Bilderverbot: Adorno and the Ban on Images
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Truskolaski, Sebastian. 2016. Bilderverbot: Adorno and the Ban on Images. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]
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Text (Bilderverbot: Adorno and the Ban on Images)
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Abstract or Description
My thesis examines the significance of Theodor W. Adorno’s recurrent reference to the Old Testament ban on making images of God: the ‘Bilderverbot’. In particular I focus on three facets of this figure that occur at prominent junctures of Adorno’s work: his ‘imageless materialism’ (Chapter One), his ‘inverse theology’ (Chapter Two) and his ‘negative aesthetics’ (Chapter Three). In each case I argue that Adorno strips the image ban of its religious associations and enlists it in the service of a broadly Marxian critique of capitalist modernity. The ban on picturing the absolute is rendered as a ban on pre-determining a future in which all historical antagonisms are reconciled. As Adorno argues, only an unflinching criticism of the present can throw into relief the contours of an ‘imageless’ Utopia. I approach Adorno’s writings with a view to his sources, many of which contain notable references to the image ban that span the history of modern German thought. They include: Marx and Lukács, Benjamin and Bloch, Kant and Hegel, as well as Hölderlin, Kafka and Schoenberg. By emphasising these elective affinities, I aim to shed light on Adorno’s singular application of the figure of the image ban to his critical project. In this regard, I hope to dispense with certain prevalent characterisations of Adorno as a quietistic aesthete advanced by critics such as Habermas, Taubes and Agamben. Far from designating a merely historical curio, I argue that Adorno’s singular appropriation of the image ban serves as a potent model for thinking an aesthetics of resistance in the present.
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Item Type: |
Thesis (Doctoral) |
| Identification Number (DOI): |
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| Keywords: |
Adorno, Frankfurt School, Critical Theory, Aesthetics |
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| Date: |
31 May 2016 |
| Item ID: |
18527 |
| Date Deposited: |
06 Jun 2016 11:23 |
| Last Modified: |
08 Sep 2022 15:24 |
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URI: |
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