There are 2 ways to understand positive
1.) What is given. "when we speak of positivism as the philosophy that sticks to facts"
2.) The Ideal, the approvable, the good.
Identity thinking - characterized as the positive (+), meaning progressive in terms of society.
Identity thinking usually has to do with ideology and identity that is cooptable by capitalism.
"Now, when I speak of 'Negative Dialectics' not the least important reason for doing so is my desire to dissociate myself from this fetishism of the positive, particularly since I know full well that the concept has an ideological resonance that is connected with the advances made by certain philosophical trends"
To Adorno, what appears to be the positive is actually the negative, or "the thing that is to be critiqued" (-) and that is essentially Adornos reason for the creation of the negative dialectic.
Negative Dialectics criticizes Hegel and his philosophy and "the quintessence of all the negations it contains- not just the sum of negations but the process that they constitute- is supposed to culminate in a positive sense, namely in the famous dialectical proposition with which you are all familiar that 'what is actual is rational'. "
Adorno has a problem with totality being seen as rational even in the specifics, which in many cases seem to him as quite irrational...WWI, WWII, Auschwitz, etc. Through this, he questions the meaning of life...
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Lecture Outline
Explaining Negative Dialectics
It is first necessary to understand:
1. Positivist Dialectics: For Hegel dialectics is positive: Contradictions in a situation absolve themselves and the old situation is negated i.e. destroyed and replaced with new, "better" situation. The same negation will then go through a process of working out its contradictions and then will eventually be negated and replaced, this process only ends with the end of history. Therefore for Hegel the Negation of Negation=Positive, progress of society, the engine of development in the world.
2. Negative Dialectics: Adorno: Negation of the Negation doesn't always equal a positive. Development as positive is not true in itself, "positivism" arbitrary and limited to the realm of concepts. "Development" hasn't exactly been positive - WW1, WW2, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. Dialectics need to remain consistently critical - esp. critical of the claim that a thing and its concept are identical. Therefore negative dialectics = ruthless criticism of all that exists. It is a process of analyzing a subject and ascertaining a new understanding of reality through dissecting what something is in reality and the relation with its concept or idea (i.e. freedom, morality, etc.) This dialectical method is constituted by:
Non-identity thinking- operating in the 'force-field' between concept and object, examining contradictions between the object's idea of itself and its actual existence. Understanding something through what it is not. For example Freedom can only be defined in negative terms, corresponding to specific forms of unfreedom. To Adorno, Beckett's plays are Negative Dialectics in practice.
Adorno: " 'Endgame' typifies the dignity of modern art by examining the drama of an era which can no longer tolerate that which constitutes it."
Concepts
1. "Walking in place": Boredom, paralysis and history, repetition that doesn't give stability or reason. No rational resolution to conflicts, no progression.
Waiting for Godot: P. 13, 30, 50, 59 and 109
Endgame: P. 5, 8, 13, 14, 27. 29-31, 35, 37, 69
2. Suffering: "The slingshot to the megaton bomb"- WWI and WWII's proof that history doesn't progress linearly, but only has unity in human suffering.
To Adorno, Auschwitz was proof of meaninglessness of life. In Endgame, the characters suffer in one way or another - Hamm is blind and can't stand up, tormented by his visions he sees in his dreams. Clov can't sit and is dependent on Hamm to live, although he is verbally abused by him. Nagg and Nell can barely move at all and live in trashcans. Adorno says of Endgame: "The dustbins in which the characters live are the emblems of the culture that was reconstructed after Auschwitz."
p.2, 6, 7, 19, 80
3. No resolution: "Meaning" as closure doesn't exist, there is no purpose fulfilled. "As a negation of the absolute idea, content can no longer be identified with reason as it is postulated by idealism; content has become the critique of the omnipotence of reason." To Adorno the absence of an evident "message" is itself the content of the play. Insecurity in not knowing- echo of audience and play in characters and life.
4. Unconscious acknowledged, implicit in 'non-identity thinking': The unconscious is irrational and a central part of the process of Negative Dialectics, which is focused on the non-conceptual. For Adorno concept = reason, rationality, consciousness. Non-identity and Non-conceptual can't be co-opted by capitalism because not understandable but acknowledgeable parts of existence.
Why art is important - it appeals to desire and the unconscious, the most uncontrollable part of humanity.
Endgame is inherently irrational.
5. Difficult Art: Adorno: Art has the ability of saying without saying
6. Capitalism: Major critique
Superstructure/base (master/slave)
Hamm: "Every man his specialty". Specialization, Power, and Class are commented on in Hamm and Clov's interdependency.
These themes are all interconnected and all can be associated with one another.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Notes so far
I know there's a lot here but I think we can condense these down to some more succinct points and add them to whatever you two have come up with thus far. JULIA: me and ashley were talking about just working this out and finishing it on wednesday between 12 and 5, i took the day off work so I can sit down with you both and we can wrap this up and have it ready for thursday. I think 12-5 would be better than 10 pm, we'll be sharper and more on the ball. I'll call you tomorrow. If it's possible, see if either of you can find specific passages in either Endgame or Godot that are somehow applicable to the different facets of Negative Dialectics that I have researched and tried to make as intelligible as possible in the ramblings that follow:
Adorno: “’Endgame’ typifies the dignity of modern art by examining the drama of an era which can no longer tolerate that which constitutes it. The dustbins in which the characters live are the emblems of the culture that was reconstructed after Auschwitz.” The things constituting the era in question are exemplified in Beckett’s plays, but are namely those of Boredom, Repetition, and a Theological Insecurity or concern with the meaninglessness of existence ( “ after Auschwitz who can still venture to assert that life has a meaning!”) (lectures p.13). He was concerned with “the question whether thought can bear the idea that a given reality is meaningless and that mind is unable to orientate itself; or whether the intellect has become so enfeebled that it finds itself paralysed by the idea that all is not well with the world.” (lectures p.20) This echoes similar concerns of the protagonists of Beckett’s plays (need examples). Adorno sees in Beckett Negative Dialectics at work.
In order to understand Negative Dialectics, one must first understand the positivist, Hegelian concept of the dialectic; which is that of the engine of development and progress whether it be self-knowledge or world history. These are governed by dialectic between conflicting and contradictory expressions of mind and spirit. Development is characterized by a tension between conflicting forces and resolved as a new synthesis is achieved. Synthesis creates new internal contradictions, and then further resolution. According to this theory, this will only cease with the end of history. An important part of this process is “The Negation of the Negation” – the stage in the development that grows from its predecessor and NEGATES it. It is then in its own turn NEGATED by the development and resolution of its own internal contradictions. For example, Capitalism formed from negating/destroying Feudalism.
“Unlike the kind of dialectics that the late Hegel called for, one in which the affirmative could be discovered at the end of all the negations, this concept [negative dialectics] calls for the very opposite.” (lectures p.20) For Adorno, “the thesis that the negation of the negation is positive (progressive and developmental) […] cannot be sustained. The negation of the negation does not result in a positive, or not automatically. The situation today is one that secretly everyone finds deeply dubious, but it is also one that is so overpowering that people feel they can do nothing about it, and perhaps they can do nothing about it.” (lectures p. 17) This seems reflected in the line “nothing to be done” from Waiting for Godot as well as a conversation on p.5 of Endgame between Clov and Hamm starting with “Have you not had enough?” and concluding with the line “All life long the same questions, the same answers.”
Negative Dialectics would refute the claim that the Dialectical process in history leads to development. It is concerned with the critique of the relation of concept to thing, the identity of concept and thing being a vital nerve of idealist (predominant) thought.
“Negative Dialectics = ruthless criticism of all that exists.” (lectures, p.13) Adorno suggests that in the universe there exists the object and its concept, or the idea that is attached to the object, which affects how it is perceived and is thereby made communicable, reduced to a word and an idea. Negative Dialectics is non-identity thinking, which stands opposed to identity thinking. Identity thinking aims at the categorization of all particular objects under their general concepts. As a result, the particular is usually dissolved into the universal. However Negative Dialectics, which is non-identity thinking, seeks to identify the falseness of the claims of identity thinking. Negative Dialectics assesses the relation between concept and object, between the set of properties implied by the concept and the object in reality. It operates within the ‘force-field’ between concept and object, or idea and the material world. It confronts the object and examines contradictions between the objects idea of itself and its actual existence. When viewed in this mode of thinking, concepts can connote what their particular object is and is not. Take Freedom for example, “in the so-called free society in which we live the inequality of social power ensures that the claimed identity between concept (freedom) and object (the present state of affairs) is false […] Through the examination of the formation of concepts and the disjuncture between them and the objects they seek to cover, Adorno’s dialectical method aims to disclose the processes of mutual constitution and alteration between object and totality. In this examination the object is also assessed in terms of what it appears to be and what it is (its essense) – revealing the univeral within the particular.” (Held ppg 216, 217)
Illustrating a link between Negative Dialectics and the works of Beckett, Adorno states in “Aesthetic Theory” : “ What is today called a ‘message’ is no more to be squeezed out of Shakespeares’ great dramas than out of Beckett’s works […] As a negation of the absolute idea, content can no longer be identified with reason as it is postulated by idealism; content has become the critique of the omnipotence of reason, and it can no longer be reasonable according to the norms set by discursive thought.” (p.27)
Adorno goes on to say “In recent years it has been fashionable to accuse Beckett of simply repeating his basic idea; he exposed himself to this accusation in a provocative fashion. In this his consciousness was correct that the need for progress is inextricable from its impossibility. The gesture of walking in place at the end of Godot, which is the fundamental motif of the whole of his work, reacts precisely to this situation […] The fulfilled moment reverses into perpetual repetition that converges with desolation. His narratives […] no more offer objective descriptions of social reality than – as the widespread misunderstanding supposes- they present the reduction of life to basic human relationships, that minimum of existence that subsists in extremis […] The narratives are marked as much by an objectively motivated loss of the object as by its correlative – the impoverishment of the subject. Beckett draws the lesson from montage and documentation, from all attempts to free oneself from the illusion of a subjectivity that bestows meaning […] Beckett’s plays unfold like forces in infinitesimal physics, a second world of images springs forth, both sad and rich, the concentrate of historical experiences that otherwise, in their immediacy, fail to articulate the essential: the evisceration of subject and reality. This shabby, damaged world of images ((Connotations of the story Nag tells about the Trousers compared to the world)) is the negative imprint of the administered world. To this extent, Beckett is realistic.” (p.31 of Aesthetic Theory)
“Beckett’s plays are absurd not because of the absence of any meaning, for then they would be simply irrelevant, but because they put meaning on trial, they unfold its history. His work is ruled as much by an obsession with positive nothingness as by the obsession with a meaninglessness that has developed historically and is thus in a sense merited.” (p.153 of Aesthetic Theory)
Adorno is fascinated by the non-conceptual, which is to say the opposite of CONCEPT-which is synonymous with reason, rationality, and consciousness. The NEGATIVE, or non conceptual (unconscious) is a moment of experience that cannot be coopted by capitalism.
Quote and updates
I know it's not reliable, as it's translated by a Youtube user, but this video has a clip of Adorno talking about Beckett. In the comments, someone translated the text and it says something to the effect of: "it is always said of Beckett that he employs a technique of total reduction, I have said so myself and it is no remarkable discovery to say so, but this reduction is actually what the world does to us, to quote Karl Kraus. What the world has made out of us, these stumps of people who have lost their "selves" ["I"], these really are the products of the world we live in."
With this in mind we can talk about the characters that Beckett creates, because all are hindered, crippled, sick and/or mentally blunted. They have no selves. It would be interesting to talk about Nell and Nagg in this respect.
I picked up a copy of Bernstein's essay on Adorno and Beckett and have somewhat started it. MSR left the copies in a manila folder outside the Liberal Arts office. It has a specific part about Endgame, which will be very useful to our discussion. I think we should try to find some time tomorrow to get together and talk about our presentation--it's less than 48 hours away! I guess I will just call you.
Julia
Friday, April 3, 2009
Negation of the Negation
Already after reading the first few pages I think there are some relevant concepts in the very idea of "Negative Dialectics" which negates the Hegelian/Marxist concept of the materialist dialectic of human history, where change is always a product of a clashing of contradicting forces resulting in the negation of the previous scenario, with a positive outcome each time. Feudalism was negated by Capitalism which should eventually be negated by Socialism/Communism, etc. Hence these negations being negated equal a positive outcome and working out of conflicts/contradictions. Adorno rejects that the negation of the negation always results in positive situations, hence the prevalent misery of modern conditions and the failure of Communism in where it managed to manifest as becoming just another totalitarian control structure. Negative Dialectics is basically saying that despite the synthesis and negations of historical dialectics, there isn't a progress towards human happiness. Just progress "from the slingshot to the atom bomb". Adorno also points out that the very fact that Auschwitz happened is proof that there is no point to life. I think these echo in Endgame in a less articulated way.. namely the suggestion that life is meaningless and that mankind seems hardwired to make itself miserable. I will follow up with specific examples later when I'm not at work. Just some food for thought
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