Perturbing the Reader: The Riddle-character of Art and the Dialectical Impact of Contemporary Literature (Adorno, Goetz, Kracht)

Abstract

In his criticism of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, Hans Robert Jauß argues that Adorno widely neglects the constitutive role of reception in art, particularly forms of interaction like enjoying, identification, or catharsis (Jauß 1982: 64–65). If he is right, every attempt to analyze Adornos Aesthetic Theory via strategies that evoke certain effects would be in vain. As a matter of fact, Adorno himself expresses reservation about the effort to understand artworks by their effects. He defines the logic of the artwork as “determined objectively in themselves without regard to their reception”1 (Adorno 2013: 188). By this statement Adorno might think of a research tradition, which investigates individual reactions towards the experience of art. In contrast to these empirical studies, from which Adorno wants to distance himself, another research area, namely an abstract one, considers effects of reception as linked to the textual structures. Of course, it takes an act of reading to actualize those structures, but from the perspective of thinkers such as Wolfgang Iser or Umberto Eco, effects cannot be engendered without considering them as implicit models and intentional aims of the artwork. On the basis of this research line, this essay looks at whether and how it is possible to approach one of the most important aspects of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory: the riddle-character of art.Without doubt the term implies an activating mode for those trying to solve the riddle. Regarding the different ways of interaction in the process of riddling, I am going to answer the two following questions. First, how does Adorno conceptualize the riddle-character of art, and in which ways does it relate to concepts of interpretation, sense, and truth? Furthermore, which role does the riddle-character play in the reconciliation, which is according to Adorno the great achievement of art in society? Second, on the basis of the novels Irre, by Rainald Goetz (1983), and Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten, by Christian Kracht (2008), I am going to review whether the riddlecharacter, as Adorno understands it, actually describes all kinds of modern literature – particularly developments in contemporary literature, which strongly works in a dialectic mode of involvement and disruption. By answering these questions, I want to highlight another aspect of modern literature; namely,