WEAKNESS AND SUPPORT:
This section really slowed me down because I’m having difficulty with the terminology, his multilayered use of “form”. So I’ll do what I can to give a summary of what I understand, then move along.
Adorno seems to believe that a culture’s art forms are representative of its ontology. So the ideology of a society is lurking behind its art, and may be revealed by an analysis of the art forms.
So he proceeds to discuss a number of different types of “forms” and the difficulty for me is in distinguishing between forms that are artistic, and forms that are ontological. The blurring of any categorical division between these two is probably intentional. Here’s a recounting of the different types of “forms” mentioned.
First there is the most general, “forms in the world”. here is how it is used: “the conception of the loss of forms in the world, originally drawn up by conservative culture-critique in the nineteenth century and popularized since then.” After this, we find “ordering forms” and this is a strange, undefined concept to me: “The lament over the loss of ordering forms increases with their power.” By not producing ordering forms, the subject falls under the power of ordering forms already produced. The mentioned “power” produces a “conflict between subjectivity and forms” leaving the subject feeling powerless to change the institutions.
Then we have “commodity form”. This debases all qualitative determinations for the sake of equivalence. The equivalence appears as a formlessness, but it actually subjugates the subjects and robs them of their autonomy through the “mediated domination of human beings over human beings”, because their “freedom towards the qualitative” has been denied.
In modern art now we have a deceptive type of form, one which hides the bad, compulsory aspect. That form is the form of deception. It cannot justify itself, because its only reason for existence is to fill the void of formlessness, so that there would be some form here. It is of course, “inadequate as form”. That failing attempt to rearrange the “form-categories” produces the need to resurrect forms as “their own thing”, but the Spirit cannot suppress the inadequacy.
What has been described is an enduring conflict, a back and forth battle between the artistic freedom of the individual to produce forms, and the repression of the Spirit which uses the deceptive forms of formlessness to suppress that freedom.
Then we have the “form of invariance”. This one is difficult to grasp, but I think he means that this is the reified form itself. And, as much as the reified consciousness attempts at a “totality of the reified world”, such reification cannot be complete, so “radical modern art” for example, slips through the cracks. Having a place completely contrary to the form of invariance, it attempts to “explode the invariants” but being so weak as to be incapable of any effect.
In the end we are handed the concept of “support”. The truly emancipated consciousness would not be “constantly afraid of losing itself to an Other”, therefore would not require support. The need for support, “the alleged substantial”, is a sign of weakness of the I. So there is an inverse relation between freedom, and the suffering from the lack of support. But this suffering, the need for support, turns the consciousness toward substance, which is the invariant, thereby enhancing one’s own lack of freedom. “To this extent the ontological need is false.”