Odysseus’ bound listening to the Sirens models how art becomes merely contemplative under domination

Evidence

The other possibility Odysseus, the seigneur who allows the others to labor for themselves, reserves to himself. He listens, but while bound impotently to the mast; the greater the temptation the more he has his bonds tightenedjust as later the burghers would deny themselves happiness all the more doggedly as it drew closer to them with the growth of their own power. What Odysseus hears is without consequence for him; he is able only to nod his head as a sign to be set free from his bonds; but it is too late; his men, who do not listen, know only the song’s danger but nothing of its beauty, and leave him at the mast in order to save him and themselves. They reproduce the oppressor’s life together with their own, and the oppressor is no longer able to escape his social role. The bonds with which he has irremediably tied himself to practice, also keep the Sirens away from practice: their temptation is neutralized and becomes a mere object of contemplationbecomes art. The prisoner is present at a concert, an inactive eavesdropper like later concertgoers, and his spirited call for liberation fades like applause. Thus the enjoyment of art and manual labor break apart as the world of prehistory is left behind … The cultural material is in exact correlation to work done according to command: and both are grounded in the inescapable compulsion to social domination of nature. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1409

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the Dialectic of Enlightenment’s core diagnosis: art as neutralized temptation, the split between contemplative enjoyment and commanded labor, grounded in domination of nature.
• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School’s aesthetic theory — art’s autonomy as compensation for unfreedom — developed in Adorno’s later aesthetic writings; also evokes Weber’s Entzauberung of labor. — connects to: Art’s autonomy internalizes the very social domination it claims to escape — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 296; The Sirens episode allegorizes art’s promise of happiness under self-preservation’s rule — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 17
• ADDENDUM: Art as neutralized, contemplation-only relation to the forbidden bears on the ‘Grafting & Growth’ discussion of how mythic/natural forces get safely domesticated — here the Sirens are tamed into aesthetic objects, a parallel domestication of the wild.

Broader Connections

• The Sirens episode allegorizes art’s promise of happiness under self-preservation’s rule #expands (0.95) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 17
• Art’s autonomy internalizes the very social domination it claims to escape #expands (0.90) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 296