Style promises to reconcile individual expression with a shared universal idiom.

Evidence

“In every work of art, style is a promise. In being absorbed through style into the dominant form of universality, into the current musical, pictorial, or verbal idiom, what is expressed seeks to be reconciled with the idea of the true universal. This promise of the work of art to create truth by impressing its unique contours on the socially transmitted forms is as necessary as it is hypocritical.” Ibid., 103. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 392

Categorization

• XREF: This Adorno framing of style’s ‘necessary hypocrisy’ is the philosophical warrant for Kornbluh’s defense of mediation — form is how art becomes universality while staying particular. — connects to: Style lets particular individuals imprint what they express onto the universal — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 591; Style ideals of clarity now serve the commodity logic of fast reading. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 18; Making artifacts is the fundamental archetype underlying all lyric expression
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that style is ‘as necessary as it is hypocritical’ undergirds the whole defense of mediation: honesty lies in owning form, not pretending to be without it.