The rationality of art grows as society’s irrationality grows

Evidence

Like technology, art creates another universe of thought and practice against and within the existing one. But in contrast to the technical universe, the artistic universe is one of illusion, semblance, Schein. However, this semblance is resemblance to a reality which exists as the threat and promise of the established one. In various forms of mask and silence, the artistic universe is organized by the images of a life without fear—in mask and silence because art is without power to bring about this life, and even without power to represent it adequately. Still, the powerless, illusory truth of art (which has never been more powerless and more illusory than today, when it has become an omnipresent ingredient of the administered society) testifies to the validity of its images. The more blatantly irrational the society becomes, the greater the rationality of the artistic universe. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 832

Categorization

• XREF: Direct bridge to the attention economy: art as an omnipresent ingredient of the administered society is exactly Marcuse’s version of the culture-industry thesis the reader is tracking for the critical-theory/attention project. — connects to: Modernist writers and artists modeled creative work on machine rationality. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 240; Technological rationality has grown stronger while society grows more irrational — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 47; Technical progress makes art’s alienation from society irreversible. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 304 (+3 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that art’s truth is powerless yet validates its images, and that its rationality scales inversely with social irrationality, is dense enough to sit with for days.

Broader Connections

• The demand for transparent, topical art compounds the reductions of calculative reason. #corroborates (0.78) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 39