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Messages in a Bottle and Other Things Lost to the Sea: The Other Side of Critical Theory or a Reevaluation of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory

Although analyses of artworks are limited in Adorno’s oeuvre I argue that his critical theory is awash with images crystallising thoughts to such a degree that it has every reason to be described as aesthetic. Adorno’s first and final book-length publications dealt explicitly with aesthetics, which attests to the importance and influence this science had on his thought. In both reinstating and prioritising the image and arguing for the value and exceptional status of the work of art in and to Adorno’s oeuvre I build on the important revisionist work of contemporaries seeking to salvage Adorno’s posthumous reputation in aesthetics together with those commentators closest to him who argue that, ‘central to [Adorno’s] Aesthetic Theory is the insight that only from the most advanced contemporary art is light cast on the work of the past.’ The value of Adorno’s work in relation to ‘advanced’ contemporary art and its critical theorisation is seriously limited if it is merely and erroneously understood to stand exclusively for an elitist high modernism.

In this article I re-evaluate Adorno’s theory through a detailed analysis of his image of messages in a bottle. In overturning and displacing the critical genealogy of this image and in anchoring it to the construction of his aesthetic and the work of art I swim against the tide of current opinion. I give buoyancy to Adorno’s image by severing it from the weight of its traditional (and dogmatic) understanding as; (1) the position of the critical intellectual (2) an (a)political standpoint (3) a theoretical model for doing and distributing critical theory.

This article generates new ways of thinking that influence creative practice, art research, aesthetics and critical theory. The article is also hosted on Telos’ website, which is a public platform that creates, inspires and supports new forms of artistic, literary, social, and philosophical expression.