Performativization and the Rescue of Aesthetic Semblance

Abstract

Following years of neglect, Theodor W. Adorno’s reflections on theatricality have finally received more attention in theatre and performance studies. Nonetheless, it is striking that almost any reference to Adorno’s aesthetics today is accompanied by qualifying remarks expressing a sort of unease. Clearly, appreciation of Adorno’s complex ideas on the arts, especially the performing arts, is tainted by a certain discontent we feel concerning his disparaging statements about 1960s performance art. Since these ideas are not peripheral, but important in terms of his entire philosophical system, it is not feasible to simply disregard them. For many theorists though, these statements were reason enough to break with his theory and to promote a new orientation in aesthetics. Rüdiger Bubner, for example, reads them as testimonies of an obsolete and outdated understanding of artworks as closed and integral entities (“Bedingungen” 30). According to Bubner, Adorno fails to characterize the unique quality of avantgarde art, which lies in breaking with precisely such an understanding (a break largely initiated by new forms of performance practice). Bubner therefore recommends leaving Adorno’s “outdated” theory behind us — and many theorists since have followed Bubner’s recommendation. Admittedly, many of them argue convincingly against integrating Adorno’s thoughts into an overall philosophy of art.