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Adorno's Critical Presence: Cultural theory and literary value

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posted on 2023-06-08, 07:55 authored by Martin Ryle, Kate Soper
The chapter defends Adorno's highly selective sense of literary value. In particular, we reject the common implication that Adorno's esthetic discriminations are the cover for social elitism: on the contrary, his virtue is to have inisted that capitalist social relations make 'cultural democracy' impossible even though it would be desirable. In Adornian poetics, the autonomy of artist and critic is to be understood as the space left open for a vision undetermined by those relations. We trace this 'impossible' invocation of the 'magic of art' to the Aristotelian conception of literature's 'graver import'. Seeking to extend the reach of an Adornian critique of the novel beyond Adorno's own modernist canon, the chapter concludes with a reading of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Publisher

Continuum

Page range

26-39

Pages

14.0

Book title

Adorno and Literature

ISBN

0826487521

Department affiliated with

  • English Publications

Notes

This is a fully collaborative chapter, equally the work of both writers: my co-author is a philosopher and the chapter combines philosophical, litertary-critical and cultural-historical lines of argument and discussion.

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

David Cunningham, Nigel Mapp

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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