The expressive marking "schattenhaft" appears twice in Gustav Mahler's symphonies: at the beginning of the scherzo in the Seventh and within the first movement of the Ninth. Theodor Adorno's observations regarding Mahler's use of this marking, which connect it to Schopenhauer and Romantic aesthetics, provide the framework for an examination of possible meanings of these two passages in Mahler. Drawing also on references elsewhere in Adorno's book to stylistic and formal features peculiar to Mahler's music, and especially on the comparison he makes between the experiences of reading novels and listening to Mahler's symphonies, this thesis demonstrates that close analysis of the "schattenhaft" passages offers a valuable point of entry into the thinking of both Adorno and Mahler.

This dissertation explores the relationship of two of the most prominent women intellectuals of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag. While they are not commonly considered to be related figures – Arendt is mainly recognized as a political thinker, Sontag is an icon of postwar popular culture – it has been anecdotally noted that they lived and worked in the same intellectual environment in postwar New York City, where their paths crossed a few times. However, a comprehensive systematic study of their relationship is missing. Starting from their Benjamin portraits of 1968 and 1978, I argue that Arendt’s and Sontag’s relationship is significant in terms of the German and US American tradition of literary criticism: Both women acted as transatlantic critics invested in cultural transfer between postwar US and Germany, and they employed similar styles of citation and editorial strategies to create and inscribe themselves into an authoritative literary tradition. With Arendt and Sontag, I discuss the critic’s task in terms of citational style and as a matter of taking care of literary traditions beyond national borders. As I demonstrate through comprehensive, in-depth archival analysis and close readings, Arendt and Sontag intervened with their Benjamin portraits in a heated debate about critical methods surrounding the editorial management of Benjamin’s estate and legacy through Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem in late 1960s Germany. Arendt’s portrait made Benjamin’s work available to an English-speaking audience for the first time and Sontag popularized his prominence in the US even further. Both stage Benjamin as a literary figure rather than a philosopher. Stylistically, they employ related strategies of citational mimicry to create an intimate connection between their voices and Benjamin’s, granting even unfamiliar readers access to Benjamin’s complex writing. Through constant dialogue with his work, their affective and affirmative mediation has significant editorial qualities. By preserving and promoting Benjamin as a critic in the US, Arendt and Sontag created a transatlantic tradition of literary criticism in which they inscribed themselves to gain critical authority in singular yet similar ways. Tracing the relationship between the portraits archivally, I argue that their similar citational creation of discursive authority results from Sontag’s comprehensive study of Arendt’s work and is thus an example of critical skill building through stylistic imitation. Rendering the hidden citational traces between the portraits transparent, I show how this line of influence ironically yields a lack of credit to Arendt on Sontag’s part. Like Arendt, Sontag reifies rather than breaks patriarchal citational chains. Illuminating what Arendt calls a “hidden tradition” – consisting in stylistically visible yet inexplicit commonalities – I draw on terminology gained from the current debate on critical method in Western literary studies to argue that the portraits afford a concept of criticism between such polemic poles as “surface” versus “depth” reading, “description” versus “interpretation” or “affirmation” versus “suspicion.” Characterizing this critical nuance with Arendt and Sontag as related critics, my study delineates a genealogy of a transatlantic mode of close reading with hermeneutic roots and a feminist twist.

“A Shine of Truth in the ‘universal delusional context of reification’ (Theodor W. Adorno)” comprend sept chapitres, un prologue et un épilogue. Chaque partie se construit à deux niveaux : (1) à partir des liens qui se tissent entre les phrases contiguës ; et (2) à partir des liens qui se tissent entre les phrases non contiguës. Les incipit des paragraphes forment l’argument principal de la thèse. Le sujet de la thèse, Schein (apparence, illusion, clarté) est abordé de manière non formaliste, c’est à dire, de manière que la forme donne d’elle-même une idée de la chose : illusion comme contradiction imposée. Bien que le sujet de la thèse soit l’illusion, son but est la vérité. Le Chapitre I présente une dialectique de perspectives (celles de Marx, de Lukács, de Hegel, de Horkheimer et d'Adorno) pour arriver à un critère de vérité, compte tenu du contexte d’aveuglement universel de la réification ; c’est la détermination de la dissolution de l’apparence. Le Chapitre II présente le concept d’apparence esthétique—une apparence réversible qui s’oppose à l’apparence sociale générée par l’industrie de la culture. Le Chapitre III cherche à savoir si la vérité en philosophie et la vérité en art sont deux genres distincts de vérités. Le Chapitre IV détermine si l’appel à la vérité comme immédiateté de l’expression, fait par le mouvement expressionniste du 20e siècle, est nouveau, jugé à l’aune d’un important antécédent à l’expressionisme musical : « Der Dichter spricht » de Robert Schumann. Le Chapitre V se penche sur la question à savoir si le montage inorganique est plus avancé que l’expressionisme. Le Chapitre VI reprend là où Peter Bürger clôt son essai Theorie de l’avant-garde : ce chapitre cherche à savoir à quel point l’oeuvre d’art après le Dada et le Surréalisme correspond au modèle hégélien de la « prose ». Le Chapitre VII soutient que Dichterliebe, op. 48, (1840), est une oeuvre d’art vraie. Trois conclusions résultent de cette analyse musicale détaillée : (1) en exploitant, dans certains passages, une ambigüité dans les règles de l’harmonie qui fait en sorte tous les douze tons sont admis dans l’harmonie, l’Opus 48 anticipe sur Schoenberg—tout en restant une musique tonale ; (2) l’Opus 48, no 1 cache une tonalité secrète : à l'oeil, sa tonalité est soit la majeur, soit fa-dièse mineur, mais une nouvelle analyse dans la napolitaine de do-dièse majeur est proposée ici ; (3) une modulation passagère à la napolitaine dans l’Opus 48, no 12 contient l’autre « moitié » de la cadence interrompue à la fin de l’Opus 48, no 1. Considérés à la lumière de la société fausse, l’Allemagne des années 1930, ces trois aspects anti-organiques témoignent d’une conscience avancée. La seule praxis de vie qu’apporte l’art, selon Adorno, est la remémoration. Mais l’effet social ultime de garder la souffrance vécue en souvenir est non négligeable : l’émancipation universelle. / “A Shine of Truth in the ‘universal delusional context of reification’ (Theodor W. Adorno)” defends Adorno’s aesthetics as a theory of advanced, or avant-garde, artworks. Its seven chapters show that aesthetic experience implies liberation from illusion (Schein). Chapter I engages a dialectic of viewpoints to explain how different dialectical thinkers (Marx, Lukács, Hegel, Horkheimer, Adorno) have contributed to a criterion of truth adequate to today’s total delusional context of reification—determinate negation of illusion. Chapter II introduces the concept of artistic aesthetic illusion—a reversible illusion opposed to the social illusions of mechanical musical reproduction and of the culture industry. Chapter III examines the question of whether truth in philosophy is a different kind of truth than truth in art. Chapter IV considers whether truth in twentieth-century Expressionism is a new truth based on immediate expression, in light of an important precedent for Expressionism in Robert Schumann’s “Der Dichter spricht.” Chapter V determines whether inorganic montage is more advanced than Expressionism. Chapter VI takes up a parting suggestion of Peter Bürger: to treat artworks after Dada and Surrealism on the model of “prose” in Hegel’s aesthetics. Chapter VII pursues the idea that Dichterliebe, op. 48, (1840) by Robert Schumann is a true artwork. Three results emerge from this close musical analysis: (1) exploiting, on occasion, an ambiguity in the rules for figuration that permits all twelve tones in the harmony, Schumann anticipates Schoenberg; (2) Op. 48, No. 1 is in a hidden key: to all appearances, its key is either A major or F-sharp minor, but its secret key is the Neapolitan region applied to C-sharp major; (3) the other “half” of the cadence with which Op. 48, No. 1 breaks off suddenly may be found in a brief applied-Neapolitan passage in No. 12. The thesis argued is that the antiorganicity in such a work is advanced with regard to the false reality of 1930s Germany and the place of organicity therein. According to Adorno, the only life-praxis afforded by art is remembrance. But the social effect of remembering social suffering is considerable when the Here-and-Now is its own justification.

nÃo hà / Esta tese de doutorado considera a crÃtica da racionalidade tÃcnico-cientÃfica e a formaÃÃo do sujeito autÃnomo em Adorno no contexto da sociedade capitalista, com o objetivo de explicitar a dupla funÃÃo da educaÃÃo, no pensamento de Adorno, que se efetiva pelo processo de adaptaÃÃo e de resistÃncia dos indivÃduos à realidade socialmente constituÃda. A adaptaÃÃo à o estÃgio que integra o indivÃduo ao coletivo social e a resistÃncia se configura pelo desenvolvimento de sua capacidade crÃtica para se contrapor ao que a ele se impÃe. Para atingir nosso objetivo analisamos, principalmente, as obras de Adorno: DialÃtica negativa (2009), DialÃtica do esclarecimento (1985), EducaÃÃo e emancipaÃÃo (1995) e Teoria da semicultura (1996). Nessa perspectiva, desenvolvemos a tese com base na racionalidade reflexiva e a racionalidade tÃcnico-cientÃfica. Pela primeira racionalidade se tem a autonomia intelectual do sujeito, mas desvinculada da realidade concreta, a sua subjetividade se efetiva sem as mediaÃÃes histÃricas, à constituÃda de forma abstrata. No caso da segunda racionalidade, na proporÃÃo em que o homem se apropria do saber cientÃfico, menos autonomia ele tem para se conduzir na vida e promover a emancipaÃÃo humana. Essa questÃo à reforÃada pelo processo educacional, agenciado pelo sistema capitalista, para adaptar o sujeito ao padrÃo de comportamento que à conveniente à sua conservaÃÃo. Nele, a cultura se converte em semicultura e a formaÃÃo em semiformaÃÃo, impedindo ao sujeito de se apropriar da cultura para pensar de forma crÃtica e se contrapor Ãquilo que o oprime. Para Adorno, nÃo hà autonomia do sujeito sem o exercÃcio da reflexÃo crÃtica e nem emancipaÃÃo humana enquanto os indivÃduos nÃo recuperarem as suas particularidades. Para isto, ele concebe a educaÃÃo em duas dimensÃes: ela serve para adaptaÃÃo dos indivÃduos à coletividade social e como resistÃncia a toda forma de dominaÃÃo. Fazendo uso da dialÃtica negativa, o desafio da educaÃÃo à promover no sujeito a capacidade de pensar criticamente os conceitos universais a partir de sua nÃo-identidade. / This doctoral thesis considers the criticism of technical-scientific rationality and the formation of the autonomous subject in Adorno in the context of capitalist society, with the objective of explaining the dual function of education, in Adornoâs thought, which is effected by the process of adaptation and resistance of individuals to the socially constituted reality. Adaptation is the stage that integrates the individual into the social collective and resistance is shaped by the development of his critical capacity to counteract what is imposed on him. In order to reach our objective we analyze, mainly, the works of Adorno: Negative dialectic (2009), Dialectics of enlightenment (1985), Education and emancipation (1995) and Theory of Semiculture (1996). From this perspective, we develop the thesis based on reflexive rationality and technical-scientific rationality. By the first rationality one has the intellectual autonomy of the subject, but detached from concrete reality, his subjectivity becomes effective without historical mediations, is constituted in an abstract form. In the case of the second rationality, in proportion as man appropriates scientific knowledge, he has less autonomy to conduct himself in life and to promote human emancipation. This question is reinforced by the educational process, under the influence of the capitalist system, to adapt the subject to the standard of behavior that is convenient for its conservation. In it, culture becomes semi- culture and semiformation training, preventing the subject from appropriating culture to think critically and oppose what oppresses. For Adorno, there is no autonomy of the subject without the exercise of critical reflection or human emancipation as long as individuals do not recover their particularities. For this, he conceives education in two dimensions: it serves to adapt individuals to social collectivity and as resistance to every form of domination. Using the negative dialectic, the challenge of education is to promote in the subject the ability to think critically of universal concepts from their non-identity.