Aesthetics and Reading

As I indicated in the last chapter, Foucault develops the Heideggerian notion that equipmental or technological reason constitutes the subject, but he interprets this technology in historical terms, according to which diverse genealogies of the subject undermine instrumental reason or the ontotheological tradition. Despite many differences, Adorno, Heidegger, and Derrida claim, by contrast, that the subversive negativity of writing or art, not governmental technologies, overcomes the oppressive influence of equipmental or instrumental reason. In other words, the Heideggerian work of Adorno, Derrida, and Foucault generates an antinomy in which aesthetic critique opposes positive social or historical genealogies of the subject. In this chapter, I will argue that a Foucauldian aesthetics can escape the antinomy, preserving the aesthetic negativity of Heideggerian aesthetics, especially its ability to affirm and undermine a text’s interpretations, as well as the sociohistorical regimes, communities, or reading formations governing the practices of readers. First I will show, however, that this antinomy pervades Heideggerian cultural theory, which includes the reception aesthetics of Wolfgang Iser and Hans Robert Jauss, the neopragmatism of Stanley Fish and Steven Mailloux, the Foucauldian historicism of Pierre Macherey and Jacques Ranciere, and the post-Marxism of Tony Bennett and John Frow.