[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 62, Issue 4

[John Haber]

The summary is excellent of Adorno's goals and why he doesn't really fit 
characterizations of him as strictly formalist or, conversely, the blame 
game, and I wouldn't have anything to add.  I hate blaming Kant for 
anything, as if contemporary art were suffering from too great an 
attempt at purity.  If Greenberg was sympathetic to Kant, I suppose one 
could blame him for reactions against him, but that's getting too 
contorted.

The point of political goals as bringing in the excluded is also 
valuable to bear in mind.  And the parallel to what art does is obvious. 
The question then remains whether it suffices for that to come about 
through the vocabularies of art, as necessarily escaping closure; 
whether it requires or suffices to be highlighting the excluded in 
content (gender, etc.); whether these must align; and so on.

John