Natural History and Aesthetic Truth in Aesthetic Theory

Theodor W. Adorno’s claim in Aesthetic Theory that artworks have a truth content, and that this truth content in turn depends on philosophical interpretation, is among the work’s most challenging and obscure claims. This article argues that “The Idea of Natural History,” Adorno’s lecture dating to 1932, offers important resources for interpreting the claim of art’s truth content. Reading the lecture’s core idea of transience, the article proposes that the form of philosophical interpretation Adorno develops there illuminates one way to clarify what Adorno means, in Aesthetic Theory, by the interpretation of art’s truth content. While far from definitive, this conclusion does support interpretations of art’s truth content that foreground art’s function as a critique of ideology, that is, of having a field of application that moves beyond the sphere of the aesthetic and toward the disclosure of conditions of social domination.

Between The Symbolic And The Sublime : Slavoj Žižek In Film Studies ... And Out

The following dissertation examines film theory' s contribution to the Marxian theory of ideology. I argue that while early film theorists sought to develop a theory of film, film theory better serves the study and critique of ideology. I claim that the study of film and spectatorship can add to knowledge of ideology and subjectivity. To this end, I examine the relevance of the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, Slavoj Žižek, for contemporary film studies. I locate Žižek's place within film studies through a debate between himself and the prominent American film scholar, David Bordwell. Bordwell is well known for his advocacy of cognitive and middle-level research in film studies, and for his criticism of film theory (or, 'Theory'). He is one of the leaders of a movement in film studies known as post-Theory. I take up the debate between Žižek and Bordwell, and argue that the post-Theory rejection of Theory is an ideological effect of the class struggle. After carving out a place for Žižek in film studies, I examine the relevance of his psychoanalytic interpretations of cinema for a critique of ideology. Žižek is known for using examples from films as tools of exegesis for an interpretation of Lacanian psychoanalysis. However, I argue that while this is true for some of his writing on film, Žižek also practices a psychoanalytic interpretation of cinema that reveals something about the function of ideology. Referring to Žižek, I also argue against early film theorists who thought it possible to interpellate political subjectivities through alternative or avant-garde cinema. In contrast, I argue that the work itself in not powerful enough to interpellate political subjectivity. It is, rather, the interpretation that politicizes the work. I claim that films do not create subject-positions, as early film theorists argued; rather, they reproduce the already existing subject-positions of the spectators by reproducing pleasure or desire. However, without rejecting the efforts of early film theory, I conclude, against Bordwell and other post-Theorists, that Theory is still important in film studies, particularly in the area of political critique, and that Žižek's work is exemplary of the kind of political criticism needed in film studies.

Between The Symbolic And The Sublime : Slavoj Žižek In Film Studies ... And Out

The following dissertation examines film theory' s contribution to the Marxian theory of ideology. I argue that while early film theorists sought to develop a theory of film, film theory better serves the study and critique of ideology. I claim that the study of film and spectatorship can add to knowledge of ideology and subjectivity. To this end, I examine the relevance of the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, Slavoj Žižek, for contemporary film studies. I locate Žižek's place within film studies through a debate between himself and the prominent American film scholar, David Bordwell. Bordwell is well known for his advocacy of cognitive and middle-level research in film studies, and for his criticism of film theory (or, 'Theory'). He is one of the leaders of a movement in film studies known as post-Theory. I take up the debate between Žižek and Bordwell, and argue that the post-Theory rejection of Theory is an ideological effect of the class struggle. After carving out a place for Žižek in film studies, I examine the relevance of his psychoanalytic interpretations of cinema for a critique of ideology. Žižek is known for using examples from films as tools of exegesis for an interpretation of Lacanian psychoanalysis. However, I argue that while this is true for some of his writing on film, Žižek also practices a psychoanalytic interpretation of cinema that reveals something about the function of ideology. Referring to Žižek, I also argue against early film theorists who thought it possible to interpellate political subjectivities through alternative or avant-garde cinema. In contrast, I argue that the work itself in not powerful enough to interpellate political subjectivity. It is, rather, the interpretation that politicizes the work. I claim that films do not create subject-positions, as early film theorists argued; rather, they reproduce the already existing subject-positions of the spectators by reproducing pleasure or desire. However, without rejecting the efforts of early film theory, I conclude, against Bordwell and other post-Theorists, that Theory is still important in film studies, particularly in the area of political critique, and that Žižek's work is exemplary of the kind of political criticism needed in film studies.

Towards a Platonic critique of ideology

Plato is accused by some of being a totalitarian, “top-down” thinker, a claim that is linked not just to his politics but to his philosophical proclivities more generally. This essay will argue that Plato’s method and metaphysics collectively provide a few avenues for questioning this outcome. I think Plato’s Socratic-style provides resistance to a hegemonic and carapaced metaphysics, and moreover I would argue that there is a greater coherence between Plato’s method and his positive teaching than is allowed for by some. Through an engagement with central Platonic doctrines, namely his account of philosophical dialogue, the transcendental Good, as well as participation, and recollection, it is argued that Plato’s relational metaphysics does not fit seamlessly into an “ideological” or “naïve” rendering of intellectual intuition, an exclusionary dualism of material and spiritual substance, or an uncritical evocation of “innate ideas,” and, moreover, that it allows for a greater plurality of perspectives, all ordered towards a deeper realism and unity within the Good Beyond Being.

Sprach‑ und Weltalternativen: Mehrsprachigkeit als Ideologiekritik in kontrafaktischen Werken von Quentin Tarantino und Christian Kracht

Alternatives of Languages and Worlds: Multilingualism as Critique of Ideology in Contrafactual Fiction by Quentin Tarantino and Christian Kracht. Multilingualism and the alternate history genre have something in common: both phenomena are based on the construction of alternatives, in the case of multilingualism on the alternatives between different languages and communication systems, and in the case of the alternate history genre on the alternatives between real-world facts and the variation thereof within fictional worlds. This article investigates the interconnections between these two forms of thinking in alternatives by looking specifically at Quentin Tarantino’s counterfactual war film Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Christian Kracht’s alternate history novel Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten (2008). I argue that the consideration of language alternatives forms part of the meta-reflection of the alternate history genre in these works while at the same time opening up a political perspective: in Tarantino’s film and Kracht’s novel, multilingualism serves as a means for the critique of ideology by rendering palpable the political threats of a worldview based on clear-cut alternatives. In the article’s final section, I plead for the establishment of stronger links between the research on literary multilingualism and the theory of fiction.

The Paradox of Representation

This chapter sets out to clarify the paradox of representing the silenced subaltern voice. It appropriates an aspect of Gayatri Spivak's scholarship that creates possibilities for a new reading of Nakagami. Before arguing Spivak's view, the chapter presents background information about Kishū Kumano (Japan's marginalized South) by referring to Nakagami's essays, interviews, and travel journals. It examines Spivak's critique of ideology, hegemony, the subaltern, and her discussion on the role of the intellectual. Based on these ideas of the “intellectual,” the chapter investigates Nakagami's ambivalence about his role as a member of the silenced Burakumin community who is nevertheless privileged as a “person who has (written) language.” The challenges inherent in the act of representation are investigated by reading Marx's interpretation of this issue, in addition to the ideas of more contemporary theorists such as Spivak and Karatani. The chapter concludes with an analysis of an example of Nakagami's representation of the voices of mukoku Kumano Burakumin from the 1978 travel journal Kishū.