Priority of the Material: Some Remarks for an Aesthetic Theory of the Negative Dialectics

Abstract

Adorno's materialist thesis of the primacy of the object, the core idea of his Negative Dialectic, returns in transformed form to his aesthetic concerns and theory. Such materialist aesthetics is compelled to permanent intermittency: It must penetrate artistic objects, absorb something of them, if the talk of the inexchangeability of art is to be more than a hollow statement. In this respect, the primacy of the object in aesthetic terms also means a primacy of artworks over aesthetic theory. Materialist aesthetics according to Adorno must therefore start from the artistic objects and return to them again and again, instead of moving away from them on increasingly hyper-abstract levels of discourse and meta-reflection. It is true that what is communicated in the material enters the realm of conceptual reflection, of reflection through reason. But this does not mean that philosophy can take precedence over aesthetic practice. In contrast, only that which is already laid out in the sensual itself can lead to aesthetic reflection.