The Sirens episode allegorizes how art becomes separated from labor under domination.

Evidence

Book XII of the Odyssey tells of the encounter with the Sirens. Their allurement is that of losing oneself in the past. But the hero to whom the temptation is offered has reached maturity through suffering. Throughout the many mortal perils he has had to endure, the unity of his own life, the identity of the individual, has been confirmed for him. The regions of time part for him as do water, earth, and air. For him, the flood of that-which-was has retreated from the rock of the present, and the future lies cloudy on the horizon. What Odysseus left behind him entered into the nether world; for the self is still so close to prehistoric myth, from whose womb it tore itself, that its very own experienced past becomes mythic prehistory. And it seeks to encounter that myth through the fixed order of time. The threefold schema is intended to free the present moment from the power of the past by referring that power behind the absolute barrier of the unrepeatable and placing it at the disposal of the present as practicable knowledge. The compulsion to rescue what is gone as what is living instead of using it as the material of progress was appeased only in art, to which history itself appertains as a presentation of past life. So long as art declines to pass as cognition and is thus separated from practice, social practice tolerates it as it tolerates pleasure. … But the allurement of the Sirens remains superior; no one who hears their song can escape. Men had to do fearful things to themselves before the self, the identical, purposive, and virile nature of man, was formed, and something of that recurs in every childhood. The strain of holding the I together adheres to the I in all stages; and the temptation to lose it has always been there with the blind determination to maintain it. … He knows only two possible ways to escape. One of them he prescribes for his men. He plugs their ears with wax, and they must row with all their strength. Whoever would survive must not hear the temptation of that which is unrepeatable, and he is able to survive only by being unable to hear it. Society has always made provision for that. The laborers must be fresh and concentrate as they look ahead, and must ignore whatever lies to one side. They must doggedly sublimate in additional effort the drive that impels to diversion. And so they become practical.—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 tightened—just 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 contemplation—becomes 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. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 48

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The entire Odysseus/Sirens reading is a dense allegorical apparatus: patriarchal time, the self forging itself through labor and denial, art as neutralized contemplation, laborer vs. seigneur. Dense and paradigm-shifting in how one reads myth.
• DEFINE: Lays out the foundational critical-theory move of reading myth as proto-dialectical allegory of Enlightenment and domination.
• XREF: Directly connects to the ‘culture industry’ chapter’s thesis that mass art pacifies audiences; this is the seed of that argument. — connects to: The Sirens episode allegorizes art’s promise of happiness under self-preservation’s rule — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 17
• ADDENDUM: The claim that ‘enjoyment of art and manual labor break apart’ and art becomes ‘mere object of contemplation’ parallels how trees-as-infrastructure treats nature/environment as separate contemplative object from labor.

Broader Connections

• The Sirens episode allegorizes art’s promise of happiness under self-preservation’s rule #expands (0.92) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 17