Phantom Formations by Marc Redfield

Author:Marc Redfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
Published: 2018-01-02T16:00:00+00:00

If Kunst had earlier been seen as mere salt to the food of Handwerk, here the free arts are relegated to an even more tenuous supplementarity: inessential in comparison to the “rigorous arts,” they have now also become the locus of a potential tastelessness, the status of which is somewhat peculiar. On the one hand, the “free arts” are subject to degeneracy precisely because they are referentially free: the ground does not cave in under the impact of misdrawn figures because they have no power to negate the real. On the other hand, art’s irresponsibility does not in the least seem to preclude its having effects upon the real: the ugly statue stands; the misdrawn figure gestures; the screeching fiddle “stirs stout limbs most powerfully”; and the abominable church music “edifies” believers. Free art is not any less effective for being either non-referential or badly constructed. In fact, as the text’s repeated invocations of force, Kraft, suggests, art’s performative power might be all the greater for being indifferent to referential and formal constraints.28

And if the “free” and the “rigorous” arts are both tributaries of Kunst, the degeneracy of the former is possibly the visible sign of a disease hidden in the latter. The transcendental and pragmatic order of the symbol, in other words, might be animated by a referential force irreducible to the world of meaning it produces. In a well-known passage in Dichtung und Wahrheit, Goethe called this possibility that of the “demonic”:

. . . something which manifests itself only in contradictions, and which therefore could not be comprehended under any idea, still less under a word. It was not godlike, for it seemed unreasonable; not human, for it had no understanding; not devilish, for it was beneficent; not angelic, for it often displayed malice [Schadenfreude]. It resembled chance, for it evolved no consequences; it was like providence, for it hinted at connection. It seemed to penetrate all that limits us, and to play willfully with the necessary elements of our existence; it compacted time and expanded space. It seemed to find pleasure only in the impossible, and to reject the possible with contempt. This being, which seemed to intervene among all others to separate and bind them, I called the demonic, after the example of the ancients and of those who had attested to something similar. Thus, in accordance with my habits, I sought to save myself from this terrible being by taking refuge behind an image [Bild]. (HA, 10:175–76)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.