reflection tries to empower the
object to speak, but on the other hand it constantly tends to violate
the object by reducing it to conceptual categories (334–335). That art
simultaneously requires philosophical interpretation indicates the
dilemma of the interrelation between art and philosophy. Due to the
artwork’s mimetic impulses, which constitute its truth content, its
truth is slightly damaged (Scheible, “Sehnsüchtige Negation” 238).
Mimetic comportment has a conflicting character because it is “eman-
cipatory and archaic together” (238); in other words, the expansive
development of the subject results in a reification of rationality which
is exclusionary and regressive. The gesture which completes art with
what is excluded from knowledge is at the same time, according
to Adorno, a procedure which “once again impairs its character as
knowledge, its univocity” (Aesthetic Theory 70). Thus, the process-like
truth content of artworks, for Adorno, can only be unfolded through
interpretation, commentary, and criticism (171); these autonomous
forms build the “arena of the historical development of artworks in
themselves” (254).
According to Adorno, a critical analysis of society, which should be
the main task of current philosophy, is only possible if philosophy
attempts a thinking through art by engaging with the tensions between
the unity of the artwork (aesthetic logic, construction, spirit) and the
experience of non-identity, which are enclosed in the mimetic impulse.
The truth of the interdependence between philosophy and art appears
in the interplay between affirmation and negation, and it does not
settle in the object itself, in the artefact as product, but only emerges
in and through art’s process character. Yet one of the paradoxes of
Adorno’s aesthetics is, following Benjamin, that this aspect of art as
process becomes apparent precisely in the artwork’s appearance as a
constructed unity: “The movements of artworks must be at a standstill
and thereby become visible” (Aesthetic Theory 233).2
Interpretation is concerned with this movement at a standstill, which
defines the work of art. According to Adorno, artworks only exist in con-
ditions of becoming and they require the work of interpretation to crys-
tallise their inherent process character (254). In this sense, interpreting
does not mean deciphering the content of an artwork, its message, or
the intentions of the artist. Adorno’s concept of interpretation does not
134 Marcus Quent
follow the hermeneutic tradition, nor does it amount to a purely phe-

nomenological approach. Crucially, interpretation for Adorno does not
mean the dissecting and structural analysis of an artwork with a view of
revealing its genesis and meaning. Indeed, the artwork’s enigmatic char-
acter (Rätselcharakter), the emphasis on an insoluble relic, prohibits such
conventional interpretative approaches because “all artworks – and art
altogether – are enigmas” and “understanding is itself a problematic
category in the face of art’s enigmaticalness” (160, 161). By constantly
interrupting and thereby disconcerting the process of understanding
ever anew, the enigmatic character does not implicate a procedure of
interpretation against rationality, meaning, or spirit (Geist). Rather,
aesthetic experience invites a problematisation and self-correction of
the very terms and assumptions of rationality. Instead of suggesting a
solution to the enigma of art, which would at the same time signify a
fatal dis-solution of the work’s content, interpretation as conceived by
Adorno aims at the concretisation of art’s unsolvability.3 Through this
concretisation, rationality initiates a self-reflective process of correction.
Adorno’s notion of interpretation can be aligned with Susan Sontag’s
concept of interpretation as an “erotics of art,” which she discusses in
her famous essay “Against Interpretation.” However, Sontag’s obser-
vation that in the context of contemporary art “the project of inter-
pretation is largely reactionary, stifling” (“Against Interpretation” 7)
addresses a particular aspect of interpretation which Adorno’s approach
in turn tries to correct by thinking through the very concept of interpre-
tation. Thus to interpret an artwork means, in Adorno’s sense, to engage
in “an objective experiential reenactment from within in the same
sense in which the interpretation of a musical work means its faithful
performance” (Aesthetic Theory 161). This could be described as an erotic
practice of interpretation; interpretation understood as a moved move-
ment of analysis: It is achieved “as the imitation of the dynamic curves
of what is performed” (165), as a renewed interpretative production of
the artwork according to the force of its own objective constitution. It is
this characteristically mimetic dimension, shared by the artwork and the
interpretive process, which constitutes the significant interface between
art and philosophy – the scene of their interdependence.
Mimetic behaviour indicates a process of assimilation which is pre-
ceded by a moment in which the subject becomes affected (Gebauer
and Wulf, Mimesis. Kultur 11). This (self-)affection of the subject indi-
cates a double movement: on the one hand, something penetrates the
immanent sphere of the subject; something intrudes, even attacks the
self’s sovereign status. On the other hand, there is the subject’s desire to
bridge the chasm between itself and the Other; a desire to step outside
of its sovereign context, which however does not necessarily mean a
forceful withdrawal of sovereignty, but implies a dangerous exposure:
the subject expresses itself.
The mimetic impulses suggest a permeability of the subject as a
moving subject. When behaving mimetically, the subject is neither
only active nor just passive, neither just moving nor merely moved.
Mimesis occupies the intermediate space between two extreme poles: as
something that befalls the subject from the outside, and as an internal,
immanent impulse which the subject sets in motion single-handedly
by choosing to come into contact with the outside. One detects in these
movements which mimesis generates “a moment of passivity, a suspen-
sion of activity” (Gebauer and Wulf, Mimesis. Kultur 397). As Joseph
Vogl has recently proposed in his conceptualisation of an “idiosyncratic
theory” (Über das Zaudern 114), they are movements of a “vigorous inac-
tivity” (23) which share the temporality of hesitation (Zaudern).
Similarly, one could consider the interpretation of an individual
artwork (as well as of the aesthetic experience) as a form of “active pas-
sivity” (Gebauer and Wulf, Mimesis. Kultur 398) or “vigorous inactivity”
(Vogl, Über das Zaudern 23). In doing so, I do not mean to regard aesthetic
practice as a regression into the archaic realm of pre-conscious, pre-lin-
guistic experience and expression. The fact that art was able to become
a “refuge for mimetic comportment” (Aesthetic Theory 69) presupposes a
differentiation of mimesis and rationality, a process which Horkheimer
and Adorno have reconstructed in their Dialectic of Enlightenment from
a cultural-historical perspective, particularly in their passages about
Odysseus. In relation to aesthetic behaviour, one could speak of a second
mimesis, which echoes Adorno’s notes on a so-called “second reflection”
(Aesthetic Theory 34). According to Adorno, “second reflection” tries to
re-capture the naïvety in the relationship between the (first) reflection
of spirit (Geist) – which is intertwined with the aforementioned “sub-
strate of domination” – and the content (Gehalt) of things, the proper
law of the object. “Second reflection” lays hold of “the language of the
artwork in the broadest sense, but it aims at blindness” (34) because it
rejects the telos of philosophical reflection. Comparably, second mimesis
means a release from the immediate constraints of nature, because art-
works, as Adorno states, imitate nothing but themselves (166). Mimesis
becomes self-reflexive and in this respect does not indicate an imitation
of something external; rather, I propose to call this mimetic process a
movement of self-imitation (Sich-selbst-gleich-Werden). In Adorno, the
emphatic artwork appears as a being-in-itself (Ansichsein); more precisely,
136 Marcus Quent
it is the “anticipation of a being-in-itself that does not exist yet” (100).

This is the affirmative moment in Adorno’s thinking of the truth of art,
which is a negative truth. Aesthetic appearance (Erscheinen) invokes art
as the determinate negation of society, while the affective relationship
between artwork and recipient suggests a veiled affirmative moment
in the negation. It would be a challenge for interpretation to grasp the
precise shape of this ambiguous relation between affirmation and nega-
tion. The mimetic comportment of art, which interpretation seeks to
trace, is a repetition or reenactment of the artwork’s desire to become
(like) itself. I would like to understand this interpretational activity as a
process of reconstructing a pre-imitation (Nachvollziehen einer vorgeahmten
Selbstgleichheit).4 If it is true that artworks imply imitations which bury
in their hidden core an enigmatic form of anticipation, as Benjamin has
remarked (“Varia zum ‘Kunstwerk’” 1047), then the following statement
of Adorno’s can be a guide for interpretive activities: “If artworks do not
make themselves like something else but only like themselves, then only
those who imitate them understand them” (Aesthetic Theory 166).
Here it is necessary to differentiate between two kinds of mimetic
behaviour, as was pointed out by Hartmut Schweppenhäuser: mimesis
as social behaviour with a practical and instrumental component, and
a playful mimesis that has emancipated itself from any practical sense
during the process of spiritualisation (Vergeistigung) and now exists in
sublimated form (“Schein, Bild, Ausdruck” 24). Even if aesthetic phe-
nomena resist such analytic demarcations, it is nevertheless productive
to keep the emphasis on playful mimesis as a sublimated form.
It seems that the theatre is an ideal, maybe even predestined, space
for the radical experience of such mimetic movement. Here, this expe-
rience is encouraged and raised to the point of its impossibility. As an
art form, theatre is marginal in Adorno’s thinking; he uses the collective
term “art” primarily for music and literature (and their manifestations
in the bourgeois canon). Occasionally, theatre is evoked as a perfor-
mance space for other art forms or as the social platform for bourgeois
culture.5 Indeed, Adorno operates with a notion of theatre that has
become increasingly problematic: namely, theatre understood as the
staging of dramatic texts (see Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater).
However, a close reading of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory suggests that
theatre emerges as a space in which the interdependence of art and
philosophy is permanently performed and re-performed (in the sense of
retraced). As the scene of aesthetic thinking, theatre could be described
in the first instance, and in a fundamental sense, as a space shared by
people, where thinking and bodies form constellations through joint
negotiations, be they conscious or not conscious. Theatre is a space for

cultural practices, in which the dialectic relationship between acting
and watching – a seeing which is seen – is carried out.
If we bring theatre into the equation as a space of mimetic behaviour,
it is necessary to emphasise that this does not suggest a prioritisation
of theatre’s potential for illustrative imitation of actions. According
to Adorno, any approach to art requires a mimetic behaviour because
aesthetic experience is mainly an imitation of an experience which is
inherent in the work of art (Aesthetic Theory 166). Therefore, it would
be necessary to locate the mimetic moments in all of the theatrical
practices like illusion, deception, dissimulation, estrangement, and so
on, which does not exclusively concern the performance of actors and
spectators.
Let us recall that mimesis, as Burkhardt Lindner has put it, manifests
itself in “two opposing movements” (“Kunstwerk” 248): as semblance
and play. Lindner rightly points out that due to the artistic techniques
and practices developed in modernism, the dimension of play in mime-
sis (which prior to the twentieth century had been superimposed by the
semblance character of art) becomes prominent once again in the age of
art’s technical reproduction (249). In Adorno, we encounter this devel-
opment under the key phrase of a “crisis of semblance,” which expresses
a crucial symptom of the uncertain possibility – the (im)possibility – of
art. The crisis of art’s semblance character (Scheincharakter) is made
apparent in the destruction of the artwork’s unity, in the rejection of its
illusory moments, and in the highlighting of the work’s materiality and
construction. Aesthetic semblance “includes aesthetic inconsistency”
(Aesthetic Theory 134). In theatre, for example, this crisis of semblance
and illusion was indicated by the rejection of costume in the perfor-
mance of dramatic works.
In short, the crisis of aesthetic semblance (Schein) affects the artwork’s
ability to appear (erscheinen). Ultimately, this means that art’s potential to
outline a world sui generis, as autonomous appearance (Erscheinung), is put
in question. The artwork, whose aesthetic character has become problem-
atic, “wants to shake off its illusoriness like an animal trying to shake off
its antlers” (136). Aesthetic unity and spirit (Geist) are forms of semblance,
illusion; thereby they are simultaneously untruth and a shelter of truth.
Because for Adorno the artwork’s truth content is buried in its semblance,
art must not forsake its semblance character: neither become pure abstract
play nor blend or collapse into empirical social reality.
If one does not simply accept Adorno’s disregard for theatre as a con-
sequence of his idiosyncratic preference for other artistic genres (such
138 Marcus Quent
as music and literature), one could argue that theatre – even prior to its
manifestation in happenings and other forms of transgression into every-
day life – signifies a considerable threat to semblance, more so than is
apparent in other art forms. In other words, the problematisation of
semblance is implicit in theatre’s work of appearance: it questions that
an appearance of semblance can take place. Since everything in theatre
exists only in the elusive and fleeting moments of a shared presence, the
aesthetic tension between objectification and transience, between dura-
tion and becoming, is always in danger of getting resolved in favour of
one of its poles – which means that consequently both parts lose their
truth. Hence, one could argue that the materiality of the body puts
theatre’s illusory character into question, while the “unity” and “coher-
ence” of a theatrical performance are always threatened by its temporal
appearance as process.
The second mimesis oscillates between semblance and play. The fact
that theatre is always also a non-artistic reality could be considered a
disadvantage for theatre’s existence as art. However, such a view implies
a disregard for the productive tension between the aesthetic and the
social in the theatre event’s transitory existence. I would like to suggest
that the theatre space is precisely this oscillating, unstable yet produc-
tive differential inter-space between semblance and play, between the
aesthetic and the social. And as in no other artistic, cultural, or social
practice, this gap opens up as the theatrical space in the presence of a
shared experience.
These tensions emerge as peculiar aesthetic moments of theatre when
theatre’s historical (and authoritative) dependence on the dramatic
text is suspended. Adorno’s marginalisation of theatre is understand-
able because of the fact that his aesthetics to a certain degree prohibit
a perception of theatrical autonomy. Writing (Schrift) in the sense of an
aesthetic objectification (Verschriftlichung) (score, text, instruction, etc.)
represents a significant authority in Adorno’s aesthetic theory, even
though it is set in dialectic relation with the moment of performance.
Nonetheless, a kind of standstill is indispensable for the generation of
tension between both. Only by holding on to the inescapable impulse
for objectification can aesthetic unity be productively negotiated and
corrected through the resistant motion of the ephemeral material
moments. I concur with Hans-Thies Lehmann, who states that one has
not at all entered a discussion on the subject of theatre, if one does
not recognise its autonomy and conceive of the aesthetic elements as
genuine theatrical elements instead of perceiving them only as vicarious
agents of a dramatic text (see Lehmann, “Inszenierung” 32). However,
the problematisation of drama in contemporary theatre practice and cri-

tique does not automatically imply a departure from mimesis: “Insofar
as theatre rejects imitations of ordinary actions, it does not simply posi-
tion itself beyond mimesis. Even theatre in its postdramatic manifesta-
tion and even performance art are forms of mimetic theatre” (Lehmann,
“Notiz” 70, translation M.Q.). Especially in postdramatic theatre’s use of
movement, dance and gesture one senses a mimetic comportment that
reaches beyond the mere imitation of illustrative acts and also beyond
mere playfulness. The forms of mimesis (fable, figuration, embodiment,
but also language and text) exist in non-hierarchical relations and lead
into the realm of a second mimesis.
In Kafka’s short story Der Verschollene (The Man Who Disappeared),
Karl Rossmann has high expectations from the “Theatre of Oklahoma”:
a theatre in which “everybody has their proper place,” as it says on the
poster (387, translation M.Q.). It is an imaginary place that is associated
with an unbiased hope for authentic selfhood and difference – a hope
that is deferred and distorted. Benjamin has argued that all of Kafka’s
stories must be conceived as scenes or performances on the stage of this
“nature theatre” (“Franz Kafka” 418). A theatre which retrieves traces of
this poetic vision is reminiscent of the possibility of a pre-imitation of
being-an-other (Vorahmen eines Anderssein) which does not converge with
the concepts of a prescribed social practice. Approaches to a thinking of
theatre in this manner are found in Bertolt Brecht’s learning play practice
as well as in Heiner Müller’s understanding of theatre as a “laboratory
of social fantasy” (Müller, “Ein Brief” 126). The mode of this aesthetic
practice is one of minimal dislocations and displacements carried out
in a space of experimentation and rehearsal of different behavioural
patterns and new ways of perception. “The elements of this other are
present in the reality and they require only the most minute displace-
ment into a new constellation to find their right position. Rather than
imitating reality, artworks demonstrate this displacement to reality”
(Aesthetic Theory 174). Instead of merely being a space of imitation and
illustration, reflection and critique, instead of merely being a space of
sensual experience and catharsis, theatre can be conceived as a space for
potential pre-imitation – even if the aesthetic formulation of model-like
comportment in this space may initially be not more than an interrup-
tion in the practical context of our behavioural patterns.
Such an emphatic concept of theatre is always thrown back on an
inquiry of its play character. In his consideration of postdramatic
theatre, Christoph Menke insists on the inescapable difference between
play and practice, and he does so particularly in order to prevent any
140 Marcus Quent
premature unification of art and life, of play and practice, which might
be a response to the failure of the historical avant-garde (“Doppelter
Fortschritt” 183). In the “problem experience” (Problemerfahrung) in
postdramatic theatre, which indicates a certain negation of drama
(Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater 30) – but which for Menke is under-
stood as a “negation of the dramatic that is not abstract, but anchored
within the dramatic itself” (“Doppelter Fortschritt” 179) – this difference
between play and practice becomes part of the thematic material in the
artistic process itself.
Even though Menke tends towards a construction of conceptual
binaries, whereby theatre and practice are opposed to one other, he
nevertheless avoids a reduction of (postdramatic) theatre to the sole
dimension of play. Rather, “in and through the play of theatre, the
other of play – namely praxis – is able to emerge,” so that “through
and in the play of theatre the opposition between play and praxis
becomes apparent” (Menke, “Doppelter Fortschritt” 184). It becomes
obvious, however, that this conception of theatre remains tied to the
notion of representation. Thus, when reflecting on the almost classic
characterisation of the theatrical situation, namely its ability to avoid
or suspend real consequences, the very fact is ignored that theatre not
only qualifies an aesthetic stage event but – as the “problem experi-
ence” in postdramatic theatre shows – it also indicates a social situa-
tion. Menke develops a concept of theatre as a representational practice
on stage, which acts out the difference between play and practice in a
variety of ways. However, this difference – to put it with Lehmann –
comes to the fore because theatre “exists only as performance, as
praxis, as action, as communicative process, as a practical and non-
artistic reality” (“Notiz” 69, emphasis M.Q.). Theatre is not conceived
comprehensively enough if one thinks of it only as a playing space or
merely as a presentational space.
If, as Menke concludes, in theatre “the relation between the act
of demonstration and the demonstrated action is foregrounded”
(“Doppelter Fortschritt” 185), then a playful conceptual undecidability
emerges, insofar as the performed practice is at the same time a practice
of performance (of play). Elsewhere, Menke characterises this distinc-
tion as one between the demonstrated action and the action of demonstrat-
ing (Gegenwart der Tragödie 123).
This ambiguity and oscillation between play and practice (between
the aesthetic and social sphere) is practically at stake in ever new ways.
The shot from the gallery, which Adorno imagines in his text on the
“nature theatre” as a redemption of gallery and stage, responds to the
shape of this possibility. Our task would be to imagine a theatre that

does not erase this (im)possibility (for example, through endless nihil-
istic games of relativist artistic practices; by claiming social impact to
preserve existing institutionalised forms, and so on) – but keeps alive
the demand for truth.
Returning to Adorno’s “Notes on Philosophical Thinking,” we notice

that he specifies true philosophical thinking as a behavioural pattern.
This implies that thought “immerse[s] itself in material contents in order
to perceive in them, not beyond them, their truth content” (Adorno,
“Notes” 134). The truth of thinking and thought is “a constantly evolv-
ing constellation” (131) – no difference between process and result is
possible because what is required is a “constant renewal through the
subject matter itself” (131). These assertions remind us of the models for
an ethics of intellectual life as outlined in Minima Moralia (1951). There,
Adorno states that “[n]othing less is asked of the thinker today than that
he should be at every moment both within things and outside them –
Münchhausen pulling himself out of the bog by his pig-tail becomes the
pattern of knowledge which wishes to be more than either verification
or speculation” (Minima Moralia 74). In terms of this constant renewal,
thinking is always a re-thinking (Nach-Denken). And the philosophical
movement of thought is a re-enactment (Nach-Vollzug); it tries to express
experience without slipping into a repetitive re-presentation of such
experience. This means that thought responds instinctively to its object,
while becoming critically aware of its own process as re-enactment. This
constitutes the affirmative-negative moment of philosophical thinking
as well as of aesthetic practice. The space in which such a re-enactment,
re-thinking, and pre-imitation is performed, is called theatre.
Notes
1. This core element of thinking has to be called constructive to reflect the
inner-aesthetic procedures of art, and it appears to be chaotic from a non-
aesthetic perspective because it is the aim of art to bring chaos into the
empirical order of society (see Aesthetic Theory 122–123 and 176–177).
2. See Rolf Tiedemann for a consideration of Benjamin’s notion of a “dialectics
at a standstill” (“Dialectics” 929–945).
3. Alexander García Düttmann identifies art’s enigmatic character as a tension
between consciousness and illusion, a relation between “how it is” (So-ist-es)
and “as if” (als-ob) (see Teilnahme 73, 75).
142 Marcus Quent
4. In the realm of second mimesis, pre-imitation and imitation do not share

the same logical temporality. It is not the case that imitation or re-enactment
follows a prior action like a reaction, nor does an action that is to be imitated
function like a stimulus for said imitation, Rather, the crucial point is that
pre-imitation can only appear in the process of imitation itself.
5. Anja Nowak has recently compiled Adorno’s few dispersed statements
about theatre and has offered a productive discussion of the theatricality of
Adorno’s concept of art as it emerges in Aesthetic Theory (see Elemente einer
Ästhetik des Theatralen in Adornos Ästhetischer Theorie).
9
On the Theatricality of Art
Anja Nowak
At first sight, Theodor W. Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory (1970) does not treat
the subject of theatre or theatricality in great depth. Quite the contrary:
except for his analysis of the two important dramatists Samuel Beckett
and Bertolt Brecht, he seldom writes about theatre at all.1 When he
does, Adorno mostly ignores the specific features of the theatrical situ-
ation and does not treat it as an independent art form, but merely as
subordinated to the dramatic text.
This subordination marks one of the most fundamental problems of
the Aesthetic Theory’s treatment of theatre. Even though Adorno acknowl-
edges that there is a “qualitative difference between what is required there
[in the theatre] and the texts and scores” (Adorno, Aesthetic Theory 125,
insertion A.N.), he never really follows up on these requirements. Instead,
he joins a long tradition of taking the theatre as the unfolding of an
anteceding object, namely the text. His focus mainly lies on the specific
relation of text and performance, which he uses as a means to comment
on aspects of his hypothesis about the artwork. In general, theatre mainly
appears as an example or a model for Adorno’s more general assumptions
about art. Along with the clown, the circus, the revue, the fool, and the
“element of play” (39), theatre sometimes also works as a slight corrective
for more rigid and elaborated strands of his aesthetic theory.
The blind spots of a theory that does not really treat theatre as an
autonomous art form clearly limit the possible insights that can be
gained on behalf of its contemporary practices.2 Neither will it be pos-
sible to distill a coherent theory of theatre from the scattered and unsys-
tematic remarks. Nevertheless, as a figure of thought, theatre becomes
quite central for the Aesthetic Theory and if examined on a more abstract
level it proves to be very useful for an understanding of Adorno’s
aesthetics. Therefore, the following analysis will leave aside all the
143
144 Anja Nowak
deficiencies and misunderstandings that can be criticized in Adorno’s

notion of theatre. Aspects such as Adorno’s neglect of all specific charac-
teristics of the theatrical situation, his disregard of its sheer materiality,
of the corporeality and co-presence of performer and audience, and the
inescapable social character of the situation (see Fischer-Lichte, Ästhetik
68), will not be analyzed in detail. Also, the unquestioned and almost
exclusively subordinating linkage of performance and dramatic text,
which follows the Aristotelian tradition up to the very questionable
idea that in the end, “[w]hether or not they [dramatic or musical texts]
are performed is for them a matter of indifference” (Adorno, Aesthetic
Theory 126, insertion A.N.) will be referred to without being criticized
exhaustively. Instead, this chapter will focus on the potential theatre
gains as a model and example. In particular, the constitutive tempo-
rality of theatre will turn out to be a surprisingly central element of
Adorno’s aesthetics. First, the analysis will approach the essential cat-
egories of form and objectivation. Throughout Adorno’s aesthetics these
categories designate the main dialectical counter-forces that theatre
engages with. In a very literal interpretation, theatre is linked to them
as their corrective. Its essential fleetingness is revaluated and opposed to
the durational character Adorno generally attributes to art. In a second
step, the relation between the dramatic text and its performance will
be outlined. Without regard to a possible critique of this correlation,
Adorno’s understanding of the two elements of the theatrical will help
to sketch out what Adorno calls the fundamental “precariousness of the
thing-character” of art (100). After that, the analysis will proceed on a
more abstract level. Instead of following explicit references to theatre,
it will illustrate general temporal characteristics of its practice in their
relevance to Adorno’s aesthetics. The assumed processuality of artworks
will be shown in its dialectic relation to their objectivation; and atten-
tion will be drawn to the instantaneousness of the artwork’s appearance
and the process of re-dynamization through reception. By drawing this
theoretical connection, a much deeper relevance of the theatrical for
Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory will be demonstrated.
9.1 Objectivation and fugacity
As progressive as its orientation might be, Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory still

clearly follows an understanding of art that focuses very much on the
work, on an artifact as the result of an artistic process. Even though he
sometimes broaches the issue of more open art forms, he always returns
to the notion of a “finished, molded” object (Aesthetic Theory 176) as
Theatricality of Art 145
the base of his reflections. This is closely linked to the fact that one of
the main categories of his aesthetics is that of form, which also implies
a certain stability and materiality at the core of his understanding of
art.3 Even though it is clear that form can only be thought of dialecti-
cally and Adorno admits that “no single select category, not even the
aesthetically central concept of the law of form, names the essence of
art and suffices to judge its products” (7), it still becomes the bearer of
most of what is relevant in art.
Adorno distances himself emphatically from the idea of a so-called
“message” of an artwork (27,128, 272) and also dismisses the intention
of the artist as the central characteristic of the work (see 43, 129). Both
elements may contribute to the “content [Gehalt]” but ultimately, only
what is realized in the aesthetic form, the “objectivity” of the work,
really counts (169, 266). For Adorno, aesthetic form itself has to be
seen as “sedimented content” (5, 144). He assumes that the “unsolved
antagonisms of reality return in artworks as immanent problems of
form” (6). Correspondingly, the formal composition of a work becomes
the only appropriate way in which it can relate to the world.
Also, what Adorno calls the “integral elaboration” of a work (98) has
to be seen as the essential measure of its artistic quality. Its value cor-
responds to the degree to which it is strictly and thoroughly composed.
Adorno concludes: “artworks are more valuable in direct relation to how
articulated they are, when nothing dead, nothing unformed remains;
when there is no part that has not been passed through in the forming
process” (190). In this way, form becomes art’s fundamental require-
ment. Accordingly, there is only a very limited resort for the unformed
in Adorno’s aesthetics. Even though he concedes that a “horizon of a
certain indeterminateness” (168) can develop productive potential, it
ultimately has to be tied back to the primacy of a thorough composi-
tion. Especially from the perspective of theatre studies, this marks a very
severe constriction. Art forms that turn away from complete planning
and open up to social interaction, confrontation, or moments of haz-
ard and unforeseen development, are disregarded.4 They are rejected as
symptoms of decline, acceptable – if at all – only as manifestations of a
crisis of art (see Sauerland, Einführung 23).
But still, the postulate of the “law of form” (Adorno, Aesthetic Theory 7,
222) does not stand unchallenged. At the same time, form is discredited
as cruel, as violent, oppressive, and finally even lethal. In its structure,
it is akin to the “mastery” over the natural (66; and see Adorno and
Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)), a projection of rational-
ity into the sphere of art. Construction – the instrument of molding
146 Anja Nowak
and forming an object – “is the plenipotentiary of logic and causality

transferred to the artwork from the domain of objective knowledge”
and thereby guilty of the same mode of cutting back and killing off the
“qualitative elements that it masters” (Aesthetic Theory 57). Adorno calls
this the “original sin of art” (50) and asserts that only “those artworks
succeed” that manage to appease their own brutality and “that rescue
over into form something of the amorphous to which they ineluctably
do violence” (50). Also, form’s complicity with the idea of permanence
is highly problematic. Adorno states that all artworks were “meant to
endure” and links this assumption to the concept of their indispensable
objectivation (27). He interprets art as a protest against death, as the
attempt to “give permanence to the transitory” (134) while at the same
time, through the very process of fixation, it brings death to “the fleet-
ing, the ephemeral, the transitory” it set out to save (219). Furthermore,
art’s object-character makes it prone to become a “commodity” (21). Its
permanence is, as he says, “modeled on fixed, inheritable possession,”
a circumstance that Adorno calls an “outrage” (28). Consequently,
artworks “suffer” from their “immanent condition as a thing” (100)
and what is a necessary condition of art at the same time becomes its
threat. Works of art that try to distance themselves from the ephemeral
using “pure impregnable forms” or aiming at “the ominous claim to the
universally human” (177) a fortiori put themselves to death: “As soon
as artworks make a fetish of their hope of duration, they begin to suffer
from their sickness unto death: The veneer of inalienability that they
draw over themselves at the same time suffocates them” (28). Instead,
Adorno demands that artworks challenge their pursuit of duration.
At this point, he turns to the temporal arts as a possible corrective. In
their constitutive fleetingness he sees the perfect example for an art that
turns against “the once perceived illusion of duration” (289). Adorno
finds the archetype for this in the image of the firework, which in its
nature symbolizes an absolute willingness to die away in the instant of
appearance (28). He ennobles the fugacity that is also inherent to musi-
cal and theatrical performance to the ideal of an aesthetic practice that
is aware of the destructive side of duration and responds by letting go of
it. Temporal fleetingness is thereby transformed into a general aesthetic
moment, which of course does not only concern the material side of the
artwork but affects what Adorno calls its “truth content,” its “spirit.”
Adorno comes to the conclusion that:
Today it is conceivable and perhaps requisite that artworks immolate

themselves through their temporal nucleus, devote their own life to
the instant of the appearance of truth, and tracelessly vanish without

thereby diminishing themselves in the slightest. (177)
Thereby he revaluates the constitutive momentariness of the perfor-

mance, not taking it as a deficit but rather as the only honorable ges-
ture. This ideal corresponds to an understanding of truth that perceives
it as not permanent but rather temporal in its core:
If art were to free itself from the once perceived illusion of duration,
were to internalize its own transience in sympathy with the ephem-
eral life, it would approximate an idea of truth conceived not as
something abstractly enduring but in consciousness of its temporal
essence. (28)
Of course, the gesture of vanishing and immolating is no more than a

corrective. It does not fundamentally challenge the concept of a result, an
objectivated work of art, but rather engages with it in a field of tension.
Artworks are essentially bound between their objectivation – which for
Adorno is an indispensable guarantor of their integral elaboration – and
their struggle against the rigidification it inevitably means. As an antidote
to this threat, musical and theatrical performances become the prototype
of an aesthetic comportment which Adorno requests from every artwork.
9.2 Drama and performance
When Adorno discusses the relation between the dramatic text and its
performance, theatre becomes an example for the ambiguity between
indispensable fixation and its counterpart, the corrective moment of
fugacity. Whereas drama is taken as the anteceding object, the per-
formance comes to symbolize the desirable gesture of embracing the
ephemeral. Adorno writes:
Ernst Schoen once praised the unsurpassable noblesse of fireworks

as the only art that aspires not to duration, but only to glow for an
instant and fade away. It is ultimately in terms of this idea that the
temporal arts of drama and music have to be interpreted, the coun-
terpart of a reification without which they would not exist and yet
that degrades them. (28)
In theatre the fugacious moment of art is externalized in the perfor-

mance, thereby separating object-character and fleetingness in a very
literal sense.
148 Anja Nowak
However, this is more than a mere example: with their twofold struc-
ture theatre and music disclose a polarity that is inherent in all artworks.
What is “eloquent” in them (112), what makes them an “apparition”
(88), can also be seen as an act of performing themselves. Despite their
object character they are all “becoming actual, like fireworks, incandes-
cently in an expressive appearance” (81). Adorno explicitly draws the
connection to the drama-performance relation when he writes:
If some types of art, drama, and to a certain extent music, demand that
they be played and interpreted so that they can become what they are
[…] these types actually do no more than illuminate the comportment
of an artwork, even those that do not want to be performed: This com-
portment is that each artwork is the recapitulation of itself. (125)
In this context, the indecisiveness that Adorno displays with regards to

the status of the two sides of the theatrical is telling. On the one hand,
Adorno declares the “primacy of the text over its performance” (100)
and states for the comparable case of music that “scores are not only
almost always better than the performances, they are more than simply
the instructions for them; they are indeed the thing itself” (100). On the
other hand, “not the text but the performance is taken to be what mat-
ters, just as in music not the score but the living sound is so regarded”
(100). Exactly this lack of clarity discloses the “precariousness of the
thing-character” (100) and Adorno ends up speaking of “both concepts of
the artwork as thing” concluding that they “are not necessarily distinct”
(100). Again, what has been read out of the particular cases of theatre and
music gains general validity. The proper definition of the artwork remains
undecided. Artworks are as much “things among things” (86) as they are
something that is comparable to the experience of a living performance.
To understand this phenomenon properly, we will have to examine
its theoretical preconditions on a more abstract level. At this point,
Adorno does not explicitly refer to theatre anymore but still uses tem-
poral modes that bear a strong resemblance to the theatrical. Detached
from the concrete cases of drama or performance, concepts like proces-
suality, instantaneousness, or actualization carry the characteristics of
the temporal arts into the composition of every artwork.
9.3 Processuality
Even though Adorno holds on to the notion of the artwork as a result,

he also sees it as being processual. Actually, these two seemingly
contradictory characteristics are essentially interlocked: the artwork “is

at once static and dynamic” (86). This double character is again closely
connected to the aesthetic form. Form that orders “elements of the
empirical reality” (259) like a magnet, needs its “other,” that which
“opposes unity” (89), to be more than a “tautology” (348). If it does
not want to be reduced to absurdity, unity depends on the resisting, the
heterogeneous. Adorno writes:
In artworks, the criterion of success is twofold: whether they succeed

in integrating thematic strata and details into their immanent law of
form and in this integration at the same time maintain what resists
it and the fissures that occur in the process. (7)
This requirement mirrors the already mentioned idea of a “nonviolent

synthesis” (143), creating a unity that is at the same time preserving
that which is forced into an order. Because the “antagonistic forces” (85)
are held alive in the unity of the artwork, the work itself is essentially
dynamized.
The antagonisms that are integrated into the artwork’s form are
“represented in the work by the particularities” (53). Their relation to
each other and to the whole is also portrayed as a dynamic one. The
individual elements of the artwork are each, taken for itself, incomplete.
They demand from others to enter the constellative force field, to relate
to them, precede and follow them. Adorno describes these elements as
“centers of energy” (178) and writes:
That artworks are not being but a process of becoming can be grasped
technologically. Their continuity is demanded teleologically by the
particular elements. […] It is as a result of their own constitution
that they go over into their other, find continuance in it, want to
be extinguished in it, and in their demise determine what follows
them. (176)5
It is exactly this “nexus” of the artwork’s particular elements that consti-

tutes its “transcendence” and its “eloquence” (78). Its composition is set
out to bring its “elements together into an eloquent relation” (105), and
the moment it transcends its mere factuality to become a thing “whose
power it is to appear” (80) coincides with the moment it becomes a
“nonconceptual” language or “script,” as Adorno puts it (78, 96). Both
phenomena arise out of the constellation of the artwork’s particularities
and are again purely relational and thereby dynamic.
150 Anja Nowak
In general, spirit, as realized in materiality, is no “existence sui gen-

eris” but a “tension between the elements of the artwork” (88). Adorno
concludes: “In no artwork is the element of spirit something that exists;
rather, it is something in a process of development and formation” (91).
This processuality is also connected to art’s constitutive fugacity that was
discussed before. Being something that is not stable and fixed but rather
“something in motion,” the artwork has an “immanent temporality”
(178). The nexus of its elements is changing within time. This process
is by no means linked to what could be called the changing reception
of the work. It is immanent. What Adorno calls the “temporal nucleus”
of an artwork implicates the process of its change and at the same time
encapsulates its potential to disintegrate. Thereby, Adorno provides all
art with a temporal index. No fixation can work as a safeguard here:
“The indefeasibility of what is sketched on paper, painted on canvas, or
carved in stone is no guarantee of the indefeasibility of what is essential
to the artwork, its spirit, which is dynamic in itself” (178).
As has been shown, the processuality of art is essentially entwined with
the force of formal design, which brings the elements of the artwork into
a dynamic constellation. Adorno insists on a necessity for “objectivation”
(222). Even though artworks “are such only in actu,” Adorno declares
that “it is only as finished, molded objects that they become force fields
of their antagonisms; otherwise the encapsuled forces would simply run
parallel to each other or dissipate” (176). The antagonistic impulses that
are brought into a relation need to be fixated, otherwise their “centrifugal
force” (53) would cause the artwork’s disintegration. To generate their
dynamic tension, the elements have to be clamped into a force field.
Both, process and objectivation are irreconcilably in conflict and yet
essentially cross-referenced. Using a term of Walter Benjamin, Adorno
speaks of a “dialectic at a standstill” (84). Still, objectivation remains
flawed. It is “the fetishization of what is in itself a process as a relation
between elements” (100). While being indispensable for the “imma-
nent, crystallized process” (180) it tends towards ridification and as a
fixed object “merely feigns the becoming” (107).
9.4 Instantaneousness
Another temporal characteristic that links Adorno’s concept of the

artwork to structures that are typical for theatrical performance is the
notion of presence.
What turns artworks into something “eloquent” is not given but
emerges instantaneously; artworks become “actual” as an “expressive
appearance” (81). In doing so, they transcend their object character and
are transformed into what Adorno calls an “act” (79). In this sense, they
are also to a certain degree performative, not objects but a “comport-
ment” or doing (125). With this, Adorno takes artworks as active agents,
stating that their “immanent process is externalized as their own act,
not as what humans have done to them and not merely for humans”
(81). At the same time, the notion of being an “act” emphasizes their
temporal structure: “Artworks have the immanent character of being
an act, even if they are carved in stone, and this endows them with the
quality of being something momentary and sudden” (79). Even seem-
ingly static forms of fixation preserve the temporality of the artwork’s
immanent process. It is reactivated in the moment of their appear-
ance and performance, in the moment the “latent processes […] break
through” (85), which converts them into something actual and present.
Some of Aesthetic Theory’s terminology clearly indicates this temporal-
ity. For example: the firework as a “script that flashes up, vanishes, and
indeed cannot be read for its meaning” (81); the very act of flashing up;
the apparition; the explosion; the sudden; the appearance; the instant
and the momentary. According to Norbert Zimmermann, these notions
indicate either a specific quality of the temporality of the artwork or
designate the breaking through of its transcendence (Der ästhetische
Augenblick 15, 158).
The instantaneousness of the artwork’s appearance corresponds to
the idea that artworks are essentially trying “to save the fleeting, the
ephemeral, the transitory” (Adorno, Aesthetic Theory 219) and that they
are seeking “truth in the evanescent and fragile” (76). As refuge for
the ephemeral, artworks preserve it and at the same time negate it by
converting it into something durable. To a certain degree art’s instanta-
neousness also leads back to Adorno’s understanding of natural beauty.
Adorno notes, that art “does not imitate nature […] but natural beauty
as such” (72). This beauty is also characterized as something fleeting
and impalpable: “Just as in music what is beautiful flashes up in nature
only to disappear in the instant one tries to grasp it” (72). Therefore,
artworks create an instantaneous standstill, which encapsulates some-
thing that is in its nature transitory. Bound in their objectivation, they
recreate a similar temporality as that which is “summoned to duration”
(73). For its appearance, the instant seems to be the only thinkable
mode. At the same time it denotes the point of the crystallization of the
immanent process, “the point where out of [its] particular elements” the
artwork “became a totality” (80, insertion A.N.) and the very moment
of its reactualization. The fleeting cannot be objectivized as something
152 Anja Nowak
constant, something stable, but only as something that appears and

“slips away” (120). Thereby, it becomes something essentially present.
9.5 Reception and actualization
As has been indicated, the moment of actualization is crucial for the

emergence of the artwork’s temporality and this is linked to the recep-
tion of the artwork. To better understand this process, it is important
to keep in mind that in the context of reception, Adorno does by no
means talk about anything related to a reader-response approach. His
theory of reception is clearly founded on the “primacy of the object”
(169). He writes: “Aesthetic experience becomes living experience only
by way of its object, in that instant in which artworks themselves
become animate under its gaze” (175–176). The immanent tension and
processuality of the object is the origin of its vivification. Within the
reception, the immanent temporality of the artwork is re-dynamized
(Zimmermann, Der ästhetische Augenblick 50).
Adorno’s ideal of reception implies a process of reenactment. He com-
pares adequate reception to performance and declares: “understanding
specific artworks […] requires an objective experiential reenactment
from within in the same sense in which the interpretation of a musical
work means its faithful performance” (Aesthetic Theory 121). To under-
stand, the observer has to re-describe “the course that the artwork objec-
tively describes within itself” (69), just as the performer has to imitate
the artwork’s “dynamic curves” (125). Hence, reception is constructed
analogous to performance, and theatre and music again externalize
what is characteristic for every artwork. Adorno assumes that artworks
are “congealed imitations of works, virtually of themselves” (125) and
thereby structurally resemble musical or dramatic texts. Following the
“Aristotelian dictum that only like can know like” (125), in turn these
self-imitations request imitation to be unfolded. This imitation follows
the nexus of their elements, acts out their tensions, and reproduces
them: “Such imitation reads the nexus of their meaning out of the
signa of the artworks and follows this nexus just as imitation follows the
curves in which the artwork appears” (126).6
The notion of the “congealed imitation” of the work’s processuality,
which comes alive in its reception, is further explained by the artwork’s
resemblance to language. Artworks are described as a “nonconceptual
language” (78) and are speaking “by virtue of the communication
of everything particular in them” (5). Just as the written language is
re-translated into something temporal by the procedure of reading

(Adorno, “Relationen zwischen Musik und Malerei” (1965) 633), in
their reception artworks of all kind are re-converted into time and their
immanent processuality is reanimated.7
9.6 Summary
Even though theatre is by no means the focal point of Adorno’s aes-

thetics, it proves to be a valuable analytical concept. Especially in the
context of the dialectical tension between fixation and processuality its
twofold structure gains explanatory value. And even more than that: to
some degree, theatre almost works as a prototype for art in general. The
relation of dramatic text and performance is taken as exemplary for art’s
dialectical constitution as being “at once static and dynamic” (Aesthetic
Theory 86). Even though this parallelization is built on the questionable
identification of theatre and dramatic text, it leads to a positive revalu-
ation of typical characteristics of the theatrical situation. Immediate
presence and fleetingness, instantaneousness, and processuality are
now attributed to all art. The fact that reception is also constructed
analogous to performance enhances theatre’s prototypical status.
Adorno even goes so far as to call all art “directed, in the dramaturgical
sense” (220). As “self-identical” and “self-same,” artworks become their
own instruction, a template for their own production (if not staging),
instead of a finished, already existing object.
This is all the more astonishing because Adorno hereby breaks with
the seemingly clear demarcation line between art that explicitly turns
to performativity and art that at first glance seems to be solid, fixed,
completed, and entirely physically realized. His conception applies not
only to a certain segment of art, nor is it limited to art that consciously
displays its own performativity; it claims validity for all art forms and
all periods. Consequently, Adorno interprets even classical statues and
paintings as processual, momentary, and ephemeral phenomena.
Still, nothing can hide the fact that theatricality remains a threshold
value. Adorno sternly holds on to the concept of material realization.
Art that is purely ephemeral, that entirely renounces material objecti-
vation and that, like the firework, “glow[s] for an instant and fade[s]
away” (28, insertion A.N.), is not really to be included in his aesthetics.
Hence, Adorno’s treatment of theatre remains highly ambiguous. Major
strands of his aesthetic theory clearly contradict theatricality, but at the
same time it latently becomes a potent theoretical force.
154 Anja Nowak
Notes
1. One of the few exceptions is the short essay “Zur Naturgeschichte des
Theaters” (“The Natural History of the Theatre”) which was published in
1962 and shows a very unusual portrayal of theatrical spatiality. For a more
detailed inventory of Adorno’s statements about theatre, see Nowak, Elemente
einer Ästhetik des Theatralen in Adornos Ästhetischer Theorie.
2. For that, it might be even more productive to confront Adorno’s social cri-
tique and negative dialectics as such with contemporary theatre.
3. Ultimately, Adorno insists on the actual physical realization of the artwork.
In his 1965 essay “Über einige Relationen zwischen Musik und Malerei”
(“Some Relationships between Music and Painting”) he is tracing back musi-
cal complexity to the sheer material realization in the graphé, the notation
as an inscription into the spatial dimension. The idea of a “virtual objectiva-
tion” that lacks physical realization but might generate an equally complex
organization (as advocated for example by Horst-Dieter Klock) does not seem
to provide an alternative to this fixation on materiality.
4. Linked to this criterion is of course the central assumption of art’s autonomy
(see Rebentisch, Ästhetik der Installation 129), which also forbids certain ten-
dencies of opening up to unfiltered elements of reality (Adorno, “Marginalien
zu Theorie und Praxis” 778–779; “Die Kunst und die Künste” 452).
5. Even though the phrasing here indicates a certain temporal, successive
nature of the artwork in question, the same dynamic is also applied to paint-
ing or sculpture (see Adorno, “Über einige Relationen zwischen Musik und
Malerei”).
6. Juliane Rebentisch, who also points to Adorno’s imitational ideal of recep-
tion, criticizes its constitution as a synchronic “co-execution,” doubting both
its synchronicity and congruence (Ästhetik der Installation 146, 213ff.). She
also questions the exclusive object focus of Adorno’s approach and pleads
for a more relational concept of the artwork’s processuality that shifts the
emphasis to the aesthetic experience and the public aesthetic discourse (12,
37, 134ff.).
7. A similar idea of the reanimation of the artwork’s temporality can be found
in Martin Seel’s discussion of art as apparition (“Ereignis” 45). Seel also
assumes a processuality of all artworks that arises from the relational nexus of
their particular moments. His argumentation follows a very Adornian logic,
leading to the conclusion that in the end all art is in a sense temporal art.
10
Adorno and Performance: Thinking
with the Movement of Language
Birgit Hofstaetter
10.1 Introduction: delineating a space of performance
If one searches for the term “performance” in Adorno’s collected notes

on musical reproduction one does not look in vain. “Performance,”
understood in a broad sense as the physical act of making music,
appears for instance when Adorno discusses the shortcomings or merits
of particular interpretations of music in relation to which he develops
and refines his theoretical points. This very broad notion of perfor-
mance, however, does not take us to the heart of Adorno’s account of
musical reproduction. Indeed, in that account Adorno is much more
interested in the process of reading music, understood as a cognitive
(geistig) activity of following through the inner development of musi-
cal compositions, than he is in performance, broadly construed. This
should hardly be surprising. After all, Adorno’s interest in musical
reproduction is primarily critical: he is concerned with the possibility of
a reproduction that would be true to the objective demands of a work.
Whilst Adorno, of course, does not refer to “reading music” in terms of
“performance,” I contend that contours of the former are revealed when
seen through the lens of the latter (and vice versa). When looked at in
this way, what emerges is a conception of performance as an embodied
mode of thought that constitutes as much a practice of critique as a crit-
ical practice. Practice, however, is never a mere “doing” but is crucially
also receptive – it involves mimetic comportment in which the material
and experiential fabric of things and thought resounds.
“Reading music,” for Adorno, is responsive to its historical context
and to the development of subjectivity and musical material of the
time. The historically attuned manner in which this notion of musi-
cal interpretation is developed is iterated by a responsiveness to the
155
156 Birgit Hofstaetter
sensuality of music that lies at the heart of interpretation, but which

cannot be detached from reflective analysis. It is in the development
of a somatic resonance that unfolds in reading that Adorno’s account
of musical reproduction meets with his notion of philosophical inter-
pretation. The conception of performance that I thus wish to unearth
is one which, in giving flesh to the sensual-mimetic aspects of reflec-
tive thought, lends precision to the critical modes of interpretation
in which music approximates philosophy and in which philosophy
gives way to a musicality that lies at its heart. In attempting to draw a
notion of performance from Adorno’s work, this chapter not only seeks
to contribute to the field of Performance Philosophy, but also aims to
convey the centrality of aesthetic practices and experiences to Adorno’s
philosophical oeuvre.
That Adorno gives precedence to reading music over performance
makes sense, given his analysis of the challenges modernity poses to
the latter. Such challenges include: the increasing commodification
of musical phenomena and the stifling of experience by late capital-
ism and identity thinking; the growing autonomy and complexity
of compositions, ever more demanding on the technical ability of
musicians, that jeopardize the possibility of performances adequate
to a musical work;1 and the historical injunction that “Auschwitz”
imposes on expressive possibilities. “Reading music,” for Adorno, is a
Grenzbegriff, a limit concept, that iterates the force of a historical situa-
tion in which the ever increasing individualization and rationalization
(Vergeistigung) of the modern subject displaces claims to experiential or
material immediacy, a tendency that might in the future, as Adorno
speculates time and again, even culminate in rendering superfluous the
physical act of performance as such (Musical Reproduction 5; NS I, 2: 13).
The normative implications of this development, however, cannot be
straightforwardly defined. In his notes on musical reproduction Adorno
speaks repeatedly of an ideal of mute play or silent reading of musical
texts (Musical Reproduction 2; NS I, 2: 11). The notion of such an ideal
already takes Adorno beyond a mere lament for the loss of immediacy
in the context of an ever expanding commodification of culture, self,
and society, toward the critical possibilities that might inhere in such
a practice. In fact, I will argue that the mute performance of reading
maps onto a critical concept that lies at the heart of Adorno’s analysis
of art. In seeing this, we shall be able to provide an initial sketch of the
relation between musical reproduction and philosophical interpreta-
tion that it is the aim of the chapter to draw out, namely: the “language
character” of music.
Thinking with the Movement of Language 157
With the notion of “language character” Adorno seeks to capture the

paradoxical fact that whilst music does not picture reality it neverthe-
less appears to “say something, often something humane” (Essays 113;
GS 16: 648).2 Language, as he understands it, unfolds in the dialectic
between expressive-mimetic elements, which seek the immediate pres-
entation of particulars, and discursive-significatory elements, which
allow for the recognition and communication of objects. Taking up
the familiar thought that tonal music is modeled on the language
of words, Adorno claims that music resembles language in iterating
its double character: “The process of music’s turn toward language
(Versprachlichung) means its simultaneous transformation into conven-
tion and expression” (Essays 145; GS 18: 161). In the mediation of
structural organization and expressive components, music resembles
language insofar as it “reaches from the whole, the organized coherence
of meaningful sounds, down to the single sound, the tone as threshold
of bare existence, the pure carrier of expression.” Whilst words have a
referential function which determines something “outside” themselves
(they mean something), in music, “what is said, cannot be detached from
[it]; (music) does not form a system of signs” (Essays 113; GS 16: 649).
For this reason, music constitutes what Adorno calls a mute or non-
intentional language, which comes to “speak” through the immanent
unfolding of a mimetic impulse (NS IV, 3: 70). In other words, music
“imitates itself,” as he likes to say: it gains momentum via the negation
of individual themes and particularities into the totality of the work
and thus comes to posit itself as a meaningful self in the movement of
its progression.3 “The unique character of music: not to be an image,
not be for another reality, but to be a reality sui generis” (Beethoven 163;
NS I, 1: 235).
The silent articulation of music in which it reveals itself as itself can
thus, rather paradoxically, be grasped as an aspect of music’s resem-
blance to language. If one is to understand the mute language of art,
one must not attempt to listen to what is said, but to how it is said: to
decipher the mute gestures in which the sense of an artwork is enacted.
It is in the context of music’s muteness that reading as its interpretative
counterpart must not only be understood as responding to the reifica-
tion of experience in modernity, but also as harboring critical possibili-
ties. The focused activity of reading makes possible the analytical work
of following through the relations and elements of a musical totality
that might not be immediately accessible through the mere exposure
to a work’s sound-image. Yet, as shall become clear in the course of this
chapter, just as the language character foregrounds the unfolding of a
mimetic impulse in the generation of musical “sense,” reading, often

understood as a “mere” cognitive practice, also always demands and
evokes a mimetic and embodied attitude.
Adorno’s work challenges one to construe “performance” as a critical,
yet corporeal, literacy that occurs between an interpreter and the work to
be articulated through critical engagement with the musical text. In the
tripartite structure between music, notation, and the subject, it is thus
the text that provides the arena of performance: notation constitutes the
medium of musical interpretation that is “needy” for reflection (Musical
Reproduction 2; NS1, 2: 11). The permanence of the text lays claim to the
analytic and mimetic skills of a critical subject through which music can
emerge and re-emerge, through which it is kept alive. I want to argue
that this practice of the interpretative critique of the medium provides
a model for Adorno’s philosophy which, understood as a mode of self-
reflection, crucially always also posits the question of its medium, that
is, of its relationship to the texts of its tradition and to language as such.
As he puts it in one of his lectures on philosophical terminology:
[Philosophy] is that kind of knowledge (Erkenntnis) where language

is absolutely central; where language does not constitute an arbi-
trary and exchangeable system of signs, but where it is crucially
bound up with the matter at hand […] The medium through which
a philosophical thought realises itself is precisely language, and if
philosophy constitutes a way of thinking which reflects on itself, it
is necessarily implied that, in this process of self-reflection, it reflects
on its own medium, namely, on language. (NS IV, 9.2: 7)
Adorno’s remark has to be understood in the context of his critique

of idealism. It is his contention that in marginalizing language and in
adhering to an ideal of method and systematicity, idealist philosophy
has renounced the expressive dimension of thought and with it the
possibility of a form of interpretation that would be adequate to the
particularity of things as they are encountered in experience. Concepts
which make communication for others possible cannot possibly
account for the specific “aroma” of things (NS IV, 9.2: 177). By assuming
that concept and object are identical, Adorno claims, idealism divests
objects of their particularity and makes possible their infinite repeti-
tion merely as moments of universal categories. If philosophy is thus
to leave the epistemological cul-de-sac of reproducing the innermost
same, it is compelled to correctively develop an attentiveness to the
specific qualities of objects that it tends to disavow. In other words,
philosophical thought has to unfold in reflective modes of presentation

that seize the antagonism between the mimetic and the communicative
aspects of language “to say what cannot be said,” as Adorno maintains
contra Wittgenstein (or, rather, contra a misreading of Wittgenstein)
(Hegel 105–106; GS 5: 340; GS 6: 21; Negative Dialectics 9). As Adorno
practices philosophy as negative critique, this means taking up a criti-
cal engagement with the texts and concepts of the tradition to which
he belongs, but which are exceeded by the corrective force of a thought
oriented through the expressive potential that emerges in the resonance
between the works to be interpreted and the interpreting subject and
which is to be illuminated by conceptual mediation. “Philosophy’s
methexis in tradition,” Adorno claims,
would only be its determinate negation. Philosophy rests on the texts

it criticizes. They are brought to it by the tradition they embody, and
it is in dealing with them that the conduct of philosophy becomes
commensurable with tradition […] In its dependence – patent or
latent – on texts, philosophy admits its language character (sprachli-
ches Wesen) which the ideal of method leads it to deny in vain. (GS
6: 64–65; Negative Dialectics 55)
In what follows, I seek to establish a dialogue between Adorno’s writing

on musical reproduction and some of his more explicitly philosophical
texts to ground his account of critique by relating it to the musical per-
formance of reading. I begin by focusing on the term “Selbstbesinnung”
by means of which Adorno seeks to capture the movement that struc-
tures critique. I then relate this to Schönberg’s account of music’s sub-
cutaneous texture, which is crucial to Adorno’s thoughts on musical
reproduction. The last part of this chapter draws on the insights gained
from Adorno’s music lesson and suggests their significance for the
critical practices of reading and writing, that is, to philosophical pres-
entation. It is in the interplay of musical and philosophical modes of
interpretation that a specific notion of performance will crystallize out
of Adorno’s thought, a notion that plays as much on reflective abilities
as it enables and develops a somatic or embodied attitude.
10.2 Selbstbesinnung
Adorno often refers to his practice of critique as Selbstbesinnung, a term

that tends to be translated as “self-reflection.” The connotations of
the term “Selbstbesinnung” are, however, more manifold than those of
“self-reflection.” Whilst the notion of “reflection” conjures up images

of a perspective of a detached observer, “Besinnung” refers to an activity
that involves both the mind and the body; it is a way of thinking that
always draws on and develops emotive and sensual qualities. The play
on the syllable “sinn” already gives a clue: the German word “Sinn,” simi-
lar to its English translation “sense,” can refer both to a form of meaning
and to the faculties of bodily perception – seeing, feeling, hearing, smell-
ing, and tasting. The activity of Selbstbesinnung embodies both these
connotations: it is a form of self-interpretation in which the self comes
to see itself as part of the world, as a fallible thinking being with a body
and a history. That the call “besinne dich!” means nothing but “come to
your senses!” might help to flesh out what is entailed in Selbstbesinnung
as a critical perspective: the moment in which we are told to come to our
senses presupposes a situation in which we go along without thinking.
“To come to one’s senses” requires a moment in which one suspends
a certain course of action and comes to experience the complexities
involved in what one has been doing all along. Thus, the process of
Besinnung is an unraveling of a dimension of sense that has been implicit
in our conduct, but the realization of which has been obstructed by the
appearance of necessity, which inheres within our habitual practices.
To the extent that Besinnung is a way of coming to see things differ-
ently, a coming to recognize habits as habits, it is a mere negative act.
Yet, Be-sinnung also has a “restorative” moment in so far as it bestows
a dimension of sense, of Sinn, on phenomena by making conscious a
complexity that was previously unseen. Such a restorative function,
however, does not aspire to the resurrection of an original meaning
or to uncover an authentic existence; rather, Selbstbesinnung points to
a philosophical partisan perspective that is as risky as it is transforma-
tive. It is precisely in the process of Selbstbesinnung that the self comes
to a realization of the contingency of its own postulates and, in doing
so, undergoes a process of transformation. In the self’s realization of
its precarious and transient character, it re-emerges as a critical subject.
Adorno captures this well in one of his lectures on moral philosophy:
Actually, we are no longer a piece of nature the moment we recog-

nise that we are a piece of nature […]. And that which withdraws
from illusion, and what could emphatically be called subject at all, is
nothing but Selbstbesinnung, this Besinnung on the I, in which the I
realises: I am myself a piece of nature – and through this insight, the
I rids itself from the blind pursuit of natural ends and transforms into
something else. (Moral Philosophy 103; NS IV, 10: 154)
The transformative movement of Selbstbesinnung can be understood in

terms of a Verhaltensweise (comportment), that is, crucially a mode of
relating to oneself, others, and the world. In Negative Dialectics, Adorno
characterizes philosophy repeatedly as a Verhaltensweise, thus indicat-
ing philosophy’s non-dogmatic and resonant character. Philosophy
is not something to be applied; rather, philosophy – like the self of
Selbstbesinnung – is a critical relation that unfolds in receptivity to the
material with which it engages and to which it is bound. To draw out the
specific material or expressive register in which this critical Verhaltensweise
unfolds, one might first point to the fact that the German word “weise”
not only translates as “manner” or “mode,” but, in a musical context, also
as “melody” or “tune.”4 This initial hint shall guide our inquiry into the
possibility of understanding philosophical Selbstbesinnung in terms of a
musical or attuned way of going about, as a practice of thought that would
be oriented toward the material or, rather, sensual qualities of things.
10.3 New music’s Besinnung on the subcutaneous
Selbstbesinnung has the developmental structure of thought turn-

ing on itself and becoming conscious of itself as part of a material-
experiential dimension to which it is indebted. In order to get a
more detailed picture of philosophical Selbstbesinnung, I believe it
valuable to look at Schönberg’s notion of the “subcutaneous.”5 Whilst
Adorno never explicitly addresses the family resemblance between
Schönberg’s account of the subcutaneous and his own conception
of Selbstbesinnung, I argue that it is through its musical counterpart
that the wealth of the latter’s connotations can be seen most clearly.
“Subcutaneous,” a term borrowed from medicine, means “under the
skin.” In a certain sense, all we see when we look at a human body is
its skin (apart from occasional patches of hair, a pair of eyes, nails and
teeth). Yet seeing a body as a body implies an awareness of the flesh,
the muscles and sinews and the rest of human anatomy that lies under
its surface and by which it is lent life and expressivity. Without this
knowledge one would not see a body at all, but merely an empty shell.
Whilst anatomical medicine shaped a historic understanding of what
a human body is, the new music movement attempted to challenge
a dominant understanding of music by revealing the “latent texture”
which lies underneath musical conventions: like an anatomical proce-
dure that reveals what is under the skin, new music uncovers what is
hidden by the schematic forms of tonality – what has been there all
along but has simply not been heard.
According to Adorno, Schönberg’s determination to uncover the

subcutaneous is premised on his belief that the idiom of tonal music
has exhausted itself. Whilst the harmonious arrangements of tonality
continue to appeal to human beings, he argues, its forms and functions
have become empty. Although tonality is often presented as essential
to music itself, indeed as corresponding to and offering fulfillment to a
human disposition, for Adorno it constitutes in fact a historically con-
tingent idiom whose conventions have become contestable in moder-
nity. Resulting in the repetitive imposition of a countable number of
formal elements on a multitude of expressive possibilities, the tonal
idiom has become prone to what Adorno regards as “musical stupid-
ity”: to the blind repetition of musical thoughts that have already been
realized (Beethoven 58–59; NS I, 1: 94–95). Familiar musical forms and
phrases have become merely decorative, easy to the ear, and no longer
fulfill a necessary function in articulating the sense of musical works.
In setting free the subcutaneous, Schönberg’s compositional technique
removes these empty logics and phrases in order to develop the work
out of the specific dispositions of the material itself. In breaking open
the empty shell of tonality, the particular musical elements are rendered
sinnvoll, sensical, in the musical totality. New music thus challenges the
self-evident nature in which tonal arrangements present themselves and
with it the very distinction between essence and appearance. As such,
the familiar musical phrases and forms that appear on the surface –
the sonata form, common accord series, and cadences, for instance –
and which have shaped listening habits for centuries, shall lose their
force of necessity and become recognizable as just that, as appearances.
And, moreover, what has been regarded as “mere filling material,” as
secondary to tonal harmonies – such as minute details, accompany-
ing voices and dissonances: “the wealth of subcutanea” – shall become
essential to the appearance of the musical work. Central to Schönberg’s
work, Adorno contends, is the aim of
mastering the contradiction between essence and appearance.

Richness and plenitude are to be made the essence, not mere orna-
ment; the essence, in turn, shall appear no longer as a rigid skeleton
on which the music is draped but rather as concrete and evident in
its most subtle traits. What he called the “subcutaneous” – the fabric
of individual musical events, grasped as the ineluctable moments of
an internally coherent totality – breaks through the surface, becomes
visible and manifests itself independently of all stereotyped forms.
The inward dimension moves outward. (GS 10.1: 157; Prisms 153)
For Adorno, the subcutaneous is crucially not in itself, but rather

emerges as the negation of sedimented forms. It is thus a process.
We are now in a position to see how by lending voice to the subcuta-
neous fabric of tonality new music is conceivable as a form of musical
Selbstbesinnung. Whilst the atonal pieces of Schönberg and his disci-
ples might have sounded like extra-terrestrial noise to the ears of the
Viennese audience in the early twentieth century, new music was, in fact,
never radically new. Rather than simply replacing tonality, music now
besinnt sich auf sich selbst, that is, it remembers and renders explicit its
subcutaneous texture which had been displaced by tonal conventions.
To clarify this point, it is worth recalling that Adorno’s take on music is
indebted to an understanding of musical works in terms of motivic-the-
matic development. What he refers to as “subcutaneous” is nothing but
the thematic structure, which “evolved originally out of the ratio of the
motivic technique of the fugue before it unfolded primarily in the devel-
opment part of the sonata form” (Adorno cit. in Klein 122). It is thus that
new music, whilst highly experimental, is at the same time deeply tradi-
tional: the event of Schönberg’s compositions, as Adorno situates it with
the help of Freud, constitutes the moment “where unconscious remem-
brance explodes the continuum [of tradition]” (GS 10.1: 160; Prisms 154).
New music’s experimental character testifies to the transformative devel-
opment of such “remembrance” which is inherent to Selbstbesinnung.
Rather than being a matter of going back to an original source or the
essence of music, the rendering visible and audible of the uncovered
material in a musical work is tantamount to its re-articulation in terms
of its particular function within that composition. Schönberg’s composi-
tional technique can thus be seen as attempting a musical answer to the
Kantian challenge which Adorno affirms in the introduction to Negative
Dialectics, namely: “how a thinking obliged to relinquish tradition might
preserve and transform tradition” (54–55; GS 6: 64).
10.4 Subcutaneous interpretation
The laying bare of the subcutaneous which, for Adorno, Schönberg’s

compositional practice accomplishes, provides a model for his notion
of musical reproduction. Adorno starts from the presupposition that
music constitutively requires interpretation. Music and its notation,
the musical score that forms the basis for interpretation, do not present
a homogenous system. Rather, the relation between signification and
musical sound is contingent, a fact which Adorno believes does not
hold for the relation between written and spoken language: “uttering
the name ‘a’ cites the phoneme a, whilst naming the note A does not”
(Musical Reproduction 168; NS I, 2: 222). Constituting a non-intentional
language, in music “the difference between signifier and signified is
heightened to the point of a qualitative rupture” (168; 222). Musical
symbols do not carry unequivocal meaning which would guarantee
“the interpretation of their sensual suchness” (180; 238), but crucial
elements and relations resist being arrested, spatialized, by notation –
thus, “the writing down of music constitutively also creates its differ-
ence to the latter” (53; 72). This point becomes rather obvious when
one considers the possibility of an all-too-faithful interpretation that
mechanically reproduces what is presented in the score. What emerges
would be something one would be hesitant to call “musical” at all:
a mere sequence of sounds, devoid of different shades, gestures, and
intonations. “A Beethoven quartet,” as Adorno writes, “played exclu-
sively according to the notes on the page would be senseless” (248
(endnote 84); 345 (endnote 78)). In the gap between signifier and
signified, between what is written down and what is intended by the
composition, a “zone of indeterminacy” emerges which requires active
interpretation if musical sense is to be articulated at all (180; 239). The
subjective investment of the interpreter, who, in reading between the
lines, re-creates the subcutaneous fabric of the composition, is thus key
to interpretation. As we shall see, it is in “play,” understood as a cogni-
tive quasi-somatic resonance, that music gains a melodious precision
that is crucial to the articulation of what is subcutaneous or, in other
words, to the constitution of musical sense.
10.5 Making musical sense: play and voice
For Adorno, just as music in virtue of its resemblance to language con-

stitutes a reality sui generis, musical reproduction does not produce an
image of reality but is predicated on enactment:
Interpreting means for one second playing the hero, the berserker,
hope itself, and this is where the communication between the work
and the performer lies. Only those who are able to imitate the work
understand its sense, and only those who are able to understand this
sense are able to imitate. All languages apply the notion of playing
to music. (2; 10)
Like an actor who gives life to a text by imitating the “melodic-mimic

aspect of language, tone, speech melody, and manner,” it is the task
of an interpreter to immerse herself in a musical text to become its

expression (159; 207). In a vein similar to the persona of an actor which
retreats beyond the character she embodies, a musician’s play seeks
to lend voice to the material it interprets. It is in the imitation of the
development of the score to which interpretation is bound (and which,
for Adorno, is itself the imitation of the musical work) that music gains
the expressive force that takes it beyond an empty re-activation of
sounds. Analytical insights regarding the value of particular elements
and relations out of which the musical whole is developed and which
themselves gain significance in relation to the overall intention of the
musical work have to be realized in play, in the performance of the
totality, if music is to have any expressive force, that is, if it is to be
music at all. The very objectivity of music, its sense and coherence, is
thus also dependent on a subjective component – namely, the sense
and skill of the interpreter – to craft the wealth of subcutanea out of the
“zone of indeterminacy.” Whilst the discursive dimension of cognition
allows for the analysis and establishment of logical links and relations
crucial to musical analysis, play, perceived as an essentially mimetic
capacity, does not subsume the particular under the universal, but
articulates individual musical shades, gestures, and intonations in their
expressive particularity.6 Play, for Adorno, is thus precisely not to be
equated with ambiguity or infinite deferral, but, informed by analytical
insights, bestows precision and exactness onto the abstract character of
the written text. The constitutive indeterminacy of notation demands
finely tuned interpolation, an element of gestalten (lit. giving shape),
in which the body of music emerges in light of its subcutaneous fabric.
Play, in other words, dissolves signification and re-creates it as music: it
sublates conventions by translating the rigid permanence of significa-
tion into the fluid yet differentiated resonance of music.
That Adorno links this quality of finely tuned mimetic articulation to
the notion of voice in various places might help to illustrate the matter.
As he remarks with respect to Schönberg’s compositions: “everything in
him is actually ‘sung,’ including the instrumental lines. This endows his
music with an articulate quality; free-moving and yet structural down to
the last tone. The primacy of breath over the beat of abstract time” (GS
10.1: 155; Prisms 152). Whilst Schönberg’s music resists the reduction to
a single identifiable tune, it is in the polyphonic play of distinct voices
that it attains a precision that is melodic. Adorno’s comment points to
a fluid quality in which voice innervates the musical score – lending it
articulation and differentiation through the width of breath and the
rhythm of the heartbeat. This quasi-somatic ability is something that
he regards as absolutely central to music.7 For the development of a

notion of performance in terms of a silent reading of music, it is how-
ever crucial to note that voice and play only have a place in Adorno’s
account in sublimated form, that is, as confined to inner, soundless
resonance.8 “Inner and soundless” does not, however, mean abstracted
from the body, but rather constitutes a link between the cognitive and
the somatic. As he emphasizes in a note on Beethoven: “For the imagi-
nation of all music […] is vocal. To imagine music always means: to sing
music inwardly: imagining it is inseparable from the bodily sensation
of the vocal cords” (Beethoven 173; NS I, 1: 249). The voice, after all,
designates an excess of sense over concrete meaning – in Lacan’s words,
it is “the alterity of what is said” – and it is in this fleeting, sounding
muteness that accompanies cognition that body and language intersect
(cit. in Nancy 28). The sense that is bestowed onto the musical text by
means of an innervation and re-articulation of its subcutaneous details
by an “inner voice,” performs a movement of Be-sinnung that is inher-
ently critical: when voice is read into music’s mute texture, music admits
to its language character and transforms into something that is alive.
10.6 Philosophical language: invoking a zone of

indeterminacy
Just as musical interpretation is necessarily Besinnung on its medium,

philosophical Selbstbesinnung, for Adorno, similarly entails a focus on
its medium, that is, on language: like musical interpretation, which
in being tied to notation is enabled to act as a critique of notation,
philosophy unfolds as a critical subject in relation to the texts which
“are brought to it by the tradition they embody” (GS 6: 64; Negative
Dialectics 55). In the context of Adorno’s critique of idealism, which I
set out at the beginning, a philosophy that besinnt-sich-selbst, that needs
“to come to its senses,” would be compelled to interpolate the particu-
lar qualities of philosophical concepts and texts that have been stifled
and disavowed under the sway of rationalized thinking and the ideal
of method. I argued that Adorno’s thoughts on musical reproduction
provide a model for such a mode of philosophical reading, conceived
as a practice of Selbstbesinnung. Music, as we have seen, is richer and
poorer than the language of words: poorer, as it is lacking a referential
element and thus determinate meaning; richer, as this lack of refer-
ent makes visible an array of particular expressive elements which are
central to language but which are drowned out by the noise of its dis-
cursive function. It is in its poverty, its muteness, that music becomes
exemplary for philosophy and that it calls for transformative practices

of interpretation.
Philosophy, as Adorno remarks in Negative Dialectics, contains an ele-
ment of play which serves “as a corrective to the total rule of method”
(11; GS 6: 14). I want to suggest that this element of play comes into
view best when one reads philosophical texts with the eyes of a musi-
cian. If philosophy opens itself up to relate to a text in a playful or
musical manner, it actively invokes a zone of indeterminacy; it cre-
ates a situation where it can abstract from the referential function of
words and bring into focus shades of expression in which language
exceeds mere signification and opens itself up to Sinn, to sense, to a
mute and transitory dimension that emerges when we consider how
words are used, how they are enacted or played, and where their
particular material connotations become perceptible.9 Whilst musical
reproduction is compelled to draw out the subcutaneous between the
lines of notation, philosophical interpretation could be thought of as
a practice that reads play into the texts of its tradition. If one looks at
a philosophical text as if it was notation, one is urged to give a bit of
free-play – of leeway, if you like – to the alleged unmoving permanence
of its meanings. Words and concepts, once put into play, are free to be
determined differently and to regain precision in modes of presenta-
tion that would be adequate to their particular and indeed sensual and
sensical qualities.
The moment where philosophy gives leeway to a text might be analo-
gous to the moment where mimesis “dissolves” notation only to recon-
stitute it as music. It is in this process of reconstitution, however, where
music and philosophy differ. Whilst music becomes music in play, phi-
losophy, for Adorno, proceeds negatively via conceptual mediation to
illuminate the latent texture in which concepts are embedded. Adorno’s
remarks on the essay convey just this insight:
Actually, all concepts are already implicitly concretised through the

language in which they stand. The essay begins with these mean-
ings and itself being essentially language, it forces such meanings
on farther; it wants to help language, in relation to its concepts, to
grasp these concepts reflectively in the way that they are already
unconsciously named in language. (“Essay as Form” 160; GS 11: 20)
The different forms of philosophical presentation (of which the essay

is just one) in and through which Adorno develops and articulates his
thought and on which he reflects time and again, thus converge with
his notion of musical reproduction in enabling a playful process in

which concepts are set free to be attuned to each other.10 This becomes
particularly evident when considering the guiding image that Adorno
invokes to characterize philosophical interpretation, namely: that of an
emigrant who is forced to learn a new language:
The way in which the essay appropriates concepts is most easily

comparable to the behaviour of a man who is obliged, in a foreign
country, to speak that country’s language instead of patching it
together from its elements, as he did in school. He will read without
a dictionary. If he has looked at the same word thirty times, in con-
stantly changing contexts, he has a clearer grasp of it than he would
if he looked up all the word’s meanings; meanings that are generally
too narrow, considering they change depending on the context, and
too vague in view of the nuances that the context establishes in every
individual case. (161; 21)
The notion of “playing with words” that this image conveys is pretty
much the opposite to what Adorno tends to refer to as a mere playing
with words, where philosophical language has become an abstract and
self-referential system that takes no impetus from, and has thus no
bearing on, dimensions of experience. Rather, the process in which an
emigrant learns a new language without a dictionary suggests a form of
“playing with words” in a musical sense: someone comes to learn a lan-
guage by listening to how words are used in different contexts and by
trying to attune one’s own use to it. Over time, precision is lent to words
through a process of tuning; one will learn how to articulate words with
exactness through reading, articulating, and correcting their use in dif-
ferent combinations and contexts. Adorno describes this elsewhere in
a way that echoes his discussion of musical reproduction: “numerous
words will unlock themselves in context but will be long surrounded by
an outer area of indeterminacy […] until the words unravel themselves
through the abundance of combinations in which they appear” (GS 5:
341; Hegel 107, my emphasis). In this process of unraveling, the zone
of indeterminacy retreats in favor of a new intelligibility that emerges
in the playful re-articulation of concepts. This emerging sense would
not glue the universal to the particular; rather it would be intrinsically
open, in that it acknowledges the historicity and context-dependency
of operating meanings, and more specific, in that the emerging mean-
ings are attuned to the object, rather than the object being appropriated
to them.
This guiding image for philosophical interpretation lays claim to

precisely those mimetic abilities of which I have attempted to trace
the contours through a consideration of Adorno’s writings on musi-
cal reproduction. The silent reading of philosophical texts calls upon
subjectivity in a full and embodied sense to attend to the mute particu-
larities of words – to those historically contingent meanings and mate-
rial qualities, the “aroma” of concepts, which will always exceed the
permanence of the written form. It is in the constitutive necessity of a
quasi-somatic receptivity to philosophical Selbstbesinnung that a notion
of performance specific to Adorno’s thought can be found. In contest-
ing any rigid division that might be drawn between the somatic and the
cognitive, Adorno’s philosophy of Selbstbesinnung suggests a notion of
performance as reading, or of reading as performance, that challenges
us “to come to our senses” and to reconsider what it might mean to
think. It is here that philosophy goes under the skin.
Notes
1. It would be premature, however, to assume that for Adorno “performance”
needs to be adequate to a musical work without changing the work itself.
Rather, the relationship between work and performance is of a dialectical
nature. This will become clear in what follows.
2. I have frequently modified the translations cited or provided my own where
there is no published English translation available.
3. “Totality” is a rather awkward translation of “Zusammenhang,” which liter-
ally means “hanging-together.” Totality is somewhat inadequate since it
bears the connotations of a reconciled unity whereas Zusammenhang empha-
sizes a whole’s structured and compositional character.
4. I owe this insight to Andrew Bowie’s essay on “Adorno, Heidegger, and the
Meaning of Music” (see Huhn, Cambridge Companion to Adorno 259).
5. It is worth pointing out that whilst Adorno attributes the term to Schönberg
and uses it frequently, the latter himself only mentioned it once or twice.
6. For a more detailed reflection on mimesis see for instance Adorno’s discus-
sion of the qualitative dimension of rationality and its relation to the indi-
vidual in the introduction to Negative Dialectics (43–47; 53–56).
7. On the “quasi-somatic” quality of voice see Mladen Dolar’s account of the
acousmatics of the voice in A Voice and Nothing More (60–74).
8. Adorno bans the actual sounding voice to the realm of utopia (“only angels
could make music freely” (Beethoven 173; NS I, 1: 249)). For him, the voice
suggests an unmediated state in which body and soul, individual and collec-
tive are reconciled – a pretense, which, in the present unreconciled state of
society, amounts to mere ideology.
9. Adorno recognizes this mute dimension in which philosophy correctively
admits to its language character when he speaks about rhetoric in Negative
Dialectics: “[i]n philosophy, rhetoric represents that which cannot be
thought except in language. It holds its place amongst those postulates of

presentation through which philosophy distinguishes itself from the com-
munication of already known (erkannter) and fixated contents” (ND 55; GS
6: 65).
10. Adorno’s writing engages with different forms of presentation, such as the
model or the aphorism, most of which are united by a configurative logic
that he owes as much to Walther Benjamin’s notion of constellation, which
the latter develops in The Origin of German Tragic Drama, as to compositional
techniques (this has been claimed inter alia by Jameson (59–62)).
11
What Is Adorno Doing? Immanent
Critique as Philosophical
Performance
Mattias Martinson
Anyone who approaches Adorno’s thought will soon become aware

of several difficulties – a fact that commentators have been keen to
point out: Adorno is an immensely difficult thinker (e.g. Brittain, Adorno
and Theology 9; Jarvis, Adorno 2–3; Spitzer, Music as Philosophy 6–7; van
Reijen, Adorno 1–2). Consequently, the traditional commentary on
Adorno’s thought is there to help us in our understanding. Supported
by commentators, who concentrate on this or that, we are supposed to
slowly get around the main obstacles and get a clearer picture.
It may perhaps be true that no one seriously involved in Adorno’s
thought would argue exactly in this way. But it is nonetheless a fact that
many books and articles on Adorno reflect something of this attitude,
with the implication that difficulties in one way or another have to be
seen as external to the content or the meaning of Adorno’s texts. Behind
the difficulties, commentators tend to presume a cleaner structure of
thought, which may be extracted and neatly compared with other
philosophies.
The following quotation is just one example from a review of Brian
O’Connor’s recent introduction to Adorno’s thought:
O’Connor’s style is careful, mercifully jargon-free, and nicely suited

to the genre. He is not seduced into emulating Adorno’s scintillat-
ing style, and he handles Adorno’s abstruse concepts with insight
and dexterity. There is no need for a book on Adorno to read like
Adorno’s philosophy, as some do. Indeed there is reason for them not
to: Adorno’s own work is difficult enough. The pitch of this work is
well-judged. It will be of interest to experts on Adorno as well as to
students encountering his work for the first time. (Finlayson, “Brian
O’Connor”).
171
172 Mattias Martinson
The task of introduction is characteristically presented in a way that

presupposes that the difficulties – such as dense formulations or vaguely
delineated concepts – are always possible to surmount. But are the obvi-
ous difficulties really to be separated from the content? Is there really
something elusive behind the obscurities that can be clearly under-
stood? Another way to frame the essence of these questions would be:
Is it really possible to approach Adorno’s thought along traditional her-
meneutic lines, suggesting that “the meaning” in one way or another
can be reached through clarification and contextualization? Sometimes
it is, for sure, but not always, and perhaps not in general.
What strikes me as highly important, therefore – and this will be the
sole theme of the wanderings of this chapter – is to rigorously theorize
the role of Adorno’s difficulties in themselves, as if the very obstacles
(not a hidden meaning behind the obstacles) were part of the essential
content of Adorno’s thought practice as it crystallizes in difficult texts.
In this ambition I intend to move further than for instance Judith
Butler, who – in defence of her own difficult writing – has used Adorno’s
difficult writing style as a good example of a way of resisting the pres-
sures of common sense. The problem with Butler’s reference to Adorno
in this context is once again that she ultimately presupposes that it is
possible to explain what he actually meant, in a way that makes the dif-
ficulties external rather than internal (see Butler, “Bad Writer”).
My attempts along these lines lead on to a notion of philosophical
performance.1 One way to view the critical theorist Adorno, as a thinker
and writer, is to see him as someone who points beyond the predica-
ments of modern society – the stifling immanence he ascribes to it – by
performing texts that enact this immanence in order to obstruct the
modern drive toward pragmatic forms of comprehension and under-
standing, ignoring the profundity of the predicaments in question (see
Goodwin, “Adorno’s Dilemma”).2
11.1 In face of despair – in light of redemption
In the last aphorism of Minima Moralia (1951), Adorno claims:
The only philosophy which can be responsibly practiced in face of

despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would pre-
sent themselves from the standpoint of redemption. Knowledge has
no light but that shed on the world by redemption: all else is recon-
struction [Nachkonstruktion], mere technique. Perspectives must be
fashioned that displace and estrange the world, reveal it to be, with
Immanent Critique as Philosophical Performance 173
its rifts and crevices, as indignant and distorted as it will appear one
day in the messianic light. (247)
This is indeed a difficult passage. Philosophy, redemption, knowledge,

technique, distortion, rifts, messianic light. What does Adorno mean?
One way to interpret this series of motifs is to see it as a complex way
of expressing a critical method based on a curious form of ontological
realism: Philosophy has to estrange the world as it appears to us, not
clarify it. The reason is that the world in itself is distorted and opaque,
not as understandable as we usually think it is. Hence, to reach truth
about the world, one has to fashion perspectives that make the world
appear as opaque as it actually is.
Alternatively, one can take one step further and interpret the passage
as a theological conception of the philosophical task. The distressed and
wounded world of late modernity – which Adorno tirelessly criticizes
under the headline of a “wholly administered world” – is in need of
redemption; an intervention from the side of the absolute. Although the
hope for such redemption is faint, it becomes thought’s responsibility to
reach beyond itself and consider things from a transcendent standpoint.
Yet another way to approach the passage would be to concentrate on
the negative elements, “Nachkonstruktion” and “technique”. To think
properly, to be a true philosopher, one has to construct something new,
not just legitimatize the old through rationalization. To truly think, there-
fore, is not to handle the world as it is by means of known philosophical
techniques, but to break with the very idea of a world that can be truth-
fully mastered and promote a different form of conceptual creativity.
As far as I can see, these three attempts to make sense of the passage are
all relatively legitimate. All three capture something that the passage seems
to reach for. There is a curious realism at play; there is an obvious theologi-
cal dimension; and there is a radical constructivist tendency. But this also
means that the three attempts are quite difficult to unite into one mean-
ingful conception of philosophy, and it is very doubtful whether the sepa-
rate attempts to clarify the passage really bring us to any deeper insight
about Adorno’s concerns at all. Attempts toward clarification of this kind
rather run the acute risk of ending up either in uninteresting hair-splitting
and sophistry, or in a diluted textbook-version of Adorno’s thought.
Somewhat later on, in the same aphorism, Adorno states that the
justifiable philosophy he prescribes is the “simplest of things [das
Allereinfachste],” since the world around us “calls imperatively for such

knowledge” (Minima Moralia 247). I take this to mean that the world is
not in order, and therefore it is not at all difficult to envision some kind
of critical conception or construal of the world which could function as a
challenge or corrective.
In the next sentence, however, Adorno retreats completely as he finds
such a truly critical conception of the world to be an “utterly impossible
thing [das ganz Unmögliche]” (247), because even though it might sound
simple, to successfully grasp the situation in a critical mode means no
less than an attempt to ascend from the world to a position beyond
empirical existence. Knowledge, according to Adorno, must always be
of this world and it has therefore to be immanently configured. But
even to claim this, even to insist on such an immediate contact with
the things of this world, implies a standpoint removed from this world,
“even though [only] by a hair’s breadth” (247). In other words, to gain
true knowledge in the right way is an impossible task.
But having said that, Adorno makes his last move in the aphorism by
suggesting that philosophy nonetheless “must comprehend for the sake of
the possible” (247) this very impossibility (that is, the radical impossibility of
the justifiable form of immanent philosophy he prescribes). Put differently,
philosophy should immanently try to capture and display its own impos-
sibility, in the name of a (futile) hope that it may at last be transcended.
This “difficult,” or complex, set-up perfectly illustrates Adorno’s way of

philosophizing. First, the difficulties he presents us with are not clari-
fied in due course. Second, not only does he make things more complex
by recognizing, accepting, and furthering the difficulties himself – he
also, literally, asks us to follow him paradoxically into the realm of the
impossible. He asks us to impossibly be impossible, in an attempt to, as
it were, imitate the way philosophy is impossible, in order to set off the
dynamism of the possible.
By furthering the difficulties in this way, Adorno formulates a demand
in the form of a double impossibility. He attempts to break through a
traditional theoretical standstill and move to a position from where
one can make a more practical and critical claim: the outrageousness
of the impossibility of a justifiable philosophy demands a construal of
this impossibility in the mode of possibility. Dialectically speaking, this
may be spelled out as a rigorous philosophical construal of the possibil-
ity that Adorno’s own verdict about the impossibility of philosophy is
in itself impossible, which would mean that his philosophical attempt

ultimately enacts the hope that this wholly administered world is nev-
ertheless not absolutely closed: “Nur wenn, was ist, sich ändern läßt, ist
das, was ist, nicht alles” (Negative Dialektik 391).3
All this is rather neatly performed through a concrete and almost art-
ful juxtaposition of overlapping sentences. In this way, Adorno concre-
tizes philosophy’s “difficulty” as a kind of hope by means of a literary
composition of the impossible impossibility.4
Is this artful gesture toward an impossible impossibility mere res-
ignation, an irresponsible play with words? Or is it an example of a
rigorous philosophical construction of a bulwark against resignation?
The aphorism ends with an almost resigned formulation, which keeps
these questions open: “Besides the demand thus placed on thought [to
impossibly be impossible], the question of the very reality or unreality
of redemption is almost indifferent” (247, insertion and emphasis M.M).
11.2 Impossibly being impossible
It is well known that Adorno’s philosophy stands in a very complex rela-

tionship to art, or better: his is a philosophy that constantly brings art
into the centre, in a way that ultimately makes it difficult to draw the
exact lines between the practice of art and the practice of philosophy.
In his programmatic essay about the philosophical essay, “The Essay as
Form” (1958), Adorno argues that the form of writing that best captures
his artful vision of philosophy is the essay, which is “both more open
and more closed than traditional thought would like” (17).
It is more open in that its structure negates system, and it satis-

fies its inherent requirements better the more rigorously it holds
to that negation […] But the essay is also more closed, because it
works emphatically at the form of its presentation [Darstellung].
Consciousness of the non-identity of presentation and subject matter
[Sache] forces presentation to unremitting efforts. In this alone the
essay resembles art [Das allein ist das Kunstähnliche des Essays]. (17–18)
To make things a bit easier, I will simply regard Adorno’s notion of the
essay form as a statement about how he wants philosophy to be writ-
ten (see Helmling, Adorno’s Poetics of Critique 8). This means that the
argument can be summarized as follows. On the one hand philosophy
should resist any systematic temptation to make things clearer than
they are, but, on the other hand, it should welcome the most rigorous
and meticulous work with its fragile language, in order to reach a proper
and exact use of words and their nuances. By doing this, in a spirit that
is critical against identification and systematic compulsion, philosophy
brings about equivocations and plays deliberately with double mean-
ings and overlapping senses. According to Adorno, this will take it
beyond all systematic intentions to a level where its language starts to
speak beyond intention, in a way that resembles a unity that “is hidden
in the object itself” (“The Essay as Form” 22).
This unintended unity in reality can be connected to the notion
of the nonidentical, which according to Adorno’s later work Negative
Dialectics is visible only as a refraction within the “logic of disintegra-
tion” that philosophy is supposed to set in motion by affecting “all
individual definitions” and thereby disclosing their incoherence and
contradictory character (Negative Dialectics 145).
This point of destabilization, where essayistic philosophical writing
resembles reality in a mode that stands up against systematic compul-
sion is the point at which it can be compared to art. Adorno writes the
following about the relationship between music and conceptual and
signifying language:
Music aims at an intention-less language, but does not separate itself

[…] from signifying language, as if there were different realms. A dia-
lectic reigns here; everywhere music is shot through with intentions
[…] but they appear only intermittently. Music points to the true lan-
guage as to a language in which the content itself is revealed […]. Time
and again it points to the fact that it signifies something, something
definite. But the intention is always veiled […]. (“Music, Language,
and Composition” 114)
In Adorno’s eyes the philosophical essay, whose language in some

ways strives in the same direction as music, is nevertheless not art.
His train of thought takes another twist. The fact that one aspect of
the essay’s conceptual and theoretical core resembles art in the way
described above does seem to mean that its sine qua non as philosophy –
that is, its intentional conceptual and argumentative dimension (the
dimension that ultimately distinguishes philosophy from art, repre-
sented by music in the quotation) – is punctured and severely under-
mined. “A philosophy that imitated art, striving to become a work of
art, would cancel itself” (Negative Dialectics 15, translation modified).
Hence, the philosophical essay, that is, the very form of a justifiable
philosophy, becomes philosophically dubious right from the beginning,
since it ultimately reaches for the side of conceptuality that reveals

“what the concept has cut away within: the ‘more’ which the concept
is equally desirous and incapable of being” (162).
Consider for instance the following ambiguous statement about the
essay’s conceptual-philosophical dimension:
In other respects [the essay] is necessarily related to theory by virtue

of the concepts that appear in it, bringing with them not only their
meanings but also their theoretical context. To be sure, the essay
behaves as cautiously toward theory as it does toward concepts. It
does not deduce itself rigorously from theory […] The more it strives
to consolidate itself as theory and to act as though it had the phi-
losopher’s stone in its hands, the more intellectual experience courts
disaster. At the same time, by its very nature, intellectual experience
strives for such objectification. This antinomy is reflected in the
essay. (“The Essay as Form” 18)
In this quotation “theory” seems to equal the “systematic framework”

or “conceptual network” through which the meaning of individual
philosophical concepts is mediated. If this is right, then the theoretical
dimension of the essay is implicit rather than explicit, and contingent
rather than systematic. This means that the overall theoretical – or
philosophical – outcome of the essay is very sparse. The essay’s funda-
mental philosophical role would then not be a theoretical role (in the
systemic sense stated above). First and foremost it performs the antin-
omy of philosophical thought; caught as it is in the impossible work of
delineating the impossibility of philosophy.
Put differently: there is a conflict between the conceptual force and
the mimetic force in the essay, as in music, “where the content itself is
revealed” (Adorno, “Music, Language, and Composition” 114). But, in
distinction from music, this content (this “hidden unity in the object
itself,” which the essay was supposed to capture or touch in a way that
would lend it “art-character” [Kunstähnlichkeit]) is not presented by the
essay as revealed content. According to Adorno, the essay differs from
authentic art in the sense that its constructed unity is not first and
foremost to be seen as a semblance of a lasting unity; one that promises
non-semblance (see Adorno, Aesthetic Theory 27). Its “philosophical”
unity rather comes forth negatively, as an index of the untruth of the
very standard of truth operative in the antagonistic social context in
which the essay is born, and of which it is part. Philosophy – as enact-
ment of this predicament – protests against a society in which freedom
has been literally transposed to unfreedom: “Society has become the

total functional context which liberalism used to think it was: to be
is to be relative to others, and irrelevant to oneself” (Adorno, Negative
Dialectics 65, translation modified).
Impossible philosophy (due to the unfree and unredeemed situation,
the radical immanence of modern life) has then to be subversively
performed as the very unfunctional impossibility it has become (in this
unfree situation) – for the sake of the possible:
Anything that has a function is bound to be so by the spell of the func-

tional world. Only a thinking that has no mental sanctuary, no illusion
of an inner dominion, acknowledging its lack of function and power,
can perhaps catch a glimpse of an order of the possible, nonexistent,
where human beings and things each would be in their right place.
(Adorno, Critical Models 15)
Let us continue with some further notes on the difficulties that haunt
a straightforward understanding of the theoretical dimension of the
philosophical essay. Adorno states:
Just as [the essay] absorbs concepts and experiences from the out-
side, so too it absorbs theories. Its relationship to them, however, is
not that of a “perspective.” If in the essay the lack of a standpoint
is no longer naïve and in bondage to the prominence of its objects,
if instead the essay uses its relationship to its object as an antidote
to the spell cast by the notion of a beginning, then the essay carries
out, in the form of parody, thought’s otherwise impotent polemic
against a philosophy of mere “perspectives.” The essay devours the
theories that are close to it; its tendency is always to liquidate opin-
ion, including the opinion it takes as its point of departure. (“The
Essay as Form” 18)
These perplexing statements about the theoretical relativity of the philo-

sophical essay (and its polemical task) are obviously related to the notion
“intention-less language,” which Adorno coined in relation to music (see
quotation on p. 176). However, it is likewise related to the notion “inten-
tion-less reality” (intentionslose Wirklichkeit), which Adorno developed in
an early lecture called “The Actuality of Philosophy” (1931). In that con-
text, he challenged traditional forms of philosophy by referring to science
as the agent in society that produces “facts,” which critical philosophy

must take very seriously, although not in a positivistic sense. Science
brings about bits and pieces of reality and it thereby provides philosophy
with its “elements,” which philosophy then has to bring into “constella-
tions” or “trial combinations” in order to make possible a new material-
istic vision of the world (“Actuality” 32). The young Adorno continues:
The task of philosophy is not to search for concealed and mani-

fest intentions of reality, but to interpret intention-less reality […]
Interpretation of the intention-less through a juxtaposition of the
analytically isolated elements and illumination of the real by the
power of such interpretation is the program of every authentically
materialist knowledge. (32, translation modified)
It is not very far-fetched to claim that for the later Adorno the essay
becomes the adequate literary form of such a constellation or trial
arrangement. If this is true, Adorno’s statements about the liquida-
tion of perspectives, standpoints, and opinions (which the essay was
supposed to bring about) are related to the (impossible) expression of
intention-less reality (or the “nonidentical,” if we use the later and
more commonly known terminology from Negative Dialectics). The
essay becomes the true form of every radically visionary philosophy
that refuses to legitimatize the present order of things. But the some-
what crude notion of constellation in Adorno’s early text does not
fully address the depth of the aesthetic complication, which stands at
the centre of the later text, “The Essay as Form.” In the early text, phi-
losophy is described almost as a liberating materialistic cancellation of
the impossible, or itself an instrument for final liberation. This radical
gesture, I would argue, cannot be fully synchronized, neither with the
intricate statement of the last aphorism of Minima Moralia, nor with
“The Essay as Form.”5
In the text from 1931, “The Actuality of Philosophy,” some of the later
Adorno’s most important characteristics of art, such as its riddle-charac-
ter or enigmatic nature, are related directly to philosophy and its relation
to reality. According to the early Adorno, philosophy should “arrange”
pieces of intentional reality in the form of a riddle, and by solving the
riddle in an almost revolutionary sense it was meant to overcome or liq-
uidate the form of reality that the riddle originally represented:
I said that the riddle’s answer was not the ‘meaning’ of the riddle
in the sense that both could exist at the same time. The answer was
contained within the riddle, and the riddle portrayed only its own
appearance and contained the answer within itself as intention. Far
more, the answer stands in strict antithesis to the riddle, needs to
be constructed out of the riddle’s elements, and destroys the riddle,
which is not meaningful, but meaningless, as soon as the answer is
decisively given to it. (“Actuality” 34).
Almost exactly the same line of thought can be found repeatedly in

Adorno’s attempts to capture the mimetic dimension of art, for instance
in an early text on Schönberg: “As a brief, precise answer [to the ques-
tions posed by the earlier musical structure], Schönberg develops the
twelve tone technique […]. The productive power of such answers is
revealed in the fact that in their light the question itself disintegrates
and disappears” (“The Dialectical Composer” 206, insertion M.M.).
Hence, the problem that Adorno’s later thought emphasizes more
thoroughly is that philosophy – understood as conceptual work – has no
chance of working conceptually without drifting deeply into the aes-
thetic realm, where it necessarily will be relativized as philosophy: the
logic he ascribes to a justifiable philosophy is borrowed from successful
art. In “The Actuality of Philosophy” Adorno writes about “an exact fan-
tasy,” which is a fantasy that “abides strictly within the material which
the sciences present to it, and reaches beyond them only in the smallest
aspects of their arrangement: aspects, granted, which fantasy itself must
originally generate” (37). In “The Essay as Form,” this moment of exact
fantasy seems to have crystallized into an “autonomy of presentation
[Darstellung],” which according to the older Adorno retains “traces of
the communicative element” that other forms of presentation have to
dispense with (“Essay as Form” 20–21). But this communicative element
is not communicative in any straightforward sense. It is something like
the fainting memory of the side of the object which is tragically lost
when the object appears for us, mediated by the functional context
of the present social totality. Hence, by performing the logic of non-
conceptual art-language through its philosophical conceptuality, the
essay closes itself off from the social. In this desperate mode it concerns
itself, says Adorno, “with what is blind in its objects” (23).
11.3 Blindness – monadology
Beside the Kantian connotation of “blind,”6 I would like to suggest

that the idea of a blind objectivity could be thematically related to
another figure of thought that Adorno frequently makes use of in order
to delineate the predicament of the modern artwork, namely, Leibniz’s

idea of the monad, understood as a windowless and “blind” interior-
ity that represents the whole from within. In “Theses upon Art and
Religion Today” (1945) Adorno states:
I should compare the work of art to the monad. According to Leibniz

each monad ‘represents’ the universe, but it has no windows; it
represents the universal within its own walls. That is to say, its own
structure is objectively the same as that of the universal. It may be
conscious of this in different degrees. But it has no immediate access
to universality, it does not look at it, as it were. (239)
According to this line of thought, the universality of art is a negative

social universality that successful artworks subversively perform in a
way that makes them disturbingly difficult to reconcile with ordinary
social discourses. In an early essay about music and society, “On the
Social Situation of Music” (1932), Adorno argues that the successful
musical work is produced without any conscious reference to its societal
context. This type of music “presents and crystallizes its problems and
solutions in a merely immanent manner; windowless, as it were, resem-
bling the monad of Leibniz, though surely not ‘representing’ a pre-
established harmony, but certainly an historically produced dissonance,
namely, the social antinomies” (396, translation modified).
Artworks, which in other contexts are likened with riddles or enig-
mas, will thus become dependent upon philosophy to communicate its
truth, which is rooted in the work’s aconceptual contact with the object
(see “Music, Language, and Composition” 114, 120). This, however, is
indeed impossible for philosophy to achieve without challenging its
own integrity. In relation to music, for instance, Adorno argues that
“only a philosophy that would truly succeed, in the most intimate way,
in securing […] micrological figures from within the construction of the
whole would come close to touching music’s enigmatic character, with-
out being able to flatter itself that it had resolved it” (“Contemporary
Relationship” 141). In other words, philosophy cannot grasp that which
is blind in the object – the intention-less reality, bespoken by the musi-
cal whole – without turning blind. Hence, the problem is that the essay’s
– that is, philosophy’s – communication of the artwork’s mimetic truth
ends up as a kind of artistic mimesis in its own right. Adorno continues:
“If someone, instead, is of a mind to force music’s secret directly and
immediately, with the magic wand of primal words, he is left only with
empty hands, tautologies” (ibid.). As “pure” philosophy, thus, it grasps
only the closed outside of the monad. By being against this purity, the
essay turns philosophically blind, or monadic. Hence, it takes on the
shape of the absolutely opaque inwardness of the monad’s true uni-
versality, and it becomes comparable to art rather than to philosophy.
In this context, it is interesting that Adorno explicitly compares the

philosophical essay with Hegelian philosophy, and more precisely, it is
interesting that he argues that Hegel’s philosophy of absolute knowledge,
like the essay, does not allow for a standpoint outside itself. In one sense,
therefore, Hegel’s philosophy risks blindness in the same way as the essay;
or – as Adorno states in Hegel: Three Studies (1963) – Hegel’s philosophy
has an acute “lack of plastic power [Mangel … an Plastik]” which forces
the reader to move deeply into its darkness, toward “micrology” (127).7
For Adorno, this means that “[i]n its microstructure Hegel’s thought
and its literary forms [literarische Gestalt] are what Walter Benjamin later
called ‘dialectics at a standstill’ [Dialektik im Stillstand], comparable to the
experience the eye has when looking through a microscope at a drop of
water that begins to teem with life; except that what the stubborn, spell-
bound gaze falls on is not firmly delineated as an object but frayed, as it
were, at the edges [an den Rändern ausgefranst]” (133).
This lack of externality puts Hegel’s philosophy in “systematic” flux,
and Adorno concludes that “[i]ndications about how to read him are
necessarily immanent” (Hegel 145). According to Adorno, this curiosity
draws the system close to its polar opposite, the essay. In “The Essay
as Form” he argues that Hegelian idealism “wants to heal thought of
its arbitrary character by incorporating arbitrariness reflectively into
its own approach rather than disguising it as immediacy” (19). Adorno
claims that, on this particular point,
[t]he essay takes Hegelian logic at its word: the truth of the totality
cannot be played off against individual judgements. Nor can truth be
made finite in the form of an individual judgement; instead singular-
ity’s claim to truth is taken literally, up to the point where its untruth
becomes evident. (19)
The crucial difference between the Hegelian system and the essay lies
in the fact that the system tends to regard the truth of the singular – “the
truth of the nonidentical” (Hegel 147) – as something that ultimately
needs to be mastered. In the process of the system, this awkward truth is
reduced and incorporated into a reflection of the system’s own untruth,

which then must be overcome from within. The blindness persists, as it
were, but in this blindness and lack of externality the Hegelian system
approaches nonidentity “for the sake of identity, only as an instru-
ment of identity” (145). Contrary to this, the essay, although itself
deeply drawn into its own interiority, entangles itself knowingly with
the untruth of details, which becomes “the element in which its truth
resides” (Adorno, “The Essay as Form” 19).
According to my interpretation, both the essayistic claim and the
claim to absolute knowledge acquire something like a monadic struc-
ture, and the different configurations of these monadic interiorities
can perhaps best be displayed with reference to Adorno’s critical inver-
sion (but not negation) of the Hegelian dictum “the true is the whole”
(Hegel, Phenomenology 11). In Minima Moralia, Adorno states: “the
whole is the untrue [das Unwahre]” (50, translation modified), which
is a motto intended to both cancel and confirm the validity of the
Hegelian dictum, with reference to the concrete social situation in
a wholly administered world. Hence, the blindness of the essay – its
lack of standpoint and point of view – is a blindness that expresses the
untruth of the truth that the system represents in its interiority. But is
this really a philosophical truth?
In a famous essay called “On Lyric Poetry and Society” (1957), Adorno
argues that the subjectivity of the successful lyric work – that is, its frag-
ile subjective protest against the pressure of the social totality – is the
dimension of the lyric that gives it objective significance. According
to Adorno the “self-absorption” of the lyrical work, “its detachment
from the social surface,” is only understandable from the perspec-
tive of the social, and – as in the Hegelian notion of the cunning of
reason – the work attains this objective quality “behind the author’s
back.” This, Adorno claims, happens through language itself and, in
certain tension with aconceptual music, it stems from the fact that
poetic language “assimilates itself completely into subjective impulses”
through a conceptual framework that still “has an inescapable rela-
tion to the universal” (“Lyric Poetry” 43). This idea of the objectifying
self-absorption of lyric poetry is yet another variation on the theme of
monadic blindness that expresses something true about the antagonistic
whole of which Adorno’s inversion of Hegel’s dictum speaks. Through
its language, the lyric work protests universally, as it were. “Hence the
highest lyric works are those in which the subject, with no remaining
trace of matter, sounds forth in language until language itself acquires
a voice” (43).
This way of putting things is again curiously similar to the way
Adorno writes about the essay’s contact with the “hidden unity in the
objects itself,” which comes close to the idea of essayistic language as
a voice of intention-less reality. However, the lyric sounding captures a
true moment of reconciliation, because for Adorno this voice of “lan-
guage itself” installs itself as the true voice of the subject in constella-
tion with the object.
Classical philosophy once formulated a truth now disdained by

scientific logic: subject and object are not rigid and isolated poles,
but can be defined only in the process in which they distinguish
themselves from one another and change. The lyric is the aesthetic
test of that dialectical philosophical proposition. In the lyric poem
the subject, through its identification with language, negates both
its opposition to society as something merely monadological and
its mere functioning within the wholly socialized society. (“Lyric
Poetry” 44)
Hence, if the monadological dimension haunts philosophical language

as some kind of final curse, the language of lyric poetry in constellation
with philosophy is presented as the non-reified and non-communica-
tive conceptual model that ultimately points away from the necessity of
antagonistic social totality – it bursts open the monad, as it were, and
heals the vision. In other words, it almost seems like an ideal version of
the hope to be able to “pry open the aspects of its objects that cannot
be accommodated by concepts” (“Essay as Form” 23).
A suggestion against this background would then be to claim that, for
Adorno, the artwork – through its complicated relation to conceptual
language (a relation that differs slightly depending on which art-form
he is discussing) – stands out as the limit point toward which philosophy
strives in a manner that could be visualized as asymptotic. The artwork,
toward which philosophy draws all the more closely without ever
becoming art, is the result of a meticulous intellectual engagement with
the unredeemed material of this world, brought into the structure of a
whole by means of a redemptive gesture that finally seals it off from this
unredeemed reality and turns it into an enigmatic windowless monad
whose windows, from the viewpoint of its asymptotic friend, philoso-
phy, are nevertheless not wholly closed.8
11.4 Art-philosophy
In an essay on Adorno’s essay on Kafka’s works, “Notes on Kafka”

(1967), Anders Johansson has drawn attention to the fact that Adorno
sometimes appears to be overtly inattentive to his own rather strict
essayistic principles. Johansson discusses the fact that Adorno forcefully
insists on a “literal” reading of Kafka against all attempts to read Kafka
symbolically, and he detects a potential contradiction:
What is peculiar about the proposal to stick to the letter is that

Adorno turns out to be bad at following his own rule. The fact is
that the discussion, throughout the essay, takes place pretty far from
Kafka’s text. In that way, his reading may appear a bit sloppy – his
statements on Kafka are not really supported by Kafka’s œuvre and
the sparse quotations are generally supposed to speak for them-
selves. The frequent accusation that Adorno’s analyses are sketchy
and unfinished could then be made about “Notes on Kafka” as well.
( Johansson, “Necessity of Over-Interpretation” 159)
There is not enough space here to go deep into Johansson’s discus-

sion. What interests me is his description of the curious things Adorno
himself actually does when he tries to read Kafka in this dubious way.
Johansson ultimately rejects the critique that Adorno does not really fail
to read Kafka strictly by the letter. But Johansson also underscores that a
literal reading in Adorno’s understanding is less concerned with the tra-
ditional sense of being closely linked to the actual wording of the text,
and more focused on the fact that the text comprises a lot of convoluted
details that a traditional symbolic reading will have to exclude in order
to reach “the” message. Johansson continues:
The interpretation shall not only adhere to the literalness of lan-

guage in a traditional sense, but also to the particular details, the
redundant aspects, that which does not fit in the context, and,
one could perhaps add, to the physical and concrete. For immedi-
ately after the mentioning of the opaque details, Adorno drifts into
something that turns out to be crucial for his reading: the gestures in
Kafka’s work. (159–160)
When approaching the text from this angle, Johansson is able to

show that Adorno’s literal interpretation of the gestures of Kafka more
than anything else presents us with Adorno’s idiosyncratic and personal
imitation of Kafka’s gestures. Adorno’s “interpretation” of this “blind”

objectivity in the text collapses into a new creation, only contingently
tied to and released by Kafka’s text, but nonetheless not possible with-
out attention to specificity and detail. Johansson concludes:
the simultaneous necessity and impossibility of the interpretation

forces it out of itself. Persistence in the face of the enigma inevitably
turns the essay into something other than an account of a secondary
interpretation. The essay starts performing its own gestures, present-
ing its own enigmas, its own images. Through a configuration of
such images, the essay may in the best case present something of the
truth content of Kafka’s work, without falsifying it (166).
I take this to mean that Adorno’s essay on Kafka is an example of the

praxis of constellation that is theorized in “The Essay as Form” and
related to the unfinished philosophical program in “The Actuality of
Philosophy.” At the very point where the philosopher reaches for the
answer, what comes up is a new riddle. But since this new riddle is a
creation that is dependent on the experience of precisely those elements
of reality that are closed from understanding, the new creation is only a
new take on things that momentarily will bring about a light that soon
will fade again.
According to my interpretation, thus, the essay form has its closest
affinity with art in the fact that its philosophical creativity ultimately
cannot be distinguished from a rigorously artistic one, modeled on
Adorno’s notion of the experience that leads to successful artworks
where success is the same as a failure to solve the problems in a properly
conceptual and discursive form. Or, more succinctly put: it is a work
that unconsciously becomes universal through its failure to present
experience in a form that is universally communicable.
11.5 Performance: what have I done?
In this essay I have tried to show that Adorno’s thought can be

approached as an attempt to perform philosophy as immanent critique –
in the most radical immanentist sense of critique. I took as my point
of departure the last aphorism of Minima Moralia and the performa-
tivity that haunts his very claim of the impossibility of a justifiable
philosophy. Logically speaking, if philosophy is impossible, it is of
course philosophically impossible to claim that philosophy is impos-
sible. This seems to suggest that we either should stay silent, perhaps
in line with the early Wittgenstein, or reconstruct philosophy as a new

possibility.
However, Adorno is obviously not interested in – his thought rages
against – any kind of play within the framework of mere logical tautol-
ogy. Rather, what he does in the aphorism is to slowly write himself
out of the tautology. I claimed that the twists and turns that his argu-
ment takes can be viewed as an attempt to impossibly be impossible;
an attempt to imitate the way philosophy appears to be impossible, in
order to set off the dynamism of the faint possibility that constantly
animates his philosophy. My interpretation has focused the difficulties
that haunt Adorno’s writings when he performs this act of imitation,
and I have tried to reach for the philosophical core of these difficulties
by connecting a series of more or less interrelated texts and some of
their key concepts. This led me to conclude that Adorno’s philosophical
writings express a notion of philosophy that draws asymptotically, as it
were, toward the limit point of modern art (as understood by Adorno).
For sure, according to Adorno, philosophy is not art and art is not phi-
losophy. They will never coincide. But since he holds fast to the idea that
philosophy must reach for truth in a situation where the whole is the
untrue, he is constantly forced to play with the unmediated particular in
a way that bestows his philosophy with a depth-quality of unmediated
particularity that will necessarily challenge his philosophical integrity
at large. In the words of Stephen Helmling, “Adorno’s account of the
aesthetic persists as problematic not because Adorno failed to ‘solve’ the
problem, but because he so brilliantly dramatized – amplified, complexi-
fied, agitated, accomplished – its problematization” (Adorno’s Poetics 4). In
this sense, artistic form, as the form par excellence of unmediated particu-
larity, becomes the horizon for a rather spectacular philosophical treason.
My concluding suggestion is that this philosophical treason or philo-
sophical heresy – Adorno himself saw heresy as the essay’s “innermost
formal law” (“The Essay as Form” 23) – is first and foremost performed
through bold, artful, and technically sophisticated writing, not by a
philosophical practice of stating things for and against this or that by
means of logical argumentation. It is on the level of writing and pres-
entation/performance (Darstellung) that Adorno manages to visualize
and enact the seductive coherence of his critical philosophical impulses
as an imitation of what would for him be a true philosophy. Only as
a performance of this kind can it stay truly and un-philosophically
immanent in its critique, because as writing-performance it is absolutely
tied to its own intra-systematic web of meaning that seals it off from
authentic contact with a general philosophical domain.
The philosophical possibility that I have expressed negatively by the

phrase “impossibly being impossible” is not in any way to be seen as a
mere logical play with words, but neither should it be seen as an open-
ing for a new quasi theological-discourse on redemption. The expression
bespeaks the mode in which one can envision a possibility for a certain
kind of creative performance in the spirit of resistance. It encloses a
demand for a philosophical writing that, in its awareness of the impos-
sibility of communicating the impossible, aims toward a counter-act;
an obstruction of communication which imitates the impossible task of
a truly responsible philosophy.This may sound obscure, and if there is
a true dimension of hope in Adorno’s thought, it may very well be the
fact that he often succeeds in his radical ambition not to clarify but to
perform this obscurity.
Notes
1. In this chapter, I am not using the concept “performance” in accordance with
Adorno’s own idea of artistic performance (“Afführung musikalischer Werke,”
“musikalische Reproduktion,” “Interpretation” – see Adorno, Towards a Theory of
Musical Reproduction). Furthermore, I am not entering a systematic discussion
of the relationship between the English concept “performance” and Adorno’s
German notion of Darstellung (presentation) although Darstellung in Adorno’s
thought often relates to the way I use performance in this chapter, see espe-
cially Adorno’s introductory comments in Negative Dialectics (18–19).
2. I use a dramatic imagery to underscore that I am not opting for a justification
of difficulties for their own sake. In Minima Moralia, Adorno states:
The thicket is no sacred grove. There is a duty to clarify all difficulties that
result merely from esoteric complacency. Between the desire for a compact
style adequate to the depth of its subject matter, and the temptation to
recondite and pretentious slovenliness, there is no obvious distinction:
suspicious probing is always salutary. Precisely the writer most unwilling
to make concessions to drab common sense must guard against draping
ideas, in themselves banal, in the appurtenances of style. Locke’s plati-
tudes are no justification for Hamann’s obscurities. (86)
It should also be noted, self-critically, that the present attempt to discuss Adorno
inevitably will expose itself to a similar critique as the one I directed at other
commentators. There are few options left then to try to make sense of Adorno’s
thought, but there is a difference between a comparative philosophical attitude
and an attitude that seeks the momentum of Adorno’s thought in its own net-
work of formulations. I hope that my attempt reflects the latter attitude.
3. Ashton’s poetically insensitive English translation of this sentence reads:
“What is must be changeable if it is not to be all” (Negative Dialectics 398).
A more correct, albeit untidy, translation would perhaps be: “Only when that
which is can be changed, is that, which is, not everything.”
4. My formulae “impossibly being impossible,” “impossible impossibility,” etc.,

are not expressions that Adorno coined himself, and they are not identical to
his own dialectical concepts such as “negative utopia” or “the possibility of
the impossible.” Although clearly philosophically related to such concepts,
my expression “impossibly being impossible” is an attempt to capture an
aspect that is central if one wants to view Adorno’s thought from the perspec-
tive of philosophical performance.
5. The notion of “constellation” returns several times in Adorno’s later writings,
although not in the same programmatic way and always more intimately
related to the proper wrestling with language (see e.g., Negative Dialectics 162).
6. It is of course unavoidable to note that Adorno’s concept “intentionslose
Wahrheit” is critically related to Husserl’s phenomenology and the funda-
mental role of “intentionality” in that context. In a similar way, although
not as obvious, the idea of the blindness of objects in Adorno’s philosophy
may be put in critical relation to Kant’s famous dictum from the Third
Critique: “Gedanken ohne Inhalt sind leer, Anschauungen ohne Begriffe sind
blind” (“Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are
blind,” Kant 1870, 100, translation M.M.). See Adorno, Kant’s Critique of Pure
Reason 143.
7. Even though Adorno does not literally use the image of blindness specifically
in the context of Hegelian thought, he sometimes uses visual metaphors
to characterize the inaccessibility of Hegel’s language. He also approaches
Hegelian writing as something that reflects the “other side” of the explicit
ambitions of performing absolute identity, or even becoming a true artwork
(see Hegel 121, 137).
8. It is really important to underline that this does not imply any kind of identi-
fication between true philosophy and art but rather an enlargement or exten-
sion of its vision (see Gutiérrez Pozo, “Idealistic Identity” 16).
12
The Vanity of Happiness: Adorno
and Self-Performance
Julie Kuhlken
The sense of performance I want to consider here is the one appealed to

when one asks someone – or oneself – to perform. It must first be noted
that to ask someone to perform can be meant in a variety of ways. It
can mean to ask someone to undertake a task or social role. In a related
vein, it can mean asking that the individual undertake said task or role
efficiently or successfully. It can also, of course, mean performing a
piece in a strictly artistic sense of the word. Or, and this is the distinc-
tively Adornian take on the notion that I want to consider here, it can
be a request that one perform tout court, that one perform one’s self. In
the last sense, to ask someone to perform is not to ask her to occupy
a social role or occupation. In fact, performing one’s self means to ask
her to reject the social pressure to conform to such roles and occupa-
tions. Performing oneself is an ethical task that resists the temptation
to adopt a readymade, social identity. Social identities promise that one
can simply “be oneself.” However, and as we will develop, one cannot
simply be oneself. Whereas the classic understanding of moral agency
describes moral action as a reflection of one’s conscious will, Adorno
criticizes this classic view by showing that a connection between action
and consciousness paradoxically requires a “right world” – a world in
which moral action is the only possible successful action. In a wrong
world, right action in the classic sense is impossible; the connection
between right consciousness and right action is broken. In a wrong
world, one’s actions do not reflect one’s “true will” or “true self,” but are
rather a performance of selfhood. As for right consciousness, and with
it ethics, if it is to continue to be relevant, it must contain an awareness
of this modern condition of the self. In what follows, I will first sketch
what the performance of self consists in. I will then say something
more about why such self-performance is inescapable in modern society
190
The Vanity of Happiness 191
according to Adorno. I will conclude by looking at the consequences,

both ethical and artistic, of modern self-performance.
12.1 The performance of self
Other than his famous dictum from Minima Moralia that “Wrong life
cannot be lived rightly” (39),1 Adorno’s most incisive presentation of
the inescapability of the performance of self appears in his lectures on
ethics, published as The Problems of Moral Philosophy (1963). There he
takes up what he sees as the central problem for the modern individual:
namely, “the fact that I have right consciousness does not at all imply
that I shall act in accordance with that right consciousness” (112). It is
a problem that eludes the scientific and technological tendencies of the
modern age, because one cannot address the problem of knowing how
to act by devoting more cognitive resources to it. Moreover, it belies the
contemporary development of professional “ethicists,” who perform, in
a non-Adornian sense, the social function of supplying the maxims of
right consciousness. One may very well have the best consciousness in
the world, according to Adorno, and yet the very nature of conscious-
ness’ rightness precludes a direct connection to action. Since freedom
of consciousness requires independence from empirical circumstances,
right consciousness is related only to the self in its transcendental
conditions. Given the rational limits on identifying right action in
a particular empirical circumstance, therefore, an alternative, non-
rationally directed form of ethical behavior must arise.2 Such behavior
tries to construct conditions where the ends demanded by one’s right
consciousness accord with the ends of society as a whole, thereby cre-
ating a tenuous bridge between the transcendental conditions of right
consciousness and the empirical circumstances of right action. For
Adorno, such behavior is first illustrated in Hamlet – that is, appropri-
ately enough, in performance in the theatrical sense.3 In the figure of
Polonius, we see a man indicate his right consciousness by giving “his
son the very best advice.” And yet, the conditions of action mean that
Polonius “acts like an utter buffoon” (Adorno, Problems 112). As for
Hamlet himself, he makes the contradiction between consciousness
and action evident when he explicitly transforms his (self-)performance
into a theatrical performance in order to bridge the “divergence of con-
sciousness and action” (112). Though Hamlet claims, “the play’s the
thing wherein I’ll catch the consciousness of the king” (Hamlet, Act II,
scene 2), it is really his own consciousness that he wishes to catch sight
of. However, being unaware of this doubling of his intentions,4 Hamlet
192 Julie Kuhlken
is unable to gain command of his self-performance. Instead of holding

tight to the possibility of right consciousness and directing his own
self-performance, Hamlet is driven from guise to guise by the actions
of others.5 If performance is inescapable, in other words, performing
oneself in such a way that one maintains right consciousness is the
central ethical task.
Perhaps the best example Adorno gives of a self-performance that
maintains the possibility of right consciousness is found in his biographi-
cal essays on the composer Arnold Schönberg.6 One moment in particu-
lar captures the essence of such self-performance. When Schönberg flees
the Nazis into exile in the United States, he explicitly refuses to perform
in the musical sense. As Adorno puts it, “[Schönberg’s] incorruptible
integrity once attained this awareness when, during the first months
of the Hitler dictatorship, he unabashedly said that survival was more
important than art” (Prisms 171). For Adorno, Schönberg’s refusal to per-
form in the musical sense is a performance; however, in this case the per-
formance has as its “instrument” (if one wishes to use such a term here),
the self in its ethical essence, which Adorno identifies with the principle
of self-preservation (Problems 94).7 By saving his self, Schönberg is not
only able to save his music from certain censorship by the Nazis, but also
uniquely able to express the “seriousness of music” (Adorno, Komponisten
320), the fact that it must fall silent in a world dominated by Fascist
cruelty or otherwise risk becoming an apologist for it. In his later essays
on Beckett, Adorno echoes this identification of the performance of self
with the refusal to perform in the functional or artistic sense. In Beckett,
as he says, “meaning nothing becomes the only meaning” (Adorno,
Notes 1 261). As we will see when we look at the aesthetic consequences
of Adorno’s conception of modern self-performance, the integration of
the refusal to perform informs Adorno’s unique understanding of the
artwork as a “promise of happiness” (Aesthetic Theory 136).
Before we turn to the consequences of performance as self-perfor-
mance, however, we must establish its philosophical and historical
basis. The philosophical basis is found in Kantian and post-Kantian
philosophy and the lessons they take from British empiricism. The his-
torical basis is found in the development of bourgeois society into its
contemporary consumerist form.
12.2 The vanity of happiness
There are two lessons that Adorno draws from British empiricism that
are critical for his conception of performance as self-performance. The
first is the already alluded to assumption that the essence of reason

is self-preservation. The origin of this understanding harkens to the
Hobbesian conception of human nature, and for Adorno it is equally
alive in Kant’s concept of the moral law:
The essence of that reason [of the moral law] is self-preservation.

We can even hear this principle of self-preservation in the Kantian
concept of the “I think” that must be able to accompany all my rep-
resentations, […] the idea of self-preservation, of the preservation of
an identical self. (Problems 94)
As is evident from its Hobbesian heritage, such a conception of reason

supposes that the self exists empirically in a fundamentally hostile
environment. For Hobbes, such circumstances legitimate a wide range
of empirical ethical behavior, much of which would fly in the face of
the rigorous demands for honesty and consistency demanded by Kant’s
categorical imperative. According to Adorno, therefore, the second les-
son drawn by German idealism from British empiricism is that “empiri-
cism is identical in its basic stance with scepticism,” and in particular
with skepticism as regards the moral potential of the self (Problems
107).8 Kant’s response is to rigorously insist upon human autonomy
against the heteronomy of empirical conditions, which legitimate
merely prudential compromises with moral principle. As such, Adorno’s
conception of the self integrates both a radical, yet socially-informed
conception of reason as self-preservation with Kant’s rigorous insistence
upon the consistent reproduction of an identical, moral self. The result
is a purely private self that acts ethically in such a way as to be identical
to itself. As Adorno puts it, there is a “reduction of moral demands to
being true to oneself and nothing more” (161).
Kantian “private ethics” (Problems 116)9 would remain an entirely
internal affair to the self if it were not for the fact that it is in fact
an ethics, and thus purports to say something about how one should
behave. Strangely enough, though, it does not. It is explicitly uninter-
ested in “the problems of possible conflicts between values imposed on
individuals and the objective norms that either hold sway in a given
society, or arise from a desire to change society” (116). As was noted by
Hegel, and countless other critics of Kant, the latter assumes that the
individual finds herself “in a traditional, solidly built and unproblem-
atic world,” where she “does know at any given moment what [she]
is supposed to do” (ibid.). Nevertheless, such traditional societies very
often make demands upon individuals that are at odds with truth to
194 Julie Kuhlken
self-identity. The consequence is that the self demanded by Kantian eth-

ics is barred from reproducing itself empirically, and thus the best it can
do is to represent itself. For instance, freedom and equality are values
that shape the consciousness of most individuals in contemporary soci-
ety. However, socio-economic conditions impede the reproduction of
consciousness of freedom and equality in empirical action. As Adorno
points out, “the businessman can squander his money and the worker
can oversleep instead of going to work – this is a freedom he does
possess. But the businessman will go bankrupt and the worker will be
sacked – let him just try to make use of his freedom!” (133). In response,
individuals satisfy the consciousness of themselves as free and equal by
mere representations of these values. Women in particular are targeted
by modern consumerist society with tokens of freedom and equality in
the form of “liberating” clothing and foods. Wearing fashionable jeans
substitutes for equal pay as the empirical realization of women’s libera-
tion. The consequence is ethical resignation to prevailing social condi-
tions. As Adorno puts it, “this element of the genuine impotence of the
individual in the face of external reality” means that individuals adopt
“the form of action of people who are firmly convinced that their action
is quite unable to change the course of the world in the here and now”
(155). As merely representative, their ethical actions – in the sense of a
private ethics – are theatrical, a “matter of conviction,” and at its worst
mere show of principle.
The example that Adorno calls upon to illustrate this conception
of the self as, empirically speaking, mere show is again drawn from
theatre. He describes Henrik Ibsen’s tragic play The Wild Duck at length,
identifying the moralizing character of Gregers Werle with the Kantian
categorical imperative. However, unlike Kantian philosophy, the play
places action according to the categorical imperative within a totally
functionalized, conformist society where the demands of the individual
and society conflict. As per his role, Werle acts in accordance with ethi-
cal conviction, with the mistaken expectation that in doing so he can
ethically “clear matters up” as to the true parentage of young, innocent
Hedwig. The consequences – Hedwig’s suicide – are completely at odds
with the nature of Werle’s conviction, but are nevertheless the direct
result of his bringing to light the incompatibility of Hedwig’s existence
with the norms of nineteenth-century society (Problems 159–161).10 On
the stage of a conformist society, in other words, individual acts of con-
viction are transformed into their mirror opposite, into mere shows of
ethical rectitude. Like actors on a stage, the unreal reality of the social
background against which individuals move determines the meaning of
their acts, and their protests that their convictions are innocent are as
impotent as the actor who yells “Fire!” on stage.
As Ibsen’s play further illustrates, an important basis for the constitu-
tion of the self through self-performance is found in the development
of bourgeois society. Kant’s “private ethics” still allows for freedom to
be realized in actions taken “on a Sunday afternoon, that is, in private
life” (Problems 173).11 However, in Adorno’s mind, even this private
freedom has been swept away by the development of a consumerist
society that reaches into every corner of life. The ostensible aim of con-
sumerist society is to make individuals happy by offering an easy and
effective provision of goods; however, its instrumentalist mechanisms
turn all action and interaction into means to an end. As Adorno and
Horkheimer examine in the chapter on “Juliette or Enlightenment and
Morality” in Dialectic of Enlightenment: “Being is apprehended under
the aspect of manufacture and administration. Everything – even the
human individual, not to mention the animal – is converted into
repeatable, replaceable process” (84). Under such conditions, even pri-
vate happiness becomes vanity, the conceit that one’s life is a unique
exception from the rule of administration, a conceit which in its turn
helps reproduce the conditions of conformity.12
In one of their more audacious passages, Adorno and Horkheimer lay
out the moral landscape of contemporary consumerist society with the
aid of the Marquis de Sade’s novel, Juliette. In so doing, they show how
happiness has been reduced to mere physical pleasure, which in its turn
is denied by the regimented ordering of the activity that produces it.
Like the willingness to be a “team player,” that is a mandate in modern
workplaces, “the sexual teams of Juliette […] employ every moment use-
fully, neglect no human orifice, and carry out every function” (Dialectic
88). For Adorno and Horkheimer, they are expressions of a society
ordered not according to the pursuit of happiness but the pursuit of
order itself, and as I have mentioned, they find their philosophical
justification in a Kantian understanding of morality.
The architectonic structure of the Kantian system, like the gymnas-

tic pyramids of Sade’s orgies […] reveals an organization of life as a
whole which is deprived of any substantial goal. These arrangements
amount not so much to pleasure as to its regimented pursuit. (88)
The enjoyment of pleasure should release individuals “from the pres-

sure of work and the bond which joins the individual to a specific social
function” (105), but in consumerist society consumption itself has
196 Julie Kuhlken
become functionalized, and its so-called “enjoyments” regulated. It is,

as Adorno and Horkheimer put it, an “order, which transforms happi-
ness into a travesty of happiness when sanctioning it, and manufactures
it when proscribing it” (113–114).
The vanity of happiness means that all expressions of happiness
are either forced or feigned. They are feigned by those in power as
an alibi for the relations of domination which their exercise of con-
trol maintains. Adorno and Horkheimer recognize the falsification of
self-performance, for example, in the “narcissistic” “exaltations of the
philanthropist,” whose activities confirm the “distinction between rich
and poor” rather than overcome it (103). On the other hand, the happy
smile of the employee departing on vacation is the forced product of the
“fixed entertainments” that have been “sparingly” administered “from
the primitive festival to the modern vacation” (106). The vanity of hap-
piness means that the most we can hope to encounter is a “promise of
happiness.” The “promise of happiness” evokes for Adorno “a primeval
era without masters and without discipline,” an evocation of a natural
existence unencumbered by the social order of civilization (105).13 As
we will see below, the importance of maintaining a “promise of happi-
ness,” and resisting the vanity of happiness’ pseudo-realization, carves
out a uniquely important role for the arts in contemporary society.
12.3 To thine ownself be not true
The most significant ethical consequence of the performance of self is

that one is limited in the aid one can offer others in their ethical delib-
erations. As early as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, this difficulty of the modern
age is already evident. Polonius may advise his son Laertes, “To thine
ownself be true” (Act I, scene 3), but the spies that he sends to watch
and bait Laertes in Paris belie the possibility of following the counsel.
Moreover, Laertes’ own advice to Ophelia, which directly precedes
Polonius’ counsel, describes the gap between individual consciousness
and social conformity that renders the other’s ethical aid impotent.14
The fates of Laertes and Ophelia hinge upon the show of propriety, not
its authentic realization. Actual propriety will not protect Laertes from
the slander spread by his father’s spies; rather, he needs to perform his
propriety as a drama of wounded pride.15 It is the latter course that will
allow him to survive in a wrong world where the essence of ethical
behavior is self-preservation.
This grim ethical message is confirmed by many developments in
contemporary thought. Immanuel Kant, whose moral philosophy
Adorno examines at length in his lectures on ethics, famously excludes

the emotions and happiness that we share with others from moral-
ity.16 As Kant argues, because the emotions are tied to empirical exist-
ence, they are contingent on circumstance, and as such, incompatible
with the autonomy and freedom required for ethics. Moreover, and as
Adorno argues, historical social developments since Kant’s time have
come to ever more confirm the taboo on emotions. The dominance of
rational command, which Kant still saw as compatible with individual
freedom and action in the private sphere, has come to be supplanted
by the command of social rationalization, whose consumerist form
reaches into every aspect of life. As Adorno examines, even compassion
falls victim to rationalization: “By reserving the cancellation of injus-
tice to fortuitous love of one’s neighbor, compassion accepts that the
law of universal alienation – which it would mitigate – is unalterable”
(Dialectic, 102). With the passing of compassion, which had been cen-
tral to eighteenth-century moral thought, ethics becomes, as Adorno
puts it in the dedication of Minima Moralia – and in an obvious critical
reference to Nietzsche – a “melancholy science.”
The melancholy science from which I make this offering to my

friend relates to a region that from time memorial was regarded as
the true field of philosophy, but which, since the latter’s conver-
sion into method, has lapsed into intellectual neglect, sententious
whimsy and finally oblivion: the teaching of the good life. (15)
The last serious attempt to rescue the teaching of the good life was
undertaken by Nietzsche. He attempted to create a new canon of values
based on “nobility, real freedom, the virtue of generosity, distance.”
And even though they are “wonderful values in themselves” (Problems
173) according to Adorno, “the very attempt on the part of the lone
individual to set up new norms and new commandments based simply
on his own subjective whim implies their impotence, their arbitrary
and adventitious nature” (172). There is a vain arrogance lurking in
Nietzsche’s undertaking, which is made all the more evident by the
“biblical imitation” that he falls back on in Also Sprach Zarathustra in
order to proclaim his new values. Like Polonius, Nietzsche clothes the
advice “To thine ownself be true,” in the guise of his ethical opponent.
To remain true to oneself is to remain attached to the love of truth.
However, in the era of administrative rationality, the love of truth,
like all evocations of human passion, appear as dogma, as irrational
remnants from a superstitious past.17 To lay claim to the good life is to
198 Julie Kuhlken
attempt to resurrect these remnants, thereby falling victim to an una-

voidable, performative travesty.
What is left of ethics and its millennial pursuit of the good and happy
life, according to Adorno, is the contradictory situation that “we must
have a conscience, but may not insist on our conscience.” The “mod-
esty” (Problems 169–170) of such a stance avoids the vanity of happi-
ness in a dual sense. On the one hand, it avoids the Nietzschean vanity
of thinking one can pursue one’s own happiness alone, and without
regard to that of society or others. On the other, it avoids the even more
dangerous vanity of happiness, that proposed by the rational, efficient
production of consumerist wellbeing: namely the illusion that we are
already happy.
12.4 The promise of happiness
We are, for Adorno, caught in an illusion of happiness woven by the

rational planning of production, which fulfills the needs that it itself
creates. The alibi is particularly effective since it produces the functional
roles that individuals in turn feel happy for having fulfilled. It is par-
ticularly pernicious because unlike the functional excellence that is at
work in Aristotle’s conception of happiness, modern rationality isolates
individuals from each other in an atomistic version of society rather
than making friendship and family integral to happiness.18 Because
the actualization of happiness is currently in vain, however, does not
mean that it is not worth hoping for. In fact, it is precisely art’s unique
capacity to maintain belief in the possibility of happiness, even in face
of its current impossibility, that makes art so central to contemporary
existence.
There are three aspects of art that make it essential to the life of
the modern self. The first is Adorno’s already introduced thesis from
Aesthetic Theory that, “Art is the ever broken promise of happiness”
(136). As we have seen, the promise of happiness avoids the vanity
of happiness proposed by consumerist society. It accepts neither the
alibis for happiness – e.g. the devotion to philanthropy after a lifetime
of paying employees the minimum wage – nor the forced enjoyments,
such as planned corporate retreats and packaged lifestyles. Rather, the
happiness art promises is freedom from the efficient, reified social roles
proscribed by modern rationality. Against the necessity of productive
efficiency, it offers the possibility of a self undistorted by domination.
Nevertheless, if art attempted to make claims for the actualization of
happiness, such as is the case transcendentally, for the promises made
by religious ritual and artifact,19 art would be a lie. Conversely, if art

contained no promise at all, but rather claimed that happiness was
already at hand for artworks to represent, then art would be in vain,
an empty representation of the feigned and forced happiness of current
social conditions. As a consequence, an artwork promises happiness
only to cast it away and only then to promise it again. The promise is
an authentic repetition, which, unlike the “archaic compulsion toward
repetition,” is “unrepeatable” (Aesthetic Theory 135). Citing Beckett’s
Play as the “most accomplished example,” Adorno likens the unrepeat-
ability of the promise of happiness to the narrative gesture of “Once
upon a time” (135). In an “authentic new artwork” (ibid.) the magic
of fairy tales is summoned only to be renounced as too precious to be
wished into existence under current social conditions. Art sustains its
promise not by fulfilling it, but rather by renouncing it, because in the
capacity to renounce – both itself and the social conditions of which it
is an artifact – an artwork ever renews the promise that happiness need
not be feigned or forced.
The second relevant feature of art concerns how art exists. Art exists
alongside other empirical objects, but not as they exist. Art refuses
the claim to objective reality which determines the function of other
objects. Objects perform real functions; artworks refuse to perform in
this sense. Even in their refusal to perform in the functional sense,
however, artworks still perform. As I outlined above, the promise of
happiness is a gesture, and for it to be sustained, it must be performed.
Thus, an artwork’s renewal of the promise of happiness is performance.
Moreover, as with the self-performance of the individual, art’s perfor-
mance is not aimed toward an external end, but rather against the
conditions of its own empirical existence. However, whereas ethical
self-performance highlights the gap between consciousness and action,
aesthetic performance highlights the gap between aesthetic appearing
and objective appearance, what Adorno calls “semblance character.” As
Adorno describes it: “The difference of artworks from the empirical world,
their semblance character, is constituted out of the empirical world and
in opposition to it” (Aesthetic Theory 103). Authentic artworks do not
deny that they represent objective reality, or that their performance
involves materially real elements – sounds and colors, strings and can-
vas.20 What they deny is that they should be reduced to this material
reality. To avoid appearing simply as a function of their material ele-
ments, artworks renounce their appearance even as they announce it,
and yet, in this gesture of renouncement they make the promise that
they will appear. This is very different from consumerist goods which
200 Julie Kuhlken
exhaust themselves in their outward appearance or “look.” Authentic

artworks do not pose as consumerist ones do; authentic artworks play
in the genuine sense, appearing for the sake of appearing. It is the light-
heartedness of an artwork’s gesture that sustains the performance, and
makes it an “unrepeatable” promise of happiness. As Adorno describes
it concerning Beckett, “in Beckett’s plays the curtain rises the way it
rises on the room with the Christmas presents” (Notes 2 248). We know
that we are not going to get everything that we asked for, but we are
captivated by the promise that we might receive that for which we
dared not hope. The rise of the curtain is in an objective sense always
the same, but the semblance character of artworks transforms the banal
gesture into a performance that promises to reveal something never
before seen.
Finally, and as indicated by the reference to Beckett, art is significant
because of the way it relates to its audience. As I introduced earlier in
the chapter, the products of consumerist society address themselves to
an atomistic conception of the individual, one which is first described
by Hobbes, and later ethically justified by Kant. As private individu-
als, people are only “known” through performances which are further
mediated by those of others. However, and as Adorno illustrates with
the drama of Hamlet, the outward performance of an action indicates
little of the consciousness of the individual performing it. The difficulty
thereby presented goes beyond the skeptical one first described by Plato
through the allegory of the Ring of Gyges.21 Plato’s ethical concern is
that we can deceive others of our true consciousness if we are able to
conceal our authorship of an action; or to put it differently, if an indi-
vidual can create a gap between consciousness and action he can get
away with murder. For Adorno, by contrast, the gap between conscious-
ness and action is not something over which we have ethical control.
For him, it is an inescapable aspect of the modern era, and thinks it vain
idealism to believe that one can close it. Nevertheless, rather than this
creating an opportunity for vice, as Plato suggested, Adorno sees the gap
between action and consciousness posing a much more insurmountable
difficulty. Because the gap means that we can deceive ourselves about our
own consciousness, it threatens the ability to do right, and especially to
do right by others.
Thus, even when undertaken modestly and in full honest awareness
of social conditions, ethical self-performance can at best maintain the
possibility of right consciousness. As if perceiving one’s speech through
its silences, right consciousness glimpses the gap between conscious
impulses and outward actions.22 Artistic performance provides a stage
upon which these silences and gaps can play out, because its semblance
character is a playful refusal of what simply appears outwardly. Even if
I appear to be exchangeable with everyone else according to the ration-
alization of modern society, art can announce the universality of these
social conditions even while refusing to abide by them by its unrepeat-
able performance. As Adorno puts it in “On Proust,” “under the mask
of autobiography, Proust [gives] out the secrets of every person while
at the same time reporting on something extremely specialized, on
incommensurable, extremely subtle and private experiences” (313). By
eluding the self in its occluding privacy, Proust reveals the secret self-
hood that we share with others. It is a unique artistic performance that
takes on “the mask of autobiography” in order to renounce the very
performance of self that it would seem to imply. In this way, the per-
formance of self itself partakes in the ever-deferred, but for this reason
ever-renewed, promise of happiness. Only in art can the performance of
self remain true to itself as performance, and sustain the hope that the
promise of happiness is not in vain.
12.5 Conclusion
Adorno’s contribution to our understanding of performance is immeas-

urable. By taking into account the broad range of meanings consti-
tuted by what it means to ask someone to perform, he is able to direct
our attention to the performance that is nearest to ourselves, our
very performance of self. In an era when consciousness and action
have diverged, self-performance is our central ethical concern. When
undertaken modestly and in honest awareness of social conditions,
self-performance maintains the possibility of right consciousness in a
wrong world.
In addition, the notion of self-performance helps us reconsider other
forms of performance, in particular artistic performance. Artistic perfor-
mance contains within it a relation to appearing that refuses a direct
connection to objective, material appearance. Adorno calls this relation
the semblance character of artworks. By their semblance character, art-
works gesture to their aesthetic appearing as distinct from their outward
appearance and in this way perform their very own appearance as a
refusal to appear. In this refusal, one finds an analogy between ethical
self-performance and artistic performance of semblance character. They
are both refusals to perform functionally and according to current social
conditions. Nevertheless, the relation between the two is more than
analogical; artistic performance directly aids ethical self-performance.
202 Julie Kuhlken
On the one hand, and critically, artistic performance provides a stage

upon which the feigned and forced character of the vanity of happi-
ness becomes visible. On the other, and even more importantly, its
lightheartedness means that the promise of happiness can still play its
silent tune.
Notes
1. As will be developed, Adorno sees the fact that ethics have become “pri-
vate ethics” a central contemporary problem, and thus it is important to
note that this dictum is first stated as part of an aphorism describing how
“the predicament of private life is shown by its arena” (38). He proceeds
to explain how the stage for private life, the private dwelling, has become
“intolerable,” and that dwelling itself in the genuine sense of being at home,
is “impossible.”
2. In Problems of Moral Philosophy, he describes the situation as follows: “people
suffer from their knowledge because they discover that no direct path leads
from knowledge to practice. Instead, they stand in need of a third thing,
namely that injection of irrationality, of something no longer reducible to
reason” (112–113).
3. It is notable how many of his examples of ethical action Adorno derives
from theatre pieces in his lectures on moral philosophy. In addition to
Hamlet, which he sees as having a privileged place within the history of eth-
ics, he references Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, three plays by Bertolt Brecht (The
Measures Taken, St. Joan of the Stockyards, The Good Person of Szechwan), and as
we will discuss later, Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck. The reliance on theatrical
performances of ethical behavior illustrates the centrality of performance to
Adorno’s ethical thought.
4. In her chapter on “Adorno on Becoming Human” in Giving an Account of
Oneself, Judith Butler describes his ethics as pursuing a “model of ethical
capaciousness, which understands the pull of the claim and resists that pull
at the same time, providing a certain ambivalent gesture as the action of
ethics itself” (103).
5. It is quite significant that when he presents his plan for the play, he
describes it as offering him a signal for how to act: “I’ll have these players
play something like the murder of my father before mine uncle. I’ll observe
his looks; I’ll tent him to the quick. If he but blench, I know my course” (Act
II, scene 2).
6. In addition to his extensive treatment of the composition of Arnold
Schönberg in The Philosophy of New Music, as well as reviews of individual
pieces, Adorno wrote several biographical essays on the Austrian composer:
“Arnold Schönberg (I),” “Arnold Schönberg, 1874–1951” and “Arnold
Schönberg: Worte des Gedenkens zum 13. September 1951.”
7. See full citation below.
8. It might be noted that Adorno sees this conclusion as particularly inescap-
able in consideration of Humean practical philosophy, which abandons the
ground of reason and bases morality on sentiment: “the more you admit
empirical conditions, the more you rule out the possibility of any objec-
tive definition of the good life and of moral action.” Adorno returns to this
aspect of skepticism in Dialectic of Enlightenment (see especially 93).
9. Adorno attributes this characterization of Kant’s ethics to Georg Lukács.
10. Adorno discusses this example at length, and it is clear that it is of particular
significance for his conception of the self as performance.
11. It should be noted that Adorno is actually discussing Nietzsche when he
makes this statement; however, he is pointing out the conservative social
values that Nietzsche shares with Kant, and which makes Nietzsche’s critique
fall short.
12. Examples of such vain conceit are perhaps even more evident today with
the extensive spread of branding as the primary form of marketing than
it was in Adorno and Horkeheimer’s time. In their day, stardom – and the
belief that one could be “discovered” – played a comparable role in creat-
ing the appearance of uniqueness and private wellbeing. (See especially
“The Culture Industry: Enlightenment and Mass Deception” in Dialectic of
Enlightenment 146).
13. Adorno and Horkheimer see the emergence of the individual self from
natural existence as a part of the development of civilization. However, the
constraints of the social order imposed by civilization mean that the dream
of a primeval era without masters or discipline persists as a longing “to
return to nature, against which that very order [of civilization] protects.”
The “promise of happiness” maintains this longing without falsifying it.
14. As Laertes puts it, presaging Ophelia’s death,
Perhaps he loves you now, And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
The virtue of his will: but you must fear, His greatness weigh’d, his will
is not his own; For he himself is subject to his birth: He may not, as
unvalued persons do, Carve for himself; for on his choice depends The
safety and health of this whole state; And therefore must his choice be
circumscribed Unto the voice and yielding of that body Whereof he is
the head. (Act I, scene 3).
15. Polonius describes the baiting of Laertes’ reputation in detail, saying that
he will assay Laertes’ ethics by the vehemence of his and his companions’
indignant denials: “See you now; Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of
truth: And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, With windlasses and with
assays of bias, By indirections find directions out” (Hamlet, Act II, scene 1).
16. About the irrelevance of emotions, Kant says in The Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals that
there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that, without any

other motive of vanity or self-interest, they find a pleasure in spreading
joy around them and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far
as it is their own work. But I maintain that in such a case an action of
this kind, however proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless
no true moral worth. (15–16)
204 Julie Kuhlken
As for happiness, which had been the goal of ethics according to the ancient
Greeks, he dismisses it saying that it is a mere effect, and not an ethical
principle:
Thus the moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect expected
from it, nor in any principle of action which requires to borrow its
motive from this expected effect. For all these effects – agreeableness of
one’s condition and even the promotion of the happiness of others –
could have been also brought about by other causes. (18)
17. See especially Dialectic of Enlightenment (114–115).

18. See in particular Book I, ch. 7 (1097b, 7–15) of the Nicomachean Ethics.
19. As Adorno puts it in Aesthetic Theory, “No existing, appearing artwork holds
any positive control over the nonexisting [e.g., transcendent]. This distin-
guishes artworks from religious symbols which in their appearance lay claim
to the transcendence of the immediately present” (135).
20. As Adorno puts it, “As soon as the artwork fears for its purity so fanatically
that it loses faith in its possibility and begins to display outwardly what can-
not become art – canvas and mere tones – it becomes its own enemy, the
direct and false continuation of purposeful rationality” (103).
21. The allegory of the Ring of Gyges appears Book II of Plato’s Republic. It is a
ring that confers invisibility to its bearer. Glaucon suggests that if a just and
unjust man were each possessed of such a ring, the unjust man would fare
better because he would have both the reputation for right consciousness
and all the benefits of his crimes (44–48).
22. Stanley Cavell working in the American philosophical tradition comes to
a very similar conclusion regarding the difficulty of relating to the self in
the chapter “Knowing and Acknowledging” in Must We Mean What We Say?
Describing the skeptic’s picture of the self as resembling a walled garden, he
says: “that analogy captures the impression that I am sealed out; but it fails
to capture the impression (or fact) of the way in which he is sealed in. He
is not in a position to walk in that garden as he pleases, notice the blooms
when he chooses: he is impaled upon his knowledge” (261).
13
Writing as Life Performed
Martin Parker Dixon
An anonymous and originless slice of popular wisdom counsels that life

is not a rehearsal.1 If this slogan is to have any salutary effects upon those
who have been so admonished, what concept of “rehearsal” is being
referenced? And what presumptions about the nature of “life” today are
thereby advanced? The fable of Groundhog Day notwithstanding, by this
phrase we are given to understand that in life we have no second chances;
we cannot prepare, shape, schedule and perfect life’s events in advance
of their actual occurrence.2 What happens to us really happens; and the
actions we take, our decisions and interventions, have genuine, concrete
consequences. So, the implication is that we had better get life right.
Real life cannot accommodate the latitude of a mere rehearsal. The
rehearsal is that safe place where one can make mistakes, fluff the lines –
“corpse” – without ramifications: the public is not watching, and little
is at stake. But real life has to be lived with unremitting urgency. Every
moment must be seized: you will never have this day again, so live it
to the full. We squander our days in unhappiness or listlessness, so our
mode of life should be inimical to fear, hesitation, and suffering. The
goal of living should be to amass a stock of personal happiness and
positive experiences.
A more melancholy spirit can go on to ask: how real is this “real” life?
Oscar Wilde quips that our real life is the one we do not lead. The com-
pulsion to get the most out of life might very well screen the fact that,
despite our best efforts, it contains so very little. The Shakespearean
tropes will suffice: with melancholy Jacques and Macbeth, we can
bemoan the fact human life is a show, it is staged and predictable: at
best it is scripted into its seven ages, at worst it is a tale told by an idiot.
We are players upon a stage; we play roles in good faith and in bad; our
being is for others. No, life is not even a rehearsal – at least a rehearsal is
205
206 Martin Parker Dixon
relatively organized, at least in a rehearsal we can try things out, get to

know one another, feel the potentiality of the role and of the complexi-
ties of the work. Come show time, the fun stops, the brave intentions
have dissipated and the default positions take over: play it safe, keep
the audience happy, be professional, and night after night the actors are
locked into deadening patterns. We, too, play our minor roles at work,
at home; our sexuality is a set of postures and quotations, we even desire
as we believe others want us to desire. Our lives, as performances, are so
much fakery and hypocrisy. Hence, perhaps, the nagging suspicions of
modern alienation that one’s real life is elsewhere: in a counter-culture,
an existential authenticity awaiting a decision, in personal enlighten-
ment, or as a citizen of a future utopia.
This way of reasoning from the premise of life’s emptiness and fini-
tude is not particularly new. In the thinking of the writer of the Biblical
Book of Wisdom (probably a first-century BC Hellenic Jew attempting to
land a few punches on Epicureanism) he exposes an inner relationship
between hedonism and mortality. The “irreverent” (asebeiV) understand
life to be “short and tedious” and are forced to conclude all we have are
fleeting pleasures: “let us enjoy the good things that are present. … Let
us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments: and let no flower of the
spring pass by us. Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds, before they be
withered” (King James Bible, Wisdom 2.5–8). Ultimately, the “ungodly”
draw these conclusions from the wrong premise: for God does not will
death. Righteousness, wisdom, and hope – even Man as such – should
be considered under the aspect of immortality (aqanatoV). The proper
manner of living is to follow a path of righteousness, for righteousness
is immortal, and righteousness ensures a worthy inheritance for later
generations.3 The righteous know all about local trials and suffering –
“as gold in the furnace hath he tried them” – but according to this logic
at least, life qua life flourishes all the more within a supposition of eter-
nity (King James Bible, Wisdom 3.6).4
Crucially, and in the midst of these transcendent concepts, the pur-
suit of Sophia – in the guise of an alluring female personification – is
remarkably grounded. An archetypal pattern is evoked: the highest
spiritual goals can be approached if, and only if, life is stabilized and
regularized by a form of constant application, by a loving commitment
to nurture, training, and discipline (paideia), which, by a trick of per-
spective perhaps, aligns the student to the vanishing point of perfec-
tion.5 Discipline is the medium by virtue of which one can be properly
and consistently orientated to life’s central task. The rhetoric is the same
when, in 1950, Heidegger writes to a “young student” on the question
Writing as Life Performed 207
of the thinking of Being. The task of thinking the greatest of questions

describes a faltering path and to “follow such paths takes practice in
going. Practice needs craft. Stay on the path, in genuine need, and learn
the craft of thinking, unswerving, yet erring” (Heidegger, Poetry 184).
These hasty observations are attempting to trail the preoccupations
of this chapter: namely, to explore the interrelatedness of practice,
rehearsal, and performance and their applicability in the domain
of “life.” These relationships are complicated when, in reference to
Adorno’s Minima Moralia, the content of critical-essayistic production
(which is analogous to aesthetic production in many ways) is ultimately
that of the life of the author. I propose that to a large extent, the cat-
egories of practicing, rehearsing, and performing that are derivable
from artistic-productive experience can be extended to lived experience.
Working and living seriously and critically have significant points of
convergence. What I attempt to disrupt is the presupposition of any
“natural” hierarchy between these categories, whereby, for example,
performance – connoting the tangible accomplishment of goals and
the visibility of that accomplishment – takes precedence over the open-
ended tasks of practice and rehearsal. In essayisic mode, I am interested
in loosening the arrangement and priority of these categories and in
evading finality and talking up the lesser partner in a litany of dualisms
that subtend our judgments: seriousness/play, public/private, realized/
unrealized, commitment/postponement, decision/indecision, planned/
unplanned, action/delay, success/disappointment.
Of course, inasmuch as the “art” of anything – music, motorcycle
maintenance, ballroom dancing, or, again, living – conceptually com-
mits agents to attaining some kind of specific result through deliberate,
practiced, action, accomplishment is never far from the essence of the
matter. But, equally, the failure to realize intentions or the produc-
tion of unintended but desirable outcomes, remain a possibility. Even
so, in artistic-productive contexts, judgments regarding the success of
the work might be thoroughly provisional – success is dependent on
external criteria and prior intentions, both of which the work itself
might be transforming. When Ernst Bloch writes “what is true is that
each and every criticism of imperfection, incompleteness, intolerance,
and impatience already without a doubt presupposes the conception
of, and longing for, a possible perfection” (Utopian Function 16) he is
justified in insisting that criticisms of imperfection – which are routine
for the artist and writer – must presuppose a longing for a possible
perfection, but the logic of artistic processes also teaches us that per-
fection is a moving target. In another sense, the dissatisfaction with
the work (which stimulates revision, as I discuss below) is not neatly

circumscribed by Bloch’s form of determinate negation and is not, if
I may, particularly stimulating or helpful for artistic work. The “long-
ing” for perfection needs a medium, a substance, and a locus for any
possible accomplishment. Perfection needs to appear as a possibility
for the artist by virtue of the contributions of a sure technique, sound
materials, and realistic intentions. To speak oxymoronically of “consum-
mate failures,” artistic productions that fail to realize extraordinary, yet
worthy, goals, and judge these as superior to works which fully achieve
what are only meager ambitions, would, similarly, respect Bloch’s logic.
But if misused, making a fetish of fragments and failures eclipses the
basic task to get control of artistic means. To do this, one must know
something of success. While it can be accepted that worthy and remark-
able failure is on the very far side of genuine competence, there is a sense
that in the following, failure is treated prosaically and its significance is
de-emphasized. Failure, insofar as it can be proven at all, is an everyday
matter of artistic production and writing, and, as it happens, living.
By way of illustration, I would like to set out some distinctions between

my thinking on performance and Austin’s concept of the performative,
for the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Simply put, while
a performative utterance for the most part requires a performance, a
performance is not a performative. And because it is performed, it is also
subject to processes of practice and rehearsal. My complaint is that only
from certain points of view can rehearsal and practice be disregarded.
Take the paradigmatic case of the “I do” of the marriage ceremony.
In point of fact, it is acceptable to assume that in a significant num-
ber of cases the delivery of the paradigmatic performative, the “I do”
and associated vows of the marriage ceremony, have been thoroughly
practiced and rehearsed prior to the occasion of their actual performa-
tive utterance. In a state of rehearsal, such that while every action and
utterance of the rite could be in place, in the absence of all actual,
binding perlocutionary effects, what takes place remains only a pro-
cedural outline. However sincere or committed the agents might be
during a walk-through, without the panoply of guests, witnesses,
counter-signatories, the binding dignity of ritual, and the solemnity of
an appointed hour; in short, without the means to correctly complete
the procedure, nothing of the ponderous social power of marriage is
manifest. The words are, as Austin put it, “hollow,” as hollow as those
uttered by actors on a stage, since no actual binding contract of fidelity

will be effectuated by saying them in a state of rehearsal.6 But taking
the externalized view of the theorist affronts the work being done by
the agents concerned. Rehearsing this utterance need not be a hollow
experience for the person that says it. It brings the event of marriage
that little bit closer to “reality,” and all the while the prospect of the
ultimate perlocutionary impact of what is said hangs before the speaker.
Practicing the ceremony of marriage remains a serious undertaking.
The nerves of the occasion have to be confronted and defeated if the
ceremony is to pass with elegance. The presiding official can give useful
direction – speak up, turn here, remember to breathe: from the point
of view of the agents involved, to some extent, the marriage ceremony
is choreographed like a theatrical event. Perhaps those involved wish
the words to be said with sincerity, with confidence and clarity. These
niceties hardly matter to the power of the performative. The “I do” is
a signal to permit all the tremendous exterior legal, psychic, and social
forces associated with marriage to do their work and demarcate a point
of no return such that no one is deemed married without having under-
gone a certain procedure. In terms of performativity, the happy couple
is not required even to mean what they say, or say it in any particular
way, only that they say it and have been witnessed as saying it.
Actions, deeds, and performances, whether with words or without,
often require practice and rehearsal. Accepting the position of Judith
Butler, who “argues that performativity is a kind of “citational practice”
by which sexed and gendered subjects are continuously constituted,”
such practice would presumably involve all the hesitant false starts,
mistakes and corrections that are proper to any practice (Hollywood,
“Performativity” 94). The course of any efforts made to performatively
constitute sexuality need not run smoothly, but more importantly, a
theory of the performativity of gender could perhaps benefit from a
description of gender formation as rehearsed rather than finally attained.
Adorno was open in his acknowledgment of the “rehearsed” moment

in his writing. He relied on a devising process of first rehearsing ideas in
dictation, and then subjecting the accumulated notes to cycles of editing.
The chief criterion of the editing phase is not to second-guess the response
of the reader, but to ensure that the written presentation is doing justice
to the subject matter, the object. It is in relation to this subject matter
that writing can be thought of as a performance, a performance of justice,
of honoring the subject matter. If the subject matter is the writer’s own
life, then reflective, biographical writing like that of Minima Moralia is
also a performance of that life, bringing, at an appointed moment, the
flux of lived experience into a cogent, significant form.
Justice is served as writing struggles to approach its final form through
stages of editing and re-writing. Writing anything of any consequence
entails inevitable false starts, revisions, editing, and deletions. First
thoughts seldom remain convincing for long and only a little while
later what looked like a striking insight, or an incisive turn of phrase,
is scored out with embarrassment. What occurred during the interval
is something like the coming to prominence of the objective spirit of
the text. The relief of having got something down on paper dissipates
quickly, and the overt, concrete sense of what was actually written must
be discerned from the text itself and not from the hopes of its author.
In a surprising piece of Gothic, one passage of Aesthetic Theory named
this objective spirit an Irrlicht, the erring-light of folklore that haunts
marshlands and lures lonely travelers off the straight and narrow. The
objectivity of the text is never nailed down; rather, it lures the writer
into pursuing its further development, but “without any guarantee that
the productive forces – the spirit of the artist and his procedures – will
be equal to that objectivity” (38–39). No guarantees, certainly. But nei-
ther can the writer do without his productive force, or more narrowly,
“procedures.” If not delivered all at once at midnight in a Faustian pact
(such rumors surrounded the likes of Paganini), the productive forces of
the writer will have been shaped and strengthened in another kind of
pact: the pursuit of an elusive objectivity in the text. This amounts to a
permanent apprenticeship in writing.
The same passage continues: “The risk taken by artworks participates
in their seriousness; it is the image of death in their own sphere” (39).
Extending this idea, we can suppose that a performance of an artwork
also knows something of risk: namely, will the performing artist be
equal to the task?
The prefix per- in “performance” implies the taking of something
through to completion. In the context of art, performance is not only
the successful completion of the work of art; the performance takes place
against the possibility of failure. It is not the being-seen, the presence of
the audience, that makes the performance. Rather, the presence of the
other enforces the rules that constitute the actuality of live performance:
don’t make mistakes, no second chances, keep going, don’t squander the
moment. (This pressure can be recreated alone.) In live performance, the
Irrlicht of objectivity haunts only the actual moment, the consistency – or
logic – of anticipation, response, unfolding, balancing, placing, coloring.

Fail this actuality and it can be said: “I died out there.”
Training, rehearsal, practicing, sketching, note making – these are pri-
vate, preliminary activities, and none seems to expose the artist to risk. But
for the writer, to remain forever revising a text, to have second thoughts,
doubts, reflections, edits, is to be forever scrambling textual objectivity;
the objective demand of the text can never appear. To only rehearse is to
risk impotence. Writers reach a point of no return whereby they perform a
nonrepeatable, singular action: they give the text over, in its imperfection,
to the risk of standing alone and being read as such. The placing of the
text outside writerly productive force can only be a decision, a spontane-
ous resignation; not finished, but abandoned, as Paul Valéry’s saying goes.
We read often enough:
The meaning of Adorno’s thought cannot be fully comprehended if

one concentrates simply on content at the expense of form. Adorno
strove for a consistency between the style of his writings and their
themes. The structure of many of his works enact his concern with
the development of repressive systems of thought and organization.
(Held, Introduction to Critical Theory 210–211)
This is hardly an insight. It only repeats what Adorno wrote explic-

itly regarding how his texts were put together, and why. While form
in Adorno’s writing does not receive the attention it might deserve,
it would be absurd to dispute the view that Adorno’s writings do (or
attempt to do) critical work in and through their form, presentation, or
“composition,” as well as their overt content.
An analytical approach to Adorno’s essay form is certainly conceiv-
able, and might be welcome, but in the meantime the temptation to
aestheticize his writing in general terms is strong. Again, Adorno has
led the way, and accelerated speculations by crossing between media:
comparisons circulate between the composition of a critical text, poetry,
and (especially atonal) music.7 Rich metaphors chase their tails in sug-
gestive ways: asserting simultaneously the “musicality” of language and
the “grammar” of music.
All of this can be raked over repeatedly, but there is no expectation
that a commentary on Adorno should ever be written to similarly test
the sensibilities, or “musicalize” its language, constellate its ideas, or
bring its dialectics to a standstill. One wonders how often one can be
reminded in theory of the vital co-dependency of form and content in
a text before we yield to the temptation to honor this theory by perfor-
mance in our own writing. There are plenty of means for keeping the
devil at bay: shall we talk about praxis some more? Shall we look at the
form and content issue from another angle? Shall we organize a confer-
ence or a round table? Shall we rehash the arguments again and again
without ever asking of ourselves, can I write like that?
The forces that prejudice the nascent thought that form could respond
to content are very great. The threat of being refused publication is real,
and many scholarly scruples are wrapped up with this refusal when it
comes, not least the schoolboy shame of incompetence, of not having
done your homework, and succumbing to pretentiousness. So many
vanities and after-images of the instruments of academic repression,
internalized over the years, and probably dished out in bad faith to sev-
eral generations of students. Worries strong enough to defeat most: you
will never have read “enough,” any thesis could be toppled by another,
stronger thesis at some later date. Your reader – stepping forth from the
community of scholars – is professionally committed to be critical and
dissatisfied, and will waste no time in expressing their “reservations” with
what you have done. I must be failing the standards of objective knowl-
edge: so write nothing that falls outside the mood of severe defensiveness.
And then there is censorship through repletion. Arthur C. Danto iden-
tified up to 40 forms of philosophical-literary expression (hymns, sum-
mae, dialogues, tracts, lectures, confessions, etc.), which now have fallen
from use (Danto, Philosophical Disenfranchisement 141). He describes the
success of the scholarly article as a Darwinian survival of the fittest.8
The well-argued scholarly dissertation has the monopoly. Texts that
generate energy through presentation are rare. And form is never talked
about as such, beyond the basic model of literature review-methodology-
analysis-conclusion. What other options are there? Is constellatory writ-
ing taught to students? Do we practice parataxis? Or even dialectical
writing? Academic culture has generally prioritized overt content over
presentation. Intensifying the relationship between presentation and
content – dreaming of a philosophical prosody – is at best a spare-time
activity. Something for the weekend, and not part of your professional
duties. “Considerations that wish to take responsibility for their subject-
matter and therefore of themselves, arouse suspicion of being vain,
windy, asocial self-gratification” (Adorno, Minima Moralia 196).
*
In the face of a critical text that has disavowed standardized presenta-

tion and conventional tone, responses could be interpretative or appre-
ciative (what does it mean, how sophisticated, how clever), or praxial.
Ask, how is it done? The desire is to become equal to the text by being
able to rewrite it.
The practical causes embarrassment. As does the “great work,” it
intimidates and presupposes the inadequacy of the admirer. The exqui-
site portrait, the late Beethoven Piano Sonata, the prose of Walter
Benjamin or Beckett, all are – always, already – beyond emulation; the
work of a master is so far beyond the scope of any possible praxis, it is
futile even to attempt to even acquire some of their technique.
Whatever vain or fugitive fascination took hold of works and tried
to bring them closer, that tried to steal some of their power, can be
punished twice over by forcing it through an utterly alien medium:
the scholarly article, the dissertation, the commentary, and by subject-
ing the mind to new disciplines, no less exacting, but remote from the
disciplines of artistic technique. In the scholarly context, self-denial,
the taking of pains, painstaking attention to detail; these get their just
rewards. But the expertise acquired is quite other to that dreamed of in
the first pulsions of artistic enthusiasm.
Being too quick to embrace the grammar of toil – the honor, the debt
to the masterwork, and the master – it is easy to overlook the possibility
that a competence, something that adds to my capacities and powers,
might be acquired happily, pleasurably, delightfully. Gilles Deleuze puts
his finger on something:
I think it is very difficult to do philosophy if you do not have a kind of

terminological certainty. Never tell yourself that you can do without it,
but also never tell yourself that it is difficult to acquire. It is exactly the
same as scales on the piano. (Cit. Conway 134. Taken from Deleuze’s
unpublished seminars on Leibniz.)
Philosophy is difficult without grasping the key concepts, but acquiring

competence in the use of those concepts is just a matter of practice and
repetition. The bathos of this observation cuts the task down to size: do
your scales, and in doing so, seize some productive power for yourself.
Deleuze is perfectly serious about this analogy: “The history of philoso-
phy can only be created by philosophers, yet, alas, it has fallen into
the hands of philosophy professors, and that’s not good because they
have turned philosophy into examination material and not material for
study, for scales” (Conway, Gilles Deleuze 135).
Of course, scales are something of a chore, but they cannot be passed

over. But neither are they difficult. They are central to the development
of musical productive power, and prepare one for the moment of perfor-
mance. Does one perform scales? Few would think the scale is material
for performance; they are material for examinations. But a great deal is
at stake in a scale since they describe almost all of music: line, tonality,
rhythm, tempo, tone, articulation. Acquiring these curious powers, like
having tactile confidence at the piano keyboard, or doing philosophy,
can result from a certain kind of mundane application; though routine,
with progress being made distractedly, privately, in loose, unscheduled
parts of the day.
The opening gambit of “Gaps,” section 50 of Minima Moralia, is typi-
cal of many other of the essays in the volume: the worry is to do with
the vulnerability of texts and thinking to heteronomous censure and
deligitimization, and how it is that the writer might counter this poten-
tial repression of her thinking:
The injunction to practice intellectual honesty usually amounts to

sabotage of thought. The writer is urged to show explicitly all the
steps that have led him to his conclusion, so enabling every reader
to follow the process through and, where possible – in the academic
industry – to duplicate it. (80)
What is targeted is an imperative that lurks in society or the institu-

tion, and weighs upon the intellectual, slowly stultifying consciousness:
conform!
One could ask straight away: who does he mean? Who imposes this
injunction? When? Why make generalizations about “every reader”?
And why should an intellectual of Adorno’s caliber be so concerned
with what society expects of him? (What is wrong with the Nietzschean
strategy – appropriated by Roland Barthes at the beginning of The
Pleasure of the Text – “Looking away shall be my only negation”? (3))
It is manifestly the case that in Minima Moralia Adorno adopted a tac-
tic of announcing prohibitions as a foil to his dialectical interpretations
of the plight of subjective experience. It is not important how “real”
these prohibitions are, or how specifically they are contextualized.
Perhaps they are straw men. But this shadow boxing is psychologically
plausible – therapeutic even. First, it is not such a straightforward thing
to disentangle what you want to “say” from what everyone else (the
Other) expects you to say. I allude to Lacan’s “che vuoi?” Your desires
have been thoroughly conditioned by encounters with the desires of
others. The “profession” expects explicit argumentation and academics

expect it of themselves.
Yet explicitness of thought is not a crime or a philosophical or writ-
erly error: it is only a problem when certain values dominate a culture,
or exert a psychological and moral pressure on the writer at the expense
of what is thought. By stealing the master signifier of “intellectual
honesty” away from the Other (academics who are supposed to know
what it means and administer scorn on those that fail), it starts to ring
hollow, it is without a referent, and can therefore become the opposite
of itself: the esteemed model of explicit – logically precise – exposition
of thought is actually a lie, the order of our thoughts is a tangle, a
mish-mash of hunches, half-understood experiences, and speculations.
“Rather, knowledge comes to us through a network of prejudices, opin-
ions, innervations, self-corrections, presuppositions and exaggerations,
in short through the dense, firmly-founded but by no means uniformly
transparent medium of experience” (Adorno, Minima Moralia 80). If the
other wants intellectual honesty, it can have it. But it will read more like
a diary of a hysteric than Spinoza’s Ethics.
Adorno’s formal “deviancy” as he deals with this issue is only appar-
ent. It does not arise from a fascination or obsession with what the Other
deems permissible, only to derive pleasure from some crafty trespass of
convention. The master signifier of intellectual honesty – and those that
identify with it – is symptomized: it is a product of a fantasy and it pro-
duces an inhibition: it “invokes the liberal fiction of the universal com-
municability of each and every thought” and it “inhibits their [thoughts’]
objectively appropriate expression.” The injunction is primed from the
outset for a symbolic re-ordering; a new priority can be discovered from
the texture of the old fantasy. A new criterion of “objectively appropriate
expression” now takes a stand. Immediately one can say that one form
of writing that can never be “objectively appropriate” is the cliché or the
banality: “For the value of a thought is measured by its distance from
the continuity of the familiar” (Adorno, Minima Moralia 80). An honest
thought is expressed in a manner that fits the thought itself; and the
thought, if it is to be valued, cannot be more-of-the-same, a cliché wrung
from the repertoire of pre-masticated, socially acceptable opinions.
Marked out here, under the sign of honesty, are the virtuous practices
of the melancholy intellectual: have the courage to think differently,
and make the form of what you write match the content. As Adorno
kept insisting, the price you pay for achieving this will be that no one
will want to listen to you, or if they do, no one will understand what
you say. “A writer will find that the more precisely, conscientiously,
appropriately he expresses himself, the more obscure the literary result

is thought, whereas a loose and irresponsible formulation is at once
rewarded with certain understanding” (101). The standardization of
presentation will lead to the standardization of thinking. A thinker will
then only dare to think what can ultimately be lodged neatly inside a
pre-approved presentational scheme.
One further line of enquiry is attractive: if for one moment the writer
stopped worrying about making her reader happy (if your reader is
happy, you have failed thought), how is the task of writing to be
reformulated? Genuine thinking is coextensive with an investment
in writing, in rhetorical and grammatical sophistication, in articulacy,
in testing textual economies. This is how the modernist philosopher
becomes a writer, or, if the term “writer” sounds a little too broad, at
least becomes pre-occupied with writing. And this is why the micro-
genre of “advice to the writer,” usually delivered in the ancient idiom
of sententiae, belongs properly to the oeuvre of both Adorno and
Benjamin. How down to earth it sounds:
A first precaution for writers: in every text, every piece, every para-
graph to check whether the central motif stands out clearly enough.
Anyone wishing to express something is so carried away by it that he
ceases to reflect on it. Too close to his intention, “in his thoughts,”
he forgets to say what he wants to say.9 (Adorno, Minima Moralia 85)
As a genre, such advice is not the proverb of common parlance, an

anonymous and ideological assertion of “how it is,” but is obviously
the product of a relatively specialist, learned activity. As such, one could
detect a degree of irony here, a countering tactic, whereby sayings of
the same linguistic tone of stand-alone, portable, popular, and multi-
valent wisdom, are laid out for the benefit of those isolated souls that
are caught up with the sphere of critical reflection and writing, and are
trying to seize hold of some fleeting moments of authenticity outside
the commonweal. But the form is a risky one in that it can all too read-
ily produce aversion: Polonius’s famous speech of farewell to Laertes in
Hamlet, while full of good sense, is also a father lecturing his son and
wisdom of this sort could justifiably occasion Oedipal rage.
The sententiae style is not only antique, it also seems to fall foul of
Adorno’s own preoccupation with the necessary incommunicability of
genuine thought. While concentration and incisiveness in philosophi-

cal writing (demonstrating a trust in one’s thinking and in words) can
lead to a density of expression that makes the reader work, the same
forces do in Adorno’s oeuvre yield on occasion, neat, compact, and reso-
nant maxims that are the very model of easy communicability.
These precepts – sometimes called aphorisms, but this seems to
diminish their hectoring tone – work only for those that are already
working. They conform to that register of intervention that comes from
a teacher to a student, pithy, memorable, designed to get the student
back on track or lift the work of the student to a new level. I recog-
nize this from the primal scene of the instrumentalist with her music
“master,” the correction of the performance, through startling insight
into its deficiencies and inefficiencies.
The practical wisdom of the writer is not technical philosophy, but a
quasi-proverbial consolation and stimulation to the work of the writer-
intellectual. Such sayings satisfy the principle (which, quoted out of con-
text, immediately looks like a slogan itself) “a good slogan should serve to
energize practice” (Conway, Gilles Deleuze 19). True, providing one already
has a practice to energize. For one who is struggling to write, who antici-
pates the scorn of editors or research assessors, whose papers are going
awry, who is struggling to find focus, or an appropriate tone, Adorno’s
words are rather energizing: do not be sentimental, look after all those
devilish details, and beware the cost of distaining your own judgment:
Should the finished text, no matter of what length, arouse even the
slightest misgivings, these should be taken inordinately seriously, to
a degree out of all proportion to their apparent importance. Affective
involvement in the text, and vanity, tend to diminish all scruples.
What is let pass as a minute doubt may indicate the objective worth-
lessness of the whole. (Adorno, Minima Moralia 86)
A more trenchant reminder to cross your ‘T’s comes from Fernando

Pessoa: to “have touched the feet of Christ is no excuse for mistakes in
punctuation.”
While Benjamin had a high regard for the tools and materials of
writing (see The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses, from One Way
Street), the labor of writing is not in the first instance identified with the
manual work of typing or penmanship – which can be considerable –
but through a cyclical process of positing, disquiet, revision. But a gulf
separates each of these stages. The cool, critical eye, or the editor’s finick-
iness, disguise the boldness of these initial risked articulations, those rash
words on which the perfecting of these texts depends. The editor-critic

is a subsequent subject position that takes responsibility for the text’s
perfection and discipline. A very revealing section of Minima Moralia,
“Sacrificial Lamb,” gives an insight into Adorno’s practice of dictation:
Dictation makes it possible for the writer, in the earliest phases of

production, to manoeuvre himself into the position of critic. What
he sets down is tentative, provisional, mere material for revision,
yet appears to him, once transcribed, as something estranged and in
some measure objective. He need have no fear of committing some-
thing inadequate to paper, for he is not the one who has to write it:
he outwits responsibility in its interests. The risk of formulation takes
the innocuous form first of the casually delivered memorandum and
then of work on something already existing, so that he no longer
properly perceives his own audacity. (212)
For many of his most important works, Adorno dictated his first
thoughts to his wife Gretel.10 These articulations begin as an informal
spoken rehearsal, with approval or censure arriving fairly immediately.
The amanuensis will also bear the brunt of any feelings of hurt if the
text is criticized. Adorno struggled to lessen his affective involvement
in his own “supposedly sacred” texts, and Gretel’s role was to come
between them.
The responsibility for composing the text was to an extent distributed
between himself and Gretel. The first enunciations are incomplete; they
are prospective. They are thrown forwards, towards other subject posi-
tions – the critic-editor, the Other – who will at some future date make
sense of them. Adorno did not “have,” in its fullness, what he had to
say at the point of speaking. One starts to wonder after a while, how
complete is this image of the writer? When Adorno uses the impersonal
phrase “the writer” he cannot disguise for long the fact that Adorno
means himself. This detached tone – derivable from the genre of the
aphorism – demonstrates that the constitution and image of “the
writer,” like the ego itself, is only to be derived from the Other.
Consider the “wrath” that appears in the writer’s reaction to censure.
In a Lacanian mode, we can notice that aggressiveness, however mild,
spills out when fissures form in the ego, when the counterpart (the
amanuensis) seems to demonstrate more composure and objectivity
than the one who is supposed to be doing the philosophy. The phi-
losopher notices the incoordination of his own thinking, and at the
same moment can react with hostility by imagining that the “last thing
I want is to be helped by you.” But in this same passage Adorno notices

that bringing aggressivity into play has a beneficial effect on the work:
it “benignly purifies his relation to his subject” (212). It lessens internal
resistance; the writer will no longer “dig in his heels” (212). Suffice it to
say that re-writing and editing, especially if forced by the unflattering
opinions of another, can occasion painful feelings of disorientation and
loss. The reduced scale of an Adorno essay, the pithy and taut construc-
tion, is perhaps not merely a stylistic choice, but a revenge for this loss.
And it offsets his own potential dissipation.
The English word “expression” has a powerful psychological note. The

freedom to express oneself is healthy; it might be considered a human
right. The German Ausdruck means that as well. But there is a mechani-
cal connotation also. For example, in Germany computer printers
“express” A4 paper.
Adorno was comfortable to cleave to the notion of expression. The
word is a micro-theory of writing: it presupposes “having something to
say” and the will to express it, the will to put that something out into the
open. Expression implies a movement of inside-to-outside. And once “out
there,” the intellectual’s “expressions” have to stand up on their own –
survive scrutiny, suffer incomprehension, or otherwise love their fate.
But the picture is not simple. To begin with, the “writer” (and certainly
if the writer is a philosopher) is not simply one who happens to be writ-
ing, but one who, because of a commitment to thinking, is unusually
committed to writing, is one who needs writing, and is accountable for
what she writes. Serious writing is necessarily complicated by a master
discourse. What I “have to say” is what I “have to say,” it is what I am
obliged to say, what the other wants me to say or demands that I say.
Those early efforts that are subsequently scored out, or deleted, might
well be rejected because they resemble quotations too closely. The con-
structions do not yet stand out as themselves. But the objectivity of the
text can be overstated; it can be adduced as doctrine. Certainly, the bur-
den of what I have to say is usefully distorted and resisted by the demand
of the text, and by whatever intellectual or aesthetic features of the text
are released and come into play in writing. But these demands, while
objective, do not make the text an object. That is to over stabilize the
text and counteract the vulnerability of the writer’s sense of identity.
Revision – as correction – eliminates all those “slips of the pen,” those
errors that might give the lie to another dimension of what the writer
was saying but did not know she was saying. But perhaps revision can
court parapraxis and ramify those errors at higher levels of construction.
A less than adequate textual formulation is not necessarily supplanted
in revision. A change of mind can be staged – performed, put on show –
in writing via the rhetorical trope known as metanoia. The writer is
entitled to correct herself, leaving the original undeleted alongside the
supposed improvement, with both statements exerting an influence.
The dialectical movement of a thought has this same quality. The sec-
ond thought that switches to a farther extreme does not defeat the first,
the “dialectical procedure … makes statements in order to withdraw
them and yet hold fast to them” (Adorno, Minima Moralia 212). Any
text that is repeatedly worked over has some quality of a palimpsest. To
retain all stages of editing, as if the text hoarded its excisions into a vast
variorum, such might give transparency to thought. But the “guilt” of
an unlegitimated thought is scarcely offset by making a parade of the
thinker’s mistakes.
Adorno made an analogy between the course of thinking, and the
course of life. Life
[d]escribes a wavering, deviating line, disappointing by comparison

with its premises, and yet which only in this actual course, always
less than it should be, is able, under given conditions of existence, to
represent an unregimented one. If a life fulfilled its vocation directly,
it would miss it. Anyone who died old and in the consciousness of
seemingly blameless success, would secretly be the model schoolboy
who reels off all life’s stages without gaps or omissions, an invisible
satchel on his back. (Minima Moralia 81)
A life which was lived “according to plan” would seem less than a life,
oddly devoid of incident, and the account of life’s course is edited back
to only those moments that suit the narrative demands of the Other. In
a totally administered existence, the only acceptable life is the one that
performs its conformity. The guiltlessness of a clean CV is of the same
order as a neat proof from first principles: a form of strategic amnesia.
By contrast, the noble, sweeping forgetting of the past lets life “devi-
ate” from its assumed trajectory, take up a new course, a fresh start.
Conversion of life, redemption, the self-overcoming that is affected
when one changes one’s mind (metanoia) is not a forgetting. If guilt
and shame propel one to make amendments to life, such are retained in
memory, they are unforgotten, but the old order of existence no longer
dominates consciousness; it persists as that old life that underwent
renewal. To forget would be to risk returning to the old ways.
Here is an account from an artist who could not shake the guilt of failure,
a painter who had failed the performance principle of painting: externalize
your interior vision. His failure is a falling short of the ideal; he knows –
or remembers – what the ideal ought to be, but he cannot reach it. Talk
of guilt arises naturally here: aʽmarti¢a, meaning “missing the mark,” is one
of the Greek words for “sin.” The twentieth-century American painter
Richard Diebenkorn reminiscences in an unpublished studio notebook:
I think that my necessity to work and rework a canvas in order to real-

ize it becomes a process wherein my ideas are externalized. I find that
I can never conceive a painting idea, put it on canvas, and accept it,
not that I haven’t often tried. As a young man I considered this ina-
bility a shortcoming – I felt my ideas (those that I brought from my
head to an initial laying out on the canvas) were essentially banal.
This of course may well have been/be true but however it is, almost
from the beginning, I looked forward with relief to being able to cor-
rect, to set things right, and it was with something akin to guilt that
I did so in the privacy of my studio … It was as though I’d failed in
my performance but somehow was able to steal this second chance
and thereby come up with something that I could set out with the
works of my peers (which were of course first crack).
Somewhat later, I did realize that the arts of painting, writing and
composing music were intrinsically activities that partake of revision
… Later yet I began to feel that what I was really up to in painting,
what I enjoyed almost exclusively, was altering – changing what was
before me – by way of subtraction or juxtaposition or superimposition
of different ideas. I should also admit to a modicum of guilt in this
instance too in that I felt that what was becoming my painting process
was a wholesale proposition and that my initial intent, as well as intent
in process, was reduced to simply making things right. (Livingston,
Richard Diebenkorn 72)
In this instance, revision is the core technique and the shame of the
artist. Revision is proof of the failure of his basic performance, his failure
to hit the mark at the first attempt, or only to hit a mark that, in its
banality, was not worth hitting. Revision is the shameful (secretive)
performance of recompense, or perhaps that of concealment. The last
phase of this guilty admission was that his intentions for his work had
become wholly non-specific, just a matter of “making things right.”
Diebenkorn had also missed his vocation.
Each section of Minima Moralia ends with a well-turned cadence. They
close themselves off so poignantly. The damaged life that is performed
in that collection can still affect a flourish of insight. The pressure to

cadence is felt here also, but, and this is the one moment when this
writer mentions his life, I do not have Adorno’s brilliance. I will miss the
mark, but am strangely glad of it. For it means that I need to get back
to the material, to practice, root out as many procedures as I can, and
work through them, quietly and unnoticed.
Notes
1. I gratefully acknowledge a Research Grant from The Carnegie Trust for the
Universities of Scotland which greatly facilitated my work on this chapter.
2. The short story The Secret Miracle by Jorge Luis Borges also entertains the
notion of the mutability of time, in this case, a divinely contrived suspen-
sion of actual time for a writer sentenced to death. He is taken out before a
firing squad at which point time is frozen and he is granted an extra year
to complete – in his imagination – a play. As the last words fall into place,
normal time is resumed and the execution is carried out.
3. In marked contrast to the prospects of the heathens: “But the multiplying
brood of the ungodly shall not thrive, nor take deep rooting from bastard
slips, nor lay any fast foundation” (King James Bible, Wisdom 4.3).
4. A theological register is extremely important in framing the utopianism of
Ernst Bloch. For both Bloch and Adorno, the abolition of human death was
the key determinant of utopian thinking. See, for example, their exchanges
in the interview “Something’s missing”: “Utopian consciousness means a
consciousness for which the possibility that people no longer have to die does
not have anything horrible about it, but is, on the contrary, that which one
actually wants” (Bloch, Utopian Function 8).
5. “For she goeth about seeking such as are worthy of her … and meeteth them
in every thought. For the very true beginning of her is the desire of disci-
pline; and the care of discipline is love” (King James Bible, Wisdom 6.16–17).
6. W.B. Worthen for one takes issue with what he calls “Austin’s cavalier dis-
missal of theatrical performatives – hollow to whom? in what sense?” (See
Worthen, “Drama” 1095).
7. See for example Gillespie, “Translating Adorno.”
8. “It is arguable that the professional philosophical paper is an evolution-
ary product, emerging by natural selection from a wild profusion of forms
Darwinized into oblivion through maladaption, stages in the advance of
philosophy toward consciousness of its true identity, a rockier road than
most. But it is equally arguable that philosophers with really new thoughts
have simply had to invent new forms to convey them with, and that it may
be possible that from the perspective of the standard format no way into
these other forms, hence no way into these systems or structures of thought,
can be found.” (Danto, Philosophical Disenfranchisement 142)
9. The German title for this section is Hinter den Spiegel.
10. See Müller-Doohm, Adorno 57.
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Index
actor, 5–6, 8, 39–40, 61, 102–3, Negative Dialectics, 4, 14, 20, 38–9,
105–10, n114, 124–5, 137, 165, 45, 48–9, 52, 106, n113, n114,
194–5, 206, 209 159, 161, 163, 166–7, n169, n170,
Adorno, Gretel, 5, 218 176, 178, 179, n188, n189
Adorno, Theodor W. “Notes on Kafka,” 10–11, 185
“The Actuality of Philosophy,” 51, “Notes on Philosophical Thinking,”
56, 178, 179–80, 186 1, 112, 130, 141
Aesthetic Theory, 6, 13, 16, 18–20, “On Subject and Object,” 3, 99
43, 49, 55–60, 62–5, 71, 79, 83, “On the Classicism of Goethe’s
85–8, 91–2, 107, 115–16, 118, Iphigenia,” 67, 73
123, 126–8, 130–42, 143–6, “On the Fetish Character of Music
151–3, 177, 192, 198–9, n204, and the Regression of Listening,”
210 83, 85, 87, 89–90, 93, 95–6
“Arnold Schoenberg: 1874–1951,” “On Tradition,” 27
83, 86–7, 91–3 Philosophy of Modern Music, 93
“Commitment,” 14, 25–6, 29, 31–3, Philosophy of New Music, 16, 87,
35–6, n77, 85, 101 n202
“The Concept of Enlightenment” Prisms, 83, 87, 93–4, 163, 165, 192
(with Max Horkheimer), 54–5 “Psychoanalysis Revised,” 50
Dialectic of Enlightenment (with Max “Resignation,” 27
Horkheimer), 16, 39, 67, 73, 99, “Short Commentaries on Proust,”
132, 135, 145, 195, n203 12
Dream Notes, 9, 18, 38–51 Sound Figures, 83
“Education after Auschwitz”, 110 “The Dialectical Composer,” 33, 180
“An Essay on Cultural Criticism and “The Natural History of the
Society,” 14 Theatre,” 8–9, 40, n154
History and Freedom, 14 “Towards a New Manifesto?” (with
Kierkegaard: Construction of the Max Horkheimer), 36
Aesthetic, 3–4, 11 Towards a Theory of Musical
“Late Capitalism or Industrial Reproduction, 5, 7, 19, 82–97, 156,
Society?” 59 158, 164, n188
“Looking Back on Surrealism,” 44 “Trying to Understand Endgame,”
“Marginalia to Theory and Praxis,” 18, 23, 25, 35–6
75 “Why is the New Art So Hard to
“The Mastery of the Maestro,” 83, Understand?” 23, 25, 28
87, 94 administered world, 67, 98, 100,
Minima Moralia: Reflections from n113, 173, 175, 183
Damaged Life, 11, 16, 20–1, 38–9, aesthetics, 20, 53–4, 62, 64, 66, 70,
45, 46, 49, 84, 93, 95, 98–100, 85, 115, 121–3, 128, 133, 138,
105, 108–9, 111–12, n113, 141, 143–5, 153
172–3, 179, 183, 186, n188, 191, aesthetic experience, 15, 57, 71,
197, 207, 210, 212, 214–15, 217, n79, 131–2, 134–5, 137, 152,
218, 220, 221 n154
236
Index 237
aesthetic unity, 28, 131, 137, 138 Barthes, Roland, 214

de-aestheticization [Entkunstung], beauty, 19–20, 82, 87, 91–2, 115–18,
26, 131 122–4, 127–8
idealist aesthetics, 20, 115–16, 118, natural beauty, 43, 49, 151
128 Beckett, Samuel, 2–5, 8, 10, 15, 17–18,
culinary aesthetics, 83, 90 23–36, 41, 52, 86, n114, 143, 192,
affect, 16, 45, 108 199–200, 213
alterity, 166 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 53, 88–9,
antagonism, 85, 145, 150, 159 91, 94, 157, 162, 164, 166, n169,
antagonistic, 33, 52, 149, 177, 213
183–4 becoming, concept of, 49, 111, 133,
apparatus, 95, 99 138, 149–50
apparition, 148, 151, n154 being, concept of, 101, 107, 195,
appearance, 26, 41–3, 49, 56, 58, 207
61, 70, 89, 125, 133, 136–8, being-in-itself, 135–6
144, 146–8, 151, 160, 162, 180, Benjamin, Walter, 8, 13–14, 16, 18,
199–201, n203, n204 25, 34, 42–3, 45–7, 49, 52, 55–6,
appearance/disappearance, 15, 17, 83, 100, 117, 133, 136, 139, n141,
42, 65 150, n170, 182, 213, 216–17
see also illusion Bergson, Henri, 12–13
see also semblance Beuys, Joseph, 19, 69–73, 75–6, n78,
archaic, 46, 133, 135, 199 n80, n81
Aristotle, n78, n79, 198 Bible, King James, 206
artwork, 14, 21, 53, 55–66, n79, Blanchot, Maurice, 44
117–18, 120, 126, 128, 131–7, blindness, 135, 180–4, n189
139, 143–53, n154, 157, 181, 184, see also monad
186, n189, 192, 199–201, n204, Bloch, Ernst, 21, 207–8, n222
210 body, 86, 89, 93, 122–3, 130, 138,
audience, 8–10, 20, 40, 70–2, 76, n81, 160–1, 166, n169
101–7, 109, 116, 118–24, 126–8, body art, 125
144, 163, 200, 206, 210 embodiment, 3, 22, 55, 59, 71, 101,
see also spectator 139, 155, 158–60
aura, 89, 117 border art, 20, 115, 119, 128, n129
Auschwitz, 14, 35, 48, 55, 110, 131–2, see also Gómez-Peña, Guillermo
156 Borges, Jorge Luis, n222
Auslander, Philip, 15, n37 Brecht, Bertolt, 10, n77, 85, n114,
Austin, J. L., 15, 23, n36, 208, n222 139, 143, n202
speech act theory, 15, 24, 37 learning plays [Lehrstücke], n114,
authenticity, 206, 216 139
authentic, 27, 38, 42, 89, 139, 160, Breton, André, 44
187, 196 Bubner, Rüdiger, 53, 64
authentic art, 177, 199–200 Büchner, Georg, n202
authentic listening, 92 Bürger, Peter, 64
autonomy, 27, 31, 54, 68, n77, 88, Butler, Judith, 15, 24, n36, 172, n202,
115–16, 128, 138, n154, 156, 180, 209
193, 197
autonomous art, 27, 29, 33, 36, 56, capitalism, 19, 24, 27, 31, 35, 52,
117–18, 121, 133, 137, 143 98–100, 108, 112
avant-garde, 25, 44, 53, 64, 140 late capitalism, 16, 52, 59, 98, 156
238 Index
catastrophe, 11, 13, 30, 32, 35, 48, 52, corporeality, 98, 130, 144, 158
131–2 see also materiality
see also Auschwitz creativity, conceptual, 173, 186
Cavell, Stanley, n204 crisis, 32, 59
character, 39, 41, 49, 56, 59–60, 70, crisis of art, 137, 145
90, 105–6, 131–4, 137–40, 144, critique, 3, 16, 18–20, 24, 30, 36,
146, 160, 163, 165, 176–7, 182 54–5, 82, 85, 87, 89–90, 92, 97,
double character, 149, 157 99, 112, 120, 132, 139, n154,
enigmatic character, 179, 181 155, 158, 166
object character, 59–60, 144, 146–8, immanent critique, 171, 186–7
151 negative critique, 159
language character, 156–7, 159, Cull, Laura, 22
166, n170 culture industry, 16, 18, 27, 36, 49,
semblance character, 56, 137, 74, 82, 84, 87, 89, 91–3, 95, 116,
199–201 128, 131, n203
classicism, 67, 69, 72–3, n79
commodity, 8, 46, 58, 98, 146 de-aestheticization [Entkunstung],
commodification, 26, n77, 156 see aesthetics
communication, 8, 26, 123, 152, Deleuze, Gilles, 213
157–8, 164, n170, 181, 188 Derrida, Jacques, 15, 24, n36, 109
communicative element, 180 dialectic, 11, 15–17, 21, 34, 41, 52,
non-communicative, 184 58–9, 68, 93–4, 97, 113, 130,
comportment, 98, 112–13, 147–8, 137–8, 144–5, 153, 157, n169,
151, 161 176, 184, n189, 214, 220
mimetic comportment, 133, 135–6, negative dialectics, 1–3, 13, 18,
139, 155 38–9, 45, 82, 93, n154
composer, 33, 53, 93, 180, 192, dialectical image, 43, 46
n202 dialectical materialism, 13
composition, 1, 33, 86, 88, 94, 118, dialectic at a standstill, 35, 133,
145, 148–9, 155–6, 162–5, n169, n141, 150, 182, 212
n170, 175–6, n202, 211 see also Adorno, Dialectic of
configuration, 43, 89, 91, 132, 183, Enlightenment
186 see also Adorno, Negative Dialectics
constellation, 8, 17, 43, 56, 83, 94, disidentification, 125
136, 139, 141, 149–50, n170, 179, disintegration, 32, 34, 150
184, 186, n189 logic of disintegration, 176
trial combination, 179 dissonance, 94, 162, 181
construction, 3, 16, 23, 41–2, 56–8, doing, mode of, 2, 4, 10, 24, 43, 46–7,
65, 88, 94, 131, 133, 137, 140, 49, 75, 151, 155
145, 175, 181, 219 see also comportment
consumerist, 192, 194–5, 197–200 drama (dramatic), 9–10, 27–8, 32–3,
content 36, 42, 60–1, 67, 68–9, n77, 139,
truth content, 3, 6, 11, n79, 85, 140, 148, n188, 196, 200, n222
126, 132–3, 137, 141, 146, 186 dramatic form, 28–9, 35
sedimented content, 145 dramatic text, 136–8, 143–4, 147–8,
see also form/content 152–3
contradiction, 8, 27, 31, 33, 39, 45, dramatize, 42, 187
51–2, 63, 77, 115, 128, 162, 185, dramaturgy, 127, 153
191 see also postdramatic
Index 239
dream, 4, 9, 14, 18, 38–52, 119, n203, 157, 165, 167, 179, 212, 215, 217,
212 219
see also Adorno, Dream Notes expressive, 51, 148, 150, 156,
duration, 138, 144, 146–7, 151 158–9, 161–2, 165
dynamic, 17, 55, 61, 63, 68, 82, expressive-mimetic, 157
89–90, 93, 134, 149–50, 153,
n154 fantasy, 139, 215
dynamic curves, 61, 134, 152 exact fantasy, 180
see also phantasmagoria
Eagleton, Terry, 24, n36 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 19, 69–70,
ego, the, 44, 46, 51, 122–3, 130, 218 73, n78, n81
ekphrasis, 71 fetishism, 58, 89
eloquence, 149 see also Adorno, “On the Fetish
emancipatory, 133 Character of Music and the
enigma (enigmatic), 15, 39, 46, 48, Regression of Listening”
117–18, 132, 136, 181, 184, 186 firework, 146–8, 151, 153
enigmatic character [Rätselcharacter], force
134, n141, 179, 181 force field, 15, 96, 149–50
see also riddle conceptual force, 15, 177
enlightenment, 16, 55, 67, 69–70, 96, mimetic force, 177
99, 105, 110–11, 115–16, 120, form
195, 206 aesthetic form, 4, 67, 69, 145,
enlightenment rationality, 91, 132 149
see also Adorno, Dialectic of artistic form, 19, 68–70, 73, 76–7,
Enlightenment 187
ephemerality (ephemeral), 15, n37, formalism, n79
42, 47, 52, 138, 146–7, 151, 153 formation, 24–5, 33, 42–3, 64, 95,
see also transience 150
epistemology, 23, 25, 58, 85–6, 158 formlessness, 64–5
epistemological character law of form, 145, 149
[Erkenntnischaracter], 131–2, 158 form/content, 10, 21, 212
essay form, 4, 21, 39, 167–8, 175–85, Foster, Roger, 11–13, 48–9, 84
187, 207, 211, 219 Foucault, Michel, 24, n37, 99
essence, 61, 124, 145, 147, 163, Frankfurt School, 16, 74, n79
192–3, 196, 207 freedom, 10, 17, 31, 33, 39, 44, 70–1,
essence/appearance, 89, 162 75–7, n78, n81, 115, 177, 191,
ethics, 141, 190–1, 197–8, n202 194–5, 197–8, 219
Kantian ethics, 193–5, n203 unfreedom, 178
see also morality Freud, Sigmund, 18, 39, 41–2, 46, 50,
event, theatrical (performance), 1–2, 89, 163
19, 40, 42–3, 49, 76, 86, 93, fugacity, 144, 146–7, 150
126–7, 131, 138, 140, 209
musical event, 84, 93, 162 gaze, 152, 182
existence, 13, 16, 30, 33, 48, 50, 56, gender, 23, 24, n37, 209
58–9, 70, 77, 101, 112, 138, 150, gesture, 5–6, 30, 48, 107, 110, 112–13,
157, 160, 196, 198–9, n203, 220 133, 139, 147, 157, 164–5, 175,
empirical existence, 174, 197, 199 179, 184–5, 199–201, n202
expression, 3–4, 10, 14, 17, 28, 39, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 19,
42–4, 46, 49–50, 52, 75, 107, 135, 67, 69–70, 72–3, n77, n78, n79
240 Index
Gómez-Peña, Guillermo, 115–16, see also appearance

118–21, 123–4, 126–8 see also semblance
La Pocha Nostra, 17, 20, 115–28 imitation, 32, 35, 44, 49, 61, 98,
Goulish, Matthew, 10 107–8, 134–5, 137, 139, n142,
guilt, 48, 146, 220–1 152, n154, 165, 186–7, 197
pre-imitation, 20, 136, 139, 141,
Habermas, Jürgen, 7, 24, n36, 73–4 n142
Handke, Peter, 71, 76, n79 see also mimesis
happenings, 62, n79, 138 image, 18, 40, 42–6, 50, 56, 70–2,
happiness, 21, 74, 190, 192, 195, n78, 88, 116, 123, 128, 130, 132,
196–7, 198–9, 205 146, 157, 160, 164, 168–9, 186,
promise of happiness, 17, 48, 50, n189, 210, 212, 218
52, 192, 196, 198–202, n203 dialectical image, 46
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 3–4, sound-image, 157
13, 16, 50, 58, 182–3, n189, 193 thought-image, 3, 72
Heidegger, Martin, n169, 206–7 immanence, 39, 49, 56, 62–3, 65, 131,
history, 4, 13–14, 16–17, 23, 30, 45–6, 172, 178
48–9, 52, 68, n77, 131, 160, 213 immanent process, 61, 151, 153
natural history, 8–10, 40, n154 immaterial labor, 100, 111
Hitler, Adolf, 192 impossibility see possibility
Hoban, Wieland, 7 indeterminacy, zone of, 164–6, 167–8
Hölderlin, Friedrich, 17 instant, 146–7, 151
Holocaust, 14–15 instantaneousness, 144, 148, 150–3
Honneth, Axel, 98, 108 instrumentalization, 16, 19, 21, 49,
Horkheimer, Max, 16, 36, 54–5, 99, 98, 108, 195, 217
120, 132, 135, 145, 195–6, n203 interpretation, 1, 18, 20, 42, 44, 68,
humanism, 16, 69, n78, 132 70, 72–5, 77, 82–3, 117, 134–6,
liberal humanism, 110–11 144, 160, 163, 185, 214
Hullot-Kentor, Robert, 11, 59, 63, philosophical interpretation, 2, 18,
n79 50, 56, 133, 156, 159, 168–9, 178
hybrid, 20, 22, 115, 117–19, 123, 126 musical interpretation, 83, 88, 92–3,
134, 152, 155, 158, 164–6
Ibsen, Henrik, 194–5, n202 irrationality, see rationality
idealism, 115–16, 118, 200
idealist philosophy, 7–8, 158, 166, Jameson, Fredric, 51, n170
182
German idealism, 12, 193 Kafka, Franz, 10–12, 25, 139, 185–6
identity, 13–14, 23, 27, 32, n37, 110, Kant, Immanuel, 2, 16, 71, n77, n79,
132, 183, n189, 194, 219, n222 116, 121–2, 130, 163, 180, n189,
identity thinking, 16, 120, 126, 156 192–7, 200, n203
negative identity, 13, 52 Kierkegaard, Søren, 3–4, 11, 31
nonidentity, 13, 32, 35, 45, 52, 133, knowledge, 16, 23, 26, 29, 31, 68, 95,
175, 182 119, 132–3, 141, 158, 161, 172–4,
social identity, 21, 190 179, 182–3, n202, n204, 215
ideology, 14, 61, n81, 84–5, 91, 110, objective knowledge, 146, 212
n169
illusion, 23, 28, 31, 40–1, 47, 57, 63, Lacan, Jacques, 166, 214, 218
115, 137, n141, 146–7, 160, 178, language, 4–6, 17, 20, 23, 25, 28,
198 30, 33–4, n36, 43, 46, 49, 100,
Index 241
123, 128, 135, 139, 152, 155–70, metaphysics, 14, 16, 92

176–8, 183–5, n189, 211 metaphysical, 23, 28, 50, 131
philosophical (conceptual) post-metaphysical, 16
language, 21, 50–1, 184 see also philosophy
nonconceptual language, 149, 152, micrological, 1, 181
180 mimesis, 32, 55, 92, 97, 98, 106–7,
language character, 156–7, 159, 111, n114, 130–1, 134–7, 139,
166, n170 167, n169, 181
Lehmann, Hans-Thies, 136, 138–40 second mimesis, 138, n142
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von, 181, see also imitation
213 mimetic, 5, 20, 49, 55, 57, 61–2, 64–5,
see also monad 106, 130, 156–9, 165, 169, 177,
liberalism, 178 179, 181
neo-liberalism, 17, 19, 24, n81, mimetic comportment
98–112 (behavior), 112, n114, 133–7,
liminal zone, 119 139, 155
Locke, John, 110, n114, n188 see also mimesis
Lukács, Georg, n203 modernism, 28, 125, 137, 216
Lyotard, Jean-François, 24, 29, n37 modernity, 16, 28, 45, 156–7, 162,
173
magic, 5, 181, 199 postmodern, 7, 24, 29
Marcuse, Herbert, 67 monad, 180–4
Marx, Karl, 58, 105 monadology, 180, 184
mastery, 33, 86, 99, 145 see also blindness
materialism, 24–5 morality, 195, 197, n203
dialectical materialism, 13 moral action, 21, 190, n203
historical materialism, 25, 45 moral law, 193
materialist, 16, 52, 179 more, concept of, 43, 51, 131
materiality, 18, 25–6, 30, 131, 137–8, Müller, Heiner, 139
144–5, 150, n154 multiculturalism, 116, 119, 128
Maxwell, Richard, 17, 19, 98–114 Murdoch, Iris, 122
Neutral Hero, 98–114 music
McKenzie, Jon, 19, 83, 86, 95–7 atonal music, 163, 211
meaning new music, 16, 82, 87, 90, 96,
determinate meaning, 166 161–3, n202
immanent meaning, 56 reading music, 155–6
meaningless, 51, 62, 180 musical performance, 7, 19, 83, 85,
melancholy, 205, 215 159
melancholy science, 197 myth, 8–9, 67, 70, n78
melody, 5, 161, 164
melodic, 5–6, 84, 164–5 National Socialism, 11, 14
memory, 8, 12–13, 16, 20, 25, 40–2, see also Hitler, Adolf
49, 68–9, 71–2, 75, n81, 104, 180, nature, 4, 12, 18, 30, 36, 41–2, 67,
220 70–2, n79, 89, 98, 118, 120, 130,
remembrance, 163 135, 146, 151, n154, 160, 162,
Menke, Christoph, 57, 139–40 179, 193, 197, n203, 205
messianic light, 173 nature theatre, 139–40
messianic time, 43 second nature, 89
metanoia, 220 see also beauty
242 Index
negation, 16, 32, 56, 62, 84, 92–4, performer, 6, 8, 22, 40, 61, 82, 88, 90,
128, 131, 133, 140, 157, 163, 175, 91, 93–4, 101–2, 116, 118, 121,
183, 214 123–7, 144, 152, 164
determinate negation, 27, 35, 93, see also actor
132, 136, 159, 208 persona, 20, 118, 125–6, 165
neoliberalism see liberalism phantasmagoria, 40, 52
nexus, 131, 149–50, 152, n154 see also fantasy
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 197–8, n203, Phelan, Peggy, 15–16, n37, 125
214 phenomenological, 15, 82, 87, 89,
nonconceptual, 50–1, 55, 149, 152, 134
180 phenomenology, 183, n189
nonconceptual object, 29, 32, 36 philosophy
nonidentity see identity philosophy and art, 131–3, n189
notation, n154, 158, 163–7 aesthetic philosophy, 16, 53
critical philosophy, 54, 179
object idealist philosophy, 7, 100, 132, 158
object-character, 146–8, 151 materialist philosophy, 13, 25, 52
primacy of the object, 3, 16, 43, moral philosophy, 160, 191, 196,
57, 152 n202
objectification, 59, 62–3, 65–6, 130, see also Adorno, “The Actuality of
138, 177 Philosophy”
objectivation, 17, 144, 146–7, see also metaphysics
150–1, 153, n154 Plato, 123, 200, n204
Odysseus, 135 play, 12, 18, 20, 26–7, 67–70, 102,
other, concept of the, 70, 94, n113, 137–40, 143, 156, 164–7, 194–5,
135, 140, 196, 210, 214–15, 218, 200
220 playwright, 1, 10
poetry, 34, 44, 183–4, 207, 211
Paddison, Max, 84–5, 95 popular culture, 84, 116
painting, 153, n154, 221 possibility, 19–20, 23, 29–30, 36,
visual art, 13 42–5, 50, 52, 68–70, n80, 86,
parapraxis, 219 90, 99, 105, 112, 137, 139, 141,
particular, the, 12–13, 49–50, 55, 57, 155–6, 158, 161, 164, 187–8, 192,
64, 99–100, 151, 157, 165–9 196, 198, 200–1, n203, n204,
particularity, 38, 149, 157–8, 169, 207–8, 210, 213, n222
187 possibility of the impossible, 43–4,
Pensky, Max, 7–8 n189
performance impossibility, 31, 42, 92, 95, 131,
performance art, 18–19, 53–4, 59, 136–7, 141, 174–5, 177–8, 186,
62–3, 65, 70, 115, 118–19, 124, 188, n189, 198
127, 139 postdramatic theatre, 29, 139–40
Performance Philosophy, 21–2, 68, postmodern, see modernity
156 practice
performance studies, 3, 15–16, 21, artistic practice, 1, 15, 22, 135, 139,
23–5, n36, 53–4, 66, 86, 95–6 141, 146, 156
self-performance, 21, 190–201 philosophical practice, 3, 7, 13, 22,
performativity, 18, 23–5, 36, 86–7, 23, 25, 187
153, 186, 209 praxis, 1, 3, 18, 22, 61, 68, 75–6, n80,
performativization, 18, 53–4, 64 83, 115, 140, n154, 186, 212–13
Index 243
presence, 89, 98, 102, 117, 123–4, riddle, 179–81, 186

138, 150, 153, 210 see also enigma
presentation, 3–7, 26–8, 41–3, 60,
93–4, 140, 157, 159, 167, n170, sacrifice, 65, 67, 70, 74–5
175, 180, 187, 191, 209, 211–13, Sartre, Jean-Paul, 25–6, 31, 101
216 Scarry, Elaine, 122
see also representation Schechner, Richard, 15, n37
process character, 133 Schneider, Rebecca, 15, 111, n113
processuality, 144, 148, 150, 152–3, Schopenhauer, Arthur, 116, n129
n154 Schönberg, Arnold, 10, 33, 53, 83, 91,
promise, 8, 40, 48–9, 52, 118, 177, 93–4, 159, 161–3, 165, n169, 180,
199 192, n202
see also happiness see also Adorno, “Arnold
Proust, Marcel, 10–12, 48, 201 Schoenberg: 1874–1951”
score
queer, 24, 125–6 musical score, 60–1, 148, 163,
164–6
Rancière, Jacques, 49, n77 performance score, 2, 60–1, 138,
rationality, 16, 35, 54–5, 57, 62, 91, 143, 148
130–5, 145, n169, 197–8, n204 script, 10, 102, 104, 127, 149, 151
irrationality, 30, 197, n202 self, the, 3, 47, 49, 50–2, 106–7, 110,
reality 117, 122, 125, 134, 156–7, 160–1,
empirical reality, 49, 52, 149 190, n203, n204
intention-less reality, 178–9, 181, self-performance, 21, 190–202
184 self-reflection, 158–60
social reality, 45, 48, 50, 137 selfhood, 105, 139, 190, 201
realism, 31, 34, 173 semblance
reception, 57, 89, 127, 130, 144, 150, semblance character, 56, 137,
152–3, n154 199–201
reconciliation, 17, 31, 33, 44–5, 69, crisis of semblance, 59, 137
184 non-semblance, 177
reconstruction, 54, 57, 61, 172 see also appearance
redemption, 18, 40, 43–5, 112–13, see also illusion
115–16, 140, 172–3, 175, 188, sensation, 17, 47, 91–2, 166
220 Shakespeare, William, 196, 205
reenactment, 134, 136, 152 shock, 28
reflection, 2–4, 6, 17–18, 21, 30, 57, shock-like, 50, 132
63, 66, 76, n77, 119, 131–3, 135, shudder, 16
139, 158, 183, 190, 216 see also affect
self-reflection, 158–60 singularity, 20, 182
rehearsal, 2, n78, 126–7, 139, 205–9, somatic, 16, 20, 156, 159, 164, 166,
211, 218 169
reification, 28–31, 52, 58, 62–3, 95, Sontag, Susan, 134
99, 133, 147, 157 sound, 34, 40, 60, 82–3, 86–94, 148,
representation, 5–7, 24, 27, 31, 82, 157, 164–5, 199, 208
94, 104–5, 125, 131, 140, 193–4, sound image, 157
199 culinary sound, 83, 87, 90–2, 97
aesthetic representation, 19, 26 space, theatre, 8–9, 102, 138, n154
see also presentation spatialization, 39, 164
244 Index
spectator, 9, 31, 39–40, 49, 76, n77, temporality, 43, 45, 135, n142, 144,
91, 105, 120, 125–6, 128, 137 150–2, n154
see also audience temporal, 15, 17, 30, 39, 117, 138,
Spinoza, Baruch, 215 146–8
spirit, 29, 32, 48, 75, 98, 101–2, 112, tonality, 161–3, 214
118, 131–5, 137, 146, 150, 210 see also music
spirit of capitalism, 98, 112 totality,
spiritual experience, 49 aesthetic totality, 90, 157
spiritualization [Vergeistigung], 131, social totality, 50, 52, 180, 183–4
136 trace, 15, 20, 42, 46–8, 52, 139, 180,
standstill, 35, 39, 138, 151, 174 184
dialectic at a standstill, 35. 133, transcendence, 63, 132, 149, 151,
n141, 150, 182, 212 n204
Steuermann, Eduard, 82, 89 transcendental, 131, 191, 198
style, 67, 95, 103, 171–2, n188, 211, transience (transient, transitory), 31,
216 41–3, 49, 138, 146–7, 151, 160,
subcutaneous, 86, 91, 93–4, 97, 159, 167
161–7 see also ephemerality
subject/object, 24, 57 truth content see content
sublime, 71, n79 Turner, Victor, 15, n37, 119
suffering, 13–16, 45, 52, 205
surrealism, 34, 44–6, 51 universal, the, 26, 50, 70, 99–100,
Szondi, Peter, 72–3, n77 165, 168, 181, 183
utopia, 17, 21, 41, 44–6, 48, 50, 56–7,
Taylor, Diana, 15 67–8, 70–2, 74, 76, 116, 128,
technique, 27, 44, 64, 91–2, 137, 162–3, n169, n189, 206–7, n222
n170, 172–3, 180, 208, 213, 221
technology, 24, 46 violence, 30, 68–9, 72–3, 76, n79,
text, 10, 36, 60, 123, 136–9, 147, 152, 146
158–9, 164–7 voice, 5, 67, 69, 71, 75, 89, 93, 162–6,
see also drama n169, 184
musical text, 89, 156, 158, 165–6
primacy of the text, 148 Wagner, Richard, 10, 40, 86
theatre, 1, 3, 7, 9, 10, 13, 19–20, 25, Weil, Simone, 122
29, 40–1, 43, 53–4, 60, 68, 70, 76, Wiggershaus, Rolf, 71, 73–4, n79
94, 101–2, 105, 111, n114, 120, Wilde, Oscar, 21, 205
127, 130, 136–41, n142, 143–53, Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 101, 159, 187
n154, 194, n202 writing
culinary theatre, 85 philosophical writing, 1, 3, 20, 159,
epic theatre, 85 176, 187–8
theatricality, 20, 53, 127, n142, 143, essayistic writing, 4, 175–6, 187
153 writing of history, 13, 16
see also space, theatre writing as aesthetic objectification,
theological, 173, 188, n222 138
theory, aesthetic, 3, 13, 15, 17, 20, 43, writing as performance, 205–22
119–20, 130–1, 138, 143, 153 see also essay
see also Adorno, Aesthetic Theory
time, historical, 9, 39, 41, 43, 46, 49, Žižek, Slavoj, 24, n36
72–3, 76 Zuidervaart, Lambert, 18

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Adorno and Performance

Editorial Advisory Board:

Published in association with the research network

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Introduction to Adorno and Performance 1

11 What Is Adorno Doing? Immanent Critique as

This series is published in association with the research network

and “philosophy.” In this sense, “What is Performance Philosophy?”

traditions of philosophy, to the virtual total exclusion of those equally

Laura Cull, Alice Lagaay, and Freddie Rokem

Will Daddario is Assistant Professor in the School of Theatre and Dance

Martin Parker Dixon is Lecturer in Music at the School of Culture

Karoline Gritzner is Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies in the

Birgit Hofstaetter is a Ph.D. candidate in Humanities at the University

Ioana Jucan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Theatre and Performance

Michal Kobialka is Professor of Theatre in the Department of Theatre

Rosemarie Bank) of Theatre/Performance Historiography: Time, Space, Matter

Julie Kuhlken received her doctorate in Philosophy at the Centre for

Mattias Martinson is Professor of Systematic Theology at Uppsala

editing Volume 9 of the new critical edition of Walter Benjamin’s works.

Marcus Quent has been working as an assistant at the Institute for

Stephen Robins is Independent Scholar and Associate Artist of the

Andrea Sakoparnig is a Ph.D. candidate at the Free University Berlin,

Mischa Twitchin has a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship at

I.1 Intermittence: Adorno and performance

In his essay “Notes on Philosophical Thinking” (1965), Theodor W. Adorno

Turning to Samuel Beckett’s performance score for Act Without Words I,

Desert. Dazzling light.

In fact, Kierkegaard nowhere better described the reconciling figure

to lasso the carafe. The carafe is pulled up quickly and disappears in

Like Beckett’s mime approaching the carafe in Act Without Words I,

(melodic-mimic), the very same intertwining with which Adorno con-

Something similar happens when dwelling on the translation from

This word means “presentation” and “representation”; in Adorno’s

Thus, the problems begin to compound. Before we approach the passage

A few pages later, while pondering Habermas’s uptake (or deviation) of

For Habermas, the hypercomplex, claustrophobic, fretful atmosphere

to a form of performative self-contradiction just as pronounced as the

And then, making a distinction between Adorno and Walter Benjamin,

Adorno did not always follow up on the promise to transform the

the intersubjective experience of performance back to the audience and

I.2 Historical situation and artistic affinities

Beckett’s résumé as a playwright and theatre maker helps to reveal

Adorno’s aphorism “Memento” from Minima Moralia (1951) and the

Father created things by naming them, it is in removing their name, or

goes as far as to suggest that Adorno came to his negative dialectical

I.3 Taking seriously: Adorno and performance

Urged to consideration by Beckett’s Act Without Words I, the numerous

in New York and southern California) until his return to Germany

that performance’s labor was post-conceptual in the sense that it reveals

I.4 Contributions and disciplinary boundaries

bibliography in Lambert Zuidervaart’s entry on Adorno for the Stanford

helps to discern the dialectical underside of Adorno’s critique. Once laid

Pocha Nostra, an international performance company noted for creat-

linguistic relations to reality. Adorno’s aesthetically informed notion of

of never being at home in one’s home warn us against affiliating our-

enactment of an immanent thought that does not represent perfor-

If philosophers enact thought through the discipline of philosophy,

“Performance” and “performativity” are terms which are not necessar-

[N]amely the experience that the production of art, its material,

“Trying to Understand Endgame” is dedicated to S.B., in memory of

shot through with reminiscences of the categories of absurdity, situ-

Whereas in Sartre, according to Adorno, the possibility of staring at