189thing emerges that normally is not visible: “By determinate negation artworks ab-
sorb the membra disjectaof the empirical world and through their transformation or-
ganize them into a reality that is a counterreality, a monstrosity.”^83
Following a similar rationale, Adorno argues that in modern art, dissonance
takes the place of the harmonious model: only dissonance can give an adequate pic-
ture of a reality that is the opposite of harmonious; in fact, it is only by means of a dis-
sonant form that one is able to evoke the memory of the genuinely harmonious.The attraction of the charming can only survive where the powers of re-
fusal are the strongest: in the dissonance that refuses to believe in the
deception of the existing harmony....... While formerly ascesis sup-
pressed the aesthetic appeal to desire in a reactionary way, today the
same ascesis has become the characteristic of progressive art....... It is
in this negative fashion that art refers to the possibility of happiness, a
possibility that through a purely partial positive anticipation at present
is frustrated in a pernicious fashion.^84Art indeed refers to the harmonious—Adorno maintains that in one way or another
art is also a promesse du bonheur^85 —but it can only point to it effectively by means
of a mimesis of its opposite. This is what Adorno means when he states that disso-
nance is “the truth about harmony.”^86The Dual Character of Art
In Adorno’s view, art has a double character: on the one hand, it is fait social and so-
cially determined; on the other, it is autonomous, and obedient only to its own styling
principles. Art is fait socialbecause it is the product of a form of societal labor. Art is
socially determined not because of any direct influence of the societal structure of
production forces and production relations, nor because of any social commitment
in the themes that it deals with. In Adorno’s view, the social factor is present in art
because history is sedimented in the “material” used by the artist. Adorno uses the
word “material” in a very broad sense: it includes both the concrete materials used
to make the work, and also the techniques at the artist’s disposal, his arsenal of im-
ages and memories, the influence of the context on the work, and so on. This mate-
rial is undeniably socially formed and this social aspect therefore permeates the work
as a whole.
Works of art are also autonomous, however: the artistic process, the mimetic-
rational way of giving shape to this material, is an entirely autonomous affair. The au-
tonomous character of art, according to Adorno, does not prohibit its critical content.
Indeed, the artistic discipline largely owesits critical potential to its autonomous
character. First-rate works of art are always critical; each of them in its own fashion
exposes by means of mimesis an aspect of reality which would remain concealed188