Radical Culture

The article presents three models of radical cultural practice: Adorno’s dissonant modernism, Brecht’s “functional transformation” or “re- functioning” of institutions through estrangement and dialectical realism, and Debord’s Situationist detournement of art, aiming to rupture and de- colonize naturalized everyday life. The three models all begin with a critical appropriation of the traditions of art and aims at resisting the social power that passes through art, as an institutionalized field of production and activity. Each of the three modes establishes a set of productive strategies.

Bertolt Brecht and Theodor W. Adorno stand for opposing modes and stances within an artistic modernism oriented toward radical social transformation. In his 1962 essay `Commitment' Adorno advanced a biting critique of Brecht's work and artistic position. Adorno's arguments have often been dismissed but, surprisingly, are seldom closely engaged with. This paper assesses these two approaches that have been so central to twentieth-century debates in aesthetics: Brecht's dialectical realism and Adorno's sublime or dissonant modernism. It provides what still has been missing: a close reading and immanent critique of Adorno's case against Brecht. And it clarifies one methodological blind spot of Adorno's formalist conceptualisation of autonomy: he fails to provide the detailed analysis of context that his own dialectical method immanently calls for. The paper shows how and why Brecht's dialectical realism holds up under Adorno's attack, and draws conclusions for contemporary artistic practice.