The fleeting promise of art: Adorno's aesthetic theory revisited

Abstract

This book has a long and complex history. It grew out of individual but related projects focused on Adorno’s aesthetic theory and literary crit-icism. Some of them were originally conceived as more specifi c investiga-tions or interventions, written either as essays or book chapters. Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 5 were previously published in somewhat different form. Part of chapter 1 was published in The Philosophical Forum(43:3, Fall 2012). Chapter 2 first appeared in a volume edited by Gerhard Richter, Language without Soil: Adorno and Late Philosophical Modernity(Fordham University Press, 2010). A version of chapter 3 was originally published in Cultural Critique(60, Spring 2005), and chapter 5 fi rst appeared in New Literary History (42:1, 2011).