Mr Louis Hartnoll

Research project: Manifest Contradiction: Adorno, Sociology, and the Double Character of Art

Abstract

This thesis reads Theodor W. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory in light of his mature critique of sociological categories. It re-examines one of the book's most debated ‘paratactical parts', the ‘double character of art', via Adorno's confrontation with Émile Durkheim's sociological theory and, more specifically, the concept of the social fact. As such, the thesis consists of a dual investigation into Adorno's critical theory of society and his philosophy of art, organised around four related studies. Chapter One interprets Adorno with and against both Alfred Sohn-Rethel and Gillian Rose, in an exposition of the social content and presuppositions of Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy and against the background of the enduring problem of the Kantianism of sociology. Framed through Adorno and Max Horkheimer's abandoned second book on dialectics, Chapter Two reconsiders Adorno's metacritique of positive negation through the concept of positivity in the writings of G.W.F. Hegel. Complementary to this, Chapter Three reconstructs Durkheim's concept of the social fact within the context of Adorno's post-war confrontation with positive social science, arguing that, for all its faults, Durkheim's concept inadvertently advances the Marxian theory of reification as the theory of the appearance of the thing-like character of social relations. Finally, Chapter Four reinterprets the double character of art through its ‘social side', art as fait social. By drawing on Adorno's critique of sociological categories, this chapter argues that we should understand the concept of the social fact as part of an anti-sociological project. Aesthetic Theory thereby avoids the errors that Durkheim and other sociologists make, whilst nonetheless acknowledging the actuality of the contradictions which produced such errors. On this interpretation, art as social fact denotes Adorno's theory of the manifest contradiction by which social antagonism emerges within the artwork. The thesis concludes with a brief reflection on the possible art-historical application of this theory, arguing, contra the commonplace image of Adorno, that his philosophy of art furnishes us with a novel, generative, and enduring theory of art's social character.