File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0303, message 61


Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2003 08:28:26 -0800 (PST)
From: Jason Stuart <jts0803odon-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Topic


--0-1249860491-1047140906=:97579


 
 Paul Murphy <Villanova-AT-btopenworld.com> wrote:I think most people understand that form and content function in relation to each other.  Therefore, the skill of a 'well made poem' is in its formal constructs being in tandem with content.  Critics of this approach might argue that form seamlessly disguises the elaborate ideological project beneath, 'beneath' being a guiding trope, since form allows disguise, multi-dimensionality, subtlety - and these are prevailing aesthetic categories, as opposed to signposting, directness etc.  Look at Brecht or the other experimental movements of the post WW1 period for ways in which classical formal approaches were challanged.  In essence,  a film/play/poem with progressive content and traditional form was essentially conservative, hence Socialist Realism.  Contrast it with surrealism and the plethora of tiny movements in that period, and the sudden death or retreat of the avante garde after this period, or its progressive isolation and marginalisation in favour of an aesthetic of 'convention', 'entertainment'. I'm not sure what avant-garde movements you're referring to--it's my understanding that the Modernists formulated their formalist aesthetics as conservative ideological gestures while at the same time appropriating many avant-garde works within that aesthetic.  From the early, Italian vociani to the later, American Agrarian movement, we see an avant-garde art championed by critical viewpoints constructed (at least in part) as defensive measures against deterministic or "extrinsic" criticism, particularly Socialism.  Form may, in fact, hide or announce an ideological approach--you only need to look to Kipling for proof of that--but I think its really the application of formalism that contemporary theorists struggle with.   Even with the renewed interest in Modernism, I still think many academics would be bothered by an easy binary relationship like "form/content."  Nevertheless, and to return the conversation back to H., aren't these notions, for him, concepts of "use" that do little to define "art" in itself? JS


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 "...even if he recopied them later, as I suspect he sometimes did, he marked his card or cards not with the date of his final adjustments, but with that of his Corrected Draft or first Fair Copy. I mean, he preserved the date of actual creation rather than that of second or third thoughts. There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings."



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 Paul Murphy <Villanova-AT-btopenworld.com> wrote:

I think most people understand that form and content function in relation to each other.  Therefore, the skill of a 'well made poem' is in its formal constructs being in tandem with content.  Critics of this approach might argue that form seamlessly disguises the elaborate ideological project beneath, 'beneath' being a guiding trope, since form allows disguise, multi-dimensionality, subtlety - and these are prevailing aesthetic categories, as opposed to signposting, directness etc.  Look at Brecht or the other experimental movements of the post WW1 period for ways in which classical formal approaches were challanged.  In essence,  a film/play/poem with progressive content and traditional form was essentially conservative, hence Socialist Realism.  Contrast it with surrealism and the plethora of tiny movements in that period, and the sudden death or retreat of the avante garde after this period, or its progressive isolation and marginalisation in favour of an aesthetic of 'convention', 'entertainment'.
 
I'm not sure what avant-garde movements you're referring to--it's my understanding that the Modernists formulated their formalist aesthetics as conservative ideological gestures while at the same time appropriating many avant-garde works within that aesthetic.  From the early, Italian vociani to the later, American Agrarian movement, we see an avant-garde art championed by critical viewpoints constructed (at least in part) as defensive measures against deterministic or "extrinsic" criticism, particularly Socialism.  Form may, in fact, hide or announce an ideological approach--you only need to look to Kipling for proof of that--but I think its really the application of formalism that contemporary theorists struggle with. 
 
Even with the renewed interest in Modernism, I still think many academics would be bothered by an easy binary relationship like "form/content."  Nevertheless, and to return the conversation back to H., aren't these notions, for him, concepts of "use" that do little to define "art" in itself?
 
JS


!-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------!

 "...even if he recopied them later, as I suspect he sometimes did, he marked his card or cards not with the date of his final adjustments, but with that of his Corrected Draft or first Fair Copy. I mean, he preserved the date of actual creation rather than that of second or third thoughts. There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings."



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