The hopeful optimism of critical thought never ceases to amaze me. Take Horkheimer’s “Art and Mass Culture,” for example.[1] In view of fascism in Europe, monstrous and yet temporary by conjecture, he sees everything in plain daylight, but nevertheless chooses to reserve a certain degree of ignorance, and thence hope. The strong evidence already amassed to demonstrate the divergence between art and mass culture is explained away, and their ultimate convergence is first assumed and then postponed indefinitely:

Dewey says that art is “the most universal and freest form of communication.”[2] But the gulf between art and communication is perforce wide in a world in which accepted language only intensifies the confusion, in which the dictators speak: the more gigantic lies the more deeply they appeal to the heart of the masses. “Art breaks through barriers […] that are impermeable in ordinary association.”[3] These barriers consist precisely in the accepted forms of thought, in the show of unreserved adjustment, in the language of propaganda and marketable literature. Europe has reached the point where all the highly developed means of communication serve constantly to strengthen the barriers “that divide human beings”[4]; in this, radio and cinema in no way yield the palm to airplane and gun. Men as they are today understand each other. If they were to cease to understand either themselves or others, if the forms of their communication were to become suspect to them, and the natural unnatural, then at least the terrifying dynamic would come to a standstill. To the extent that the last works of art still communicate, they denounce the prevailing forms of communication as instruments of destruction, and harmony as a delusion of decay.[5]

Returning to Dewey in the closing paragraph, Horkheimer writes:

In a beautiful passage of his book, Dewey explains that communication is the consequence and not the intention of the artistic work. “Indifference to response of the immediate audience is a necessary trait of all artists that have something new to say.”[6] Today even the imaginary future has become questionable, because, once again, man without humanity is as solitary and abandoned as humanity within the infinite universe. But the artists, continues Dewey, “are animated by a deep conviction that since they can only say what they have to say, the trouble is not with their work but those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not.”[7] The only hope remaining is that the deaf ears in Europe imply an opposition to the lies that are being hammered at men from all sides and that men are following their leaders blindly with their eyes tight shut. One day we may learn that in the depths of their hearts, the masses, even in fascist countries, secretly knew the truth and disbelieved the lie, like catatonic patients who make known only at the end of their trance that nothing has escaped them. Therefore it may not be entirely senseless to continue speaking a language that is not easily understood.[8]

Yes, let us hope for the sake of hope. But there are at least two avenues for thought that ought to be explored in the meanwhile. First, by what means will the spell be broken, and what is the rôle of art, as opposed to mass culture, in breaking the spell? In other words, what is the basis of the inescapable hope, if it is not to become self-sufficient? And second, what if the time has run out, and the artists unconcerned with communication will in fact never have a chance of communicating with the masses, for there will be neither the artists and their dormant works, nor the masses—their being suspect of all communication notwithstanding? What if the postponed present has no future whatsoever?

Once the question has been posed in this, brutal, fashion, it becomes obvious that art will either remain decorative, as the masses will remain in their catatonic trance forever, regardless of the interpretation imposed upon the accursed “forever,” or it will become engaged in order to secure, for some future generations, the very possibility of divergence and the consequent postponement of communication. Can this paragraph be closed with a victorious exclamation, so typical of impotent reason, to the effect that tertium non datur? Hopefully not! And that pathetic conclusion offers an upper bound on our hope, present and future, in a world that is so dangerously close to self-extinction. In this, to paraphrase Horkheimer, television in no way yields the palm to intercontinental ballistic missile and its multiple nuclear warheads. Only to that extent can we agree with Horkheimer, who, for better or worse, lived in a comparatively benign and innocent world of mere fascism.

Footnotes

1. Horkheimer, M., Critical Theory: Selected Essays, New York: Seabury Press, 1972 (?) (first published in 1968 (?)), pp. 273-290.

2. Dewey, J., Art as Experience, New York, 1934, p. 270.

3. Op. cit., p. 244.

4. Loc. cit.

5. Horkheimer, op. cit., p. 279.

6. Dewey, op. cit., p. 104.

7. Loc. cit.

8. Horkheimer, op. cit., p. 290.