Art Between Fetishism and Melancholy in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory

Abstract

The article explores Adorno’s understanding of fetishism and melancholy as immanent to the artwork’s autonomous structure. In order to understand the relation between them, the Freudian understanding of fetishism and melancholy has to be considered along with the more explicit reference to the Marxist concept of commodity fetishism. Analysing the implications of Adorno’s claim that commodity fetishism is at the origin of artistic autonomy, the article shows how it should be understood not only as a materialist demystification, but also as a reaffirmation of art’s apparent self-sufficiency and its capacity to resist the commodification of society. Nevertheless —the article claims— this is only possible if art’s fetishism is dialectically opposed to its melancholy, through which art establishes a relation to the heterogeneous element of the lost object produced by its autonomous form.