This chapter engages the problem in Theodor W. Adorno's late work—both in Friedrich Hölderlin and as a general problem of aesthetic theory. The chapter explores questions through a selective reading of “Parataxis: On Hölderlin's Late Poetry”. Polemic and rescue, it will be argued, are the twin poles between which “Parataxis” oscillates and that delimit its field of argumentation. Their relationship generates a ferment in which each term passes imperceptibly into the other. On the one hand, the polemic figures a kind (...) of loving hate that mortifies in order to save: no resurrection without the stench of death. In Gnostic terms, the polemic affords a glimpse of divine truth through its absolute negation of the fallen world of the demiurge, anticipating the rescue of the particular in the universal envisaged by Adorno's regulative “utopia of knowledge”. (shrink)

Something needs to be changed—be it through the revolutionary overthrow of social conditions, the liberating force of passion, the contemplation and creation of works of art, or the exploration of an unresolved past. Luchino Visconti's films are models for the failure of such attempts. They show that this failure arises whenever people cling to possibilities that stand opposed to the reality of their lives. Does Adorno not write: "The place of utopia is blocked off by possibility, never by immediate reality"? (...) _Visconti: Insights into Flesh and Blood_ draws on aesthetics, film theory, and practical philosophy to propose an original interpretation of the melodramas of a great European director. In the encounter with Visconti's art, we come to see that something has changed already. (shrink)