Publication
Title
From dialectics to the diabolical
Author
Abstract
In Ars Nova, a short essay written in 1963, Blanchot defends the new music of Arnold Schönberg and his school against its critics and hails it as an exemplary contestation of culture conceived as an attempt to conceal the groundlessness of human existence. The fragmentary and dissonant nature of the new music has the power to unmask cultures pretence of order, meaning and harmony. It embodies the potential of modernist art to unsettle all established conventions standing in the way of an authentic, radical interrogation. Blanchot develops his argument by way of a discussion of Adornos theory of modernist music. The affinities and divergences revealed in Blanchots reading of Adornos work shed light on their respective understanding of the disruption enacted by the new music. A close analysis of Blanchots essay discloses the role of this confrontation with Adornos dialectical theory and points to the political and poetic ramifications of a complex and hitherto largely neglected category in Blanchots thinking about art: the diabolical.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Angelaki: journal of the theoretical humanities. - Basingstoke, currens
Publication
Basingstoke : 2018
ISSN
0969-725X
DOI
10.1080/0969725X.2018.1473924
Volume/pages
23 :3 (2018) , p. 14-27
ISI
000433928900004
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
Subject
Art 
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 21.06.2018
Last edited 09.10.2023
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