Theory 4 Flashcards
In which essay did Adorno discuss mass culture?
The Schema of Mass Culture
What, to Adorno, is the kind of truth that exists in an original aesthetic image?
- truth of imagination
- aesthetic truth
When aesthetic images undergo relentless duplication, what happens to the aesthetic truth of an image?
replaced by a mechanism designed to ensure that the item of reality is constantly reproduced accurately
In mass culture, what happens to every individual object?
every individual object is part of the infinite nature of production
What does Adorno believe that an authentic and committed reception of an ‘aesthetic image-consciousness’ was questionable anyway?
considering how we force ourselves to receive art ie. in galleries, in a certain amount of time etc.
Art stands in for a reality that is ‘out there’. When that aesthetic truth (ie. the integrity of that representation of reality) is lost in duplication - what happens?
- becomes harnessed as a means for a culture that self perpetuates
(ie. it becomes co-opted by mass culture to operate in a propagandist sense in order to perpetuation a desired ideology)
Give examples in which art is now used to perpetuate an ideology?
- and now art itself is used in advertising etc. - associated with foods etc.
- films can depict the narrative from an individual’s perspective, effacing the kind of wider exploitative systems to which the character belongs
What is the interaction of the aesthetic and the commercial according to Adorno?
the aesthetic becomes a commodified servant to commercialism
- mass culture recognises what works and just repeats it
- fundamentally empties the value of the art in itself
How does Brecht’s epic theatre act as both a response to mass culture and mass culture’s own reversed consciousness of itself?
- resists cultural monopoly - resists the innate lack of conflict that occurs in mass culture
(the figure of the ‘intriguer’ is one that champions this case) - recreates some aspects of mass culture - reducing characters to experimental objects of a predetermined thesis (to show the effects of mass culture)
How does Brecht recreate some aspects of mass culture in his epic theatre technique?
- reducing characters to experimental objects of a predetermined thesis, which also naturally then assumes an audience that is unmoved and at ease
In what sense does Brecht’s epic theatre reveal the ideological character of dramatic action?
if the work of art has no aspect of conflict, it lacks the capacity to conflict with the mass culture outside itself
What emphasis does Frank O’Hara’s ‘Having a Coke’ with you place on authenticity?
It is all about how to retain that authenticity of seeing art works for the ‘first time’ whether that’s second time or third etc. time over
- he is asking us to privilege that first time experience
If a poem has kind of repetitions or seems kind of irreverently obfuscating - how might we talk about it?
- reflect on anxieties that we can’t know the interior ie. we appreciate the cadences, the refrains, the classical sound
- it seems to hold us outside of any sincere message
- consider if its an irreverent commentary or handling of certain patterns of thinking ie. be that the twists of philosophical rumination or untangling arduous religious or ethical debates etc.
What might repetitions such as the ones in Wallace Steven’s ‘The Pleasures of Merely Circulating’
(The garden flew round with the angel,
The angel flew round with the clouds,
And the clouds flew round and the clouds flew round
And the clouds flew round with the clouds)
have to say about authenticity and reproduction?
- showing how repetitions trivialise or empty of impact
- the form/ rhythm of the lines seems to overtake the content ie. we become lulled into a comfortable sense of rhythm and we pay less and less attention to the content
(ie. we become less critical, less responsive, less attentive)
What relation does Benjamin register between artists and the technological infrastructure?
Artists have to perform in front of the technological infrastructure - they performed for artificiality
- they’re trying to perform their own humanity - becomes heightened realism and emptiness
What does Benjamin believe art/ advertising does?
- represents the real to us in an aestheticised form
- we end up displacing our own humanity, our own reality
- an aestheticised version of reality itself becomes the commodity
How does Sontag respond to the urge to carry out in-depth hermeneutic unpacking of art/ literature?
Sontag - should just be felt, we should inhabit it
- think about the form/ production
- we have to experience and then know what it is now
Why can, according to Benjamin, we no longer engage with the primal experience of art?
- no one is making the pilgrimage to see the artwork
- even in the first encounter, we know it can be reproduced
(meaning that now even when experienced in original, they can’t be experienced with that ‘aura’)
How might the authenticity of our own actions be under threat?
- we can’t have authentic moments to ourselves
- even own own authenticity has been displaced due to the legacy of our actions ie. we are constantly haunted by the memories of our old actions
What comment does Frank O’Hara have to make about the relationship between poetry and his own experiences?
“It may be that poetry makes life’s nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial”
In 1951, what did O’Hara read and what effect did it have on him?
Essay by Paul Goodman - he argued that the postwar American “advanced guard” writers must articulate the deep-seated, personal disquiet felt across the culture but left unvoiced
- O’Hara wrote poems that were embarrassing in their directness, and even seen as hostile to literary standards then in place
O’Hara was a leading figure of the New York school - who were they and what did they do?
informal group of artists, writers, and musicians who drew inspiration fromjazz,surrealism,abstract expressionism,action painting, and contemporaryavant-gardeart movements
What does Shklovsky argue about how we perceive things we encounter frequently?
- we lose the ability to see what we encounter frequently - we come instead merely to recognise it by its outlines
How does Shklovsky believe we see something familiar ‘in all its particularity’ again?
- needs the disorientation that arises when the familiar appears before us as precisely, if temporarily, unrecognisable
Give an example of defamiliarisation
Hyperbole
How might defamiliarisation be used to make a social commentary?
- only from a distance, only at
a remove from how things are, can art find the wherewithal to see and
show that they needn’t be that way
(consider 1984)
In what way does literary form ‘return us to life’ according to Shklovsky?
- combats automatism by slowing down perception and rendering recognition difficult, returns us to life
- arrests attention and combats sleepwalking indifference
How might we communicate that a writer demonstrates a certain alignment with a thinker?
‘[X] via his spokesperson articulates a demonstrably
[eg. Shklovskian] rationale for art…’
Which terms does Shklovsky provide us with to discuss story and plot?
Fabula and syuzhet
Spell fabula and syuzhet
fabula and syuzhet
Define fabula and syuzhet. Who coined them?
Fabula: a series of events in the order in which they must
have occurred, taking the time they must have taken to occur, and so
Syuzhet: those events as narrated—possibly out of order,
or with events that unfolded over a long duration occupying scant space in the narrative, or with a single event narrated multiple times
Shklovsky
Give an example of a Victorian writer and a quote from him showing that Shklovsky’s defamiliarization and the distinction between story and plot have a particular tie to the Victorian period
Thomas Hardy:
“art is a disproportioning—(i.e. distorting, throwing
out of proportion)—of realities, to show more clearly the features that matter in those realities”
- defamiliarization and the distinction
between story and plot seem to be formalisations of this idea
Define polysyndeton
comes from the Ancient Greek πολύ poly, meaning “many”, and συνδετόν syndeton, meaning “bound together with”. A stylistic scheme, polysyndeton is the deliberate insertion of conjunctions into a sentence for the purpose of “slow[ing] up the rhythm of the prose”
Define Apodicticity
“Apodictic”, also spelled “apodeictic” (Ancient Greek: ἀποδεικτικός, “capable of demonstration”), is an adjectival expression from Aristotelean logic that refers to propositions that are demonstrably, necessarily or self-evidently true
Who is ‘the best’ in God’s eyes?
- ‘the best’ ie. Biblical, follows 5 other virtues God installed into the world and then on the 6th he made the best which was man
What did John Donne say on the nature of the poem in his sermon preached April-June 1623?
“…the whole frame of the poem is a beating out of a piece
of gold, but the last clause is as the impression of the stamp, and that is it
that makes it current”
What did John Donne say on the nature of the poem in his sermon preached April-June 1623?
“…the whole frame of the poem is a beating out of a piece
of gold, but the last clause is as the impression of the stamp, and that is it
that makes it current”
What might the significance of the stamp be in Donne’s opinion that “…the whole frame of the poem is a beating out of a piece
of gold, but the last clause is as the impression of the stamp, and that is it
that makes it current”?
- the stamp of a letter tells us that the letter must be unfolded and read
What two types of knowledge does Hegel distinguish between in section 31 of the preface to ‘Phenomenology of the Spirit’? Define both types
familiar (bekannt) vs. cognitively known knowledge (erkannt)
- erkannt - more thorough and rigorous form of knowledge
- bekannt - ‘that which we’ve gotten to know’
Why does Hegel believe we need to scrutinize the familiar knowledge we have?
“What is familiar and well known as such is not really known for the very reason that it is familiar and well known”
What layers of deception are contained within our understanding of familiar knowledge?
- we deceive ourselves about the fact that we have understood
- we can deceive ourselves about what this process of understanding would entail
Why can’t we just take for granted that we have at least a basic understanding of things?
(ie. examples: “Subject and object, God, nature, understanding, sensibility, etc.,”)
- even if some bits are familiar - understanding something like ‘free will’ is not something we can assume to know, because it is likely that we have not tangled with it and therefore do not cognitively understand it
In section 32, once we have begun this process of questioning, how do we analyse?
analysis is to break it down into its constituents
- we defamiliarise the idea and then we break it down into its constituents
How does Hegel describe the constituent parts of concepts? What is the benefit of thinking of it like this?
to break an idea down in this way is to return to its ‘moments’
- each element is not an independent entity that has its full meaning in and of itself but that it is part of a whole
(thinking in terms of ‘moments’ enables us to differentiate wholes apart from each other)
NB: each of these moments can also be defamiliarised, interrogated and broken down
What does Hegel believe occurs when the elements of the whole begin to break off?
BUT THEN:
- in the first phase, each element only has its meaning as part of a whole AND THEN it breaks that
- it distinguishes itself from the rest of what gave it its meaning/ function/ purpose
Why does Hegel consider the recognition of non-actuality (ie. the beginning of that questioning process of an element) a kind of death?
“Death, if that is what we wish to call that non-actuality, is the most fearful thing of all, and to keep and hold fast to what is dead requires only the greatest force.”
How does Hegel thus ultimately describe ‘the spirit’?
“No, spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face and lingering with it.”
it’s not about being something that is and then unfolds itself
- it has to make choices, it has to persevere
- it has to linger with the negative
When the subject recognises itself, what does it recognise about itself?
the subject now realises that it is the one who carries out the analysis - the one for whom ideas have being
- the one that can cognise these elements of a greater whole
- the subject is what makes space in itself for ideas
- ideas exist in our minds, in our experience
- in the course of this phenomenology we come to recognise ourselves as subjects
What question is asked of the subject in relation to these concepts?
“How is the subject going to make sense of itself in relation to these other things that it comes to know?”
If we were to summarise what the ‘entire phenomenology’ was about, what would we say?
the entire phenomenology is about trying to become authentic substance
What does it mean to achieve authentic substance?
instead of having my mediations outside of myself and saying ‘I’m related to these things’ or ‘I’m related to death’ or ‘I’m related to the abstract understanding’
- the mediations are part of what I am
this is what gives us freedom in a sense, bc the things that make us ourselves are not from outside, but are mediations within ourselves
- over which, we have some kind of contribution to make
In section 18 of the preface, what does Hegel conclude about the truth of substance?
Section is focused on: what is the truth of substance?
will have unity to some degree but requires us to rethink how we think of unity
truth WILL NOT BE
- primal
- original
- simple
- unity
In what context is Hegel unpicking the concepts of ‘truth’ and ‘unity’?
(NB: ‘truth’ and ‘unity’ had been considered transcendentals by Medieval thought - Hegel was taking issue to untangle exactly what they meant)
What is the risk of seeing substance as a unity?
S17: if you think of substance as unity, you risk viewing it as a simple and inert state, which has not ‘become’ and is therefore not actual
How should we conceptualise substance?
need to see substance as subject
- not something inert but something dynamic
What kind of division takes place when the thing (the substance) asserts itself?
it puts itself forward as itself but also as something other than itself
(ie. it becomes alienated from itself - it becomes other to itself - one is not what one thought one is)
- this is a kind of division that takes place in the thing itself
Why does the thing divide itself when it asserts itself?
- it becomes other to itself, and only in doing so can it be what it is supposed to be
- only then can it have dynamism
- only then can it have purposeful activity and rationality
What are the technical names for what divide out of the thing when it asserts itself?
Thesis
Antithesis (ie. the substance projects a negated form of itself)
How does truth ultimately become actual?
There is a process of reintegration that occurs which forms an amalgamation
How does Hegel consider the relationship of form and essence in relation to substance?
- essence - he is saying that the essence does change, it is not an unalterable absolute, there is a process involved
BECAUSE - what is essential to essences?
- it is because it has a form, because it is dynamic, that it is developing
How does the dynamic of the form and the essence play out?
- have to be able to think about the essence as it develops, in situation etc.
(use freedom as an example, might have a definition but you need to see it develop)
form enables the working out of the essence
Thus, how does Hegel ultimately describe the dialectic?
- this spiralling down process of getting closer and closer to what is really essential (ie. via the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis)
If there is a case of triadic listing, what should we be looking out for?
- if this kind of listing indicates a relationship of progression, disintegration, gradual abstraction, shift, if the middle word is in someway a bridge between the two others, if we can hear a resonance of a fourth word beyond the last
When looking at syntax what should we be looking out for?
- if the syntax forces us to couple any words and what that might mean - if it is an assumption of similarity, whether they are actually closer in meaning than a reader would assume, whether they’re in contrast or supposed to be complimentary
When you have turns of phrase like ‘O’ or ‘O woe is me’ or ‘Oh, to vex me’ how might we describe them?
- superficial luxuriating in the fear/ confusion
- might be a kind of self-flagellating
What is via negativa?
- a technical term for the negative way of theology, which refuses to identify God with any human concept or knowledge, for God transcends all that can be known of him
ie. ‘God cannot be defined as - he is this - but actually “he is beyond that” or “he exists as the opposite iteration of x”’
