On Tue, 10 Aug 1999, Dennis R Redmond wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Aug 1999, Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> > So there you have it. In an art form that he has devoted more passion to
> > praising than any other, and which he knows more about than any other, he
> > thinks that 99% of the people that listen to it are unable to get the
> > liberatory potential from it.
>
> But Adorno is exactly right, isn't he? The total system is just that --
> total. It prevents people from understanding and comprehending great works
> of art, and fills up their time (and worse, their minds) with shopping
> malls and televised garbage. Only a few lucky individuals could possibly
> understand what the atonalists were doing at the time; but that doesn't
> mean that the 99% who didn't get it were right, any more than the LBOers
> on this list are wrong to believe that capitalism sucks and socialism
> would be a vast improvement, just because 75% of Americans still believe
> the Cold War fairytales about them thar Redz. It also doesn't mean that
> people can't learn their history and heritage, just that it won't happen
> by itself.
>
> > listened to by a minority of the population to start with. And this from
> > a man who thinks that in this degraded age liberatory potential is *only*
> > to be found in great art, properly understood.
>
> Not true. Quite the reverse: Adorno is critical of radical modern art,
> too, and insists that it alone cannot change things, it can only yield
> insights into the possibility that things might, someday, change. It opens
> the doors through which the subject must itself, in some form of free,
> creative praxis, walk through; no work of art, ideology, ukase or
> categorical imperative can substitute for that. But it *can* paint a huge,
> glowing arrow sign: "This Way to Utopia".
>
> -- Dennis
>
>
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com