Thinking — Mimesis — Pre-Imitation: Notes on Art, Philosophy, and Theatre in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory

Abstract

The process of thinking results neither in the production of objective thoughts nor in the kind of spontaneity which Kant considered a hallmark of subjectivity. In his 1965 essay “Notes on Philosophical Thinking” Adorno proposes that thinking is conceivable “only in the reciprocal mediation of subject and object” (129). He argues that thinking is “according to its own form […] bound to what is not itself properly thinking” (129). Thinking is to be understood as a mode of constructing and producing, which involves processes of adoption and assimilation, maybe even permissive reception. It is an activity inscribed by a passivity. In order to understand the nature and development of this relationship between the active and passive moments of thinking, between the subject and object of thought, one must consider the dialectical relationship between rationality and mimesis, which lies at the heart of Adorno’s philosophy and aesthetic theory. As Adorno states, thinking mimetically needs to “snuggle up to an object, even when it does not yet have such an object” and in this process “the ego models itself on the nonego” (129). Noticeably, Adorno invokes images of the corporeal in order to describe thinking as a form of behaviour and he employs metaphors of the body which imply movement and motion. It therefore does not come as a surprise when Adorno argues that the relationship between the process of thinking and the objectification of thought is “not unlike socalled artistic inspiration” (130).