Die Autonomie der Literatur auf dem Prüfstand. Bourdieus feldtheoretischer Ansatz als Alternative zu soziologistischen Kurzschlüssen

The article responds to the postulate repeatedly articulated in recent years that the basic assumptions of autonomy aesthetics should be replaced with a »heteronomy aesthetics of modernity« (Marcus Hahn), which is supposedly more adequate to the conditions and practices of the latter and which is also sociologically or anthropologically founded. First, we present the central theories, hypotheses and reference texts (Annette Werberger, Fredric Jameson and especially Bruno Latour) claimed by the proponents of this endeavour (Hahn, Irene Albers and Frederic Ponten), which themselves do not engage in a deeper examination of the aesthetics of autonomy. Then, we contrast these theories with two established approaches to the critical sociologisation of aesthetic autonomy (Peter Bürger and Pierre Bourdieu). The analytical comparison of Bürger’s and Bourdieu’s theoretical designs reveals, on the one hand, significant differences and, on the other hand, reflects the fact that the German criticism of Bourdieu (Hans-Edwin Friedrich, Karlheinz Stierle, Gerhard Plumpe/Nils Werber), which is often based on systems theory, wrongly associates his theory with that of Bürger. Since the differences between Bürger and Bourdieu are reflected in their respective readings of Immanuel Kant, we will reconstruct the latter’s concept of ›disinterested pleasure‹. Bourdieu’s objectifying and relational reception of Kant is different from Bürger’s, which is more concerned with an ideology-critical unmasking and depotentiation. The resulting consideration of the discursive and social conditions of possibility for aesthetic autonomy not only reveals the reductionist understanding by Hahn et al. but also the fact that Bourdieu’s theoretical design already provides a much more differentiated set of analytical tools for the »consistently historically proceeding, unadjusted history of entanglement, function and practice« (Albers/Hahn/Ponten 2022, 13) of literature and aesthetics demanded by Albers, Hahn and Ponten as a »methodological redeployment«. From the perspective of field theory, the patterning of Friedrich Schiller’s theory of ›aesthetic education‹ demonstrates the generalizing fallacy that has already undermined older schools of ideology criticism (Hocks/Schmidt, Janz), to which Albers, Hahn and Ponten now nonetheless explicitly and affirmatively refer: On the one hand, they ignore the analytical differentiation between the object level and the meta-level, i. e. between the self-statements of the actors as ›stakes‹ (by which Bourdieu understands literary works that, according to him, are positional statements) and the scientific objectification of these statements. On the other hand, they ignore the related distinction between positionings on a symbolic and positions on a social level, i. e. in the present context between the assertion of autonomy and the corresponding social position, in short: between what authors say and what they ›are‹ or do. According to Bourdieu, such symbolic positionings and social positions are only mediated by a »homology between the two structures« that is by no means static, but must be specified for each historical situation. In this respect, the polemically derived project of a »heteronomy aesthetics of modernity« proves to be epistemologically one-sided and ill-conceived, especially as it ultimately does not correspond to Latour’s undertaking of a symmetrical anthropology, to which it affirmatively refers. It should be replaced by a differentiated theory formation that takes into account both the historical circumstances and the state of theoretical discussion, without having to abandon postulating a consistent sociologisation and historicisation of the aesthetics of autonomy.