A
Term Paper
Submitted
for presentation to P.G Dept. of English
Utkal
University Bhubaneswar
For
Partial fulfillment of
course work leading to PhD programme.
Submitted
By: Mentor:
Biswa
Ranjan sahoo Prof. Himansu Sekhar Mohapatra
PhD
Course work Student
Utkal
University Bhubaneswar
On the eve of getting Theodor W. Adorno prize, in 1980 Jurgen
Habermas delivered a lecture and the essay is an outcome of that. The essay highlights
how ‘modernity’ as a project fails. He has taken many aspects like; aesthetic
modernity, cultural and societal modernization, the project Enlightenment and
negating culture, to present them in different sections of the essay. These
aspects of his experiment over modernity have been rounded up by a suitable
alternative. He attempted to show how modernism as a project grew and ultimately
rejected. I will describe the above aspects one by one from my idea of his
essay.
To Habermas, with the advent of post-modernity, we are forced to
revaluate the modernity. Modernity connotes newness,
a transition from the old to the new. One cannot confine it to an age, rather
it is an epoch formed from an outright rejection of antiquity or from a renewed
relation to the ancient. The most recent modernism, as observed by Habermas,
makes an abstract opposition between tradition and present. Modern age is
characterized by the advent of a new style. The emphatically modern
document no longer borrows this power of being a classic from the authority of
a past epoch; instead, a modern work becomes a classic because it has once been
authentically modern. Hence modernism has a secret tie with classicism. “Of course
whatever can survive time has always been considered classic.”
The Discipline of Aesthetic Modernity
In Ezra Pound's words aesthetic
modernity relies upon the quest to 'make it new'. For Habermas, modernism
arises out of 'modernity', the condition of the new which lines the constantly
changing path to the future. To quote Habermas, “Aesthetic modernism is
characterized by attitudes which find common focus in a changed consciousness
of time”, the time consciousness is expressed through metaphors of avant-garde,
which is reflected in their venture to unknown landscape. This time
consciousness of avant-gardes carry the touch of history but they use past in a
very different way by objectifying scholarship of historicism. The creative activities
done by the avant-gardes are nothing but posthisoricist attitude of recreating
past. So the originality was diminishing. For Octavio Paz, “avant-garde of 1967
repeats the deeds and gestures of those of 1917”. The impulse of modernity is
exhausted and yet to die. For Habermas ‘modernism is dominant but dead’. Hence
the modernists became neoconservatist. Daniel Bell's view is that
Western societies are experiencing, in the guise of postmodernism, a split
between culture and society. So concept of preserving modernism is the religious revival. This preserving
is described in the next section.
Cultural Modernity and
Societal Modernization
For cultural modernity and societal modernization, the modernists
became neoconservatist whose doctrine blurs the relation between the welcomed processes
of societal modernization on the one hand, and the lamented cultural
development on the other. But quite contrarily, their ideology gave birth to
all aporias- difficulties, logical impasse and doubt. Societal modernization
has modernized economy and society with capitalist mode of production, while
cultural modernization has created differentiation of cultural value
domains-science, morality and art.
Habermas disproves the old conservatives ‘attempt to escape into the
nostalgia for premodernity to the neo-conservatives’. But they attempt to impart religious faith
through the awakening of substantive reason and young conservationist attempt
to jump into post-modernity, claiming that the solutions to the problems of
modernity can be searched within it. Therefore, there is no reason to find an
escape from it. Habermas accepts
that modernity has its discontents and he also accepts that the division of ‘life-world’
has separated ones ethics, aesthetics and cognition. The communicative
rationality can link these faculties which assumes, language has potential for
the emancipator charge. Instead of one-sided, instrumental reason; based on
domination over others, Habermas’s reason is non-dominating and
non-instrumental. Only such type of communicative rationality can limit the doom
of the modern world. For this,
aesthetic should be given a new role-a role that can help to heal the division
by drawing art near to the everyday praxis.
The Project of
Enlightenment
Modernism, he says, is a goal of Enlightenment, to enrich the ‘life world’ through reason.
The Enlightenment is the
point at which a new role for art was devised. Increased attention to
objective science, universal law and morality and autonomous art would lead the
way towards an improved world. Habermas talks of Max
Weber’s separation of religion and metaphysics into three independent spheres: Science,
morality and art. This division, Habermas says, ultimately gave space to three
dimensions of culture, truth, morality and beauty, knowledge, justice and
taste. Eventually, the project of Enlightenment aimed to develop these three
aspects objective science, universal morality and low and autonomous art. In
addition, it hoped to free these domains from their own mysterious and obscure
traps, and to utilize this specialized culture for the enrichment of everyday
life. But unfortunately, in the twentieth century, this division-science, morality
and art have come to debase the autonomy itself and have created the problem.
So it has attempted to negate the culture.
The false programs of Negation
of Culture
The development of art in the 19th century encountered
aestheticism i.e. art for art’s sake. Consequently, instead of colour, lines,
sounds and movement the media of expression and techniques of production
themselves became the aesthetic object. This process of alienating art and life
continued in the 20th century too. The more art is alienated from life the more
surrealist explosives forced a reconciliation art and life. But, these attempts
to remove the distinction between art and life, artifact and object, appearance
and reality, became spontaneous and nonsense experiments. These attempts, though, have brought
art closer to life, but unfortunately, have strengthened the structures, which
the art is required to dissolve. If art wishes to complete the modernity project
it must refrain from increasingly extravagant attempts. For this the art should be a framework that legitimizes by making it
obscure to the point where the observer sees nothing to be gained. To quote Terry Eagleton, "Art is at once precious and
worthless", and it has a social role that diminishes with increased theoretical
complication. For Habermas the modernity project remains unfulfilled because
art wrongly assumed its existence. It was central to the life of the masses and
its innovation had consequence outside the cultural arena.
Alternatives
Habermas concedes that modernity has thus failed. However he
refuses to abandon the project. Rather he insists on learning from the mistakes
of those extravagant programs, which tried to negate modernity. So, the project
of modernity should be continued to establish a connection between modern
culture and everyday life. He says: the project of modernity has not yet to be fulfilled.
And the reception of art is only one of at least three of its aspects. The
project aims at a differentiated reigning of modern culture with an everyday
praxis that still depends on heritages, but would be impoverished through more
traditionalism.
Thus, Habermas expects to have established this kind of linkage,
but conversely for the near future he does not see very a strong possibility of
such connection.
Good sum up and thank you
ReplyDeleteThanks alot for a comprehensive note..was quite uaeful
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