The Sovereignty of Art

Adorno’s and Derrida’s theories of aesthetics center around art’s claim to sovereignty: art transcends the differentiated construct of modern reason by being a moment simultaneously next to and among others. The newer hermeneutic aesthetics in particular have seen the betrayal of art’s autonomy and its equation with a superior insight into the constitution of reason in the proclamation of aesthetic sovereignty because of that.

In a chain of reasoning in which Derrida’s deconstruction and Adorno’s aesthetics of negativity criticise and enlighten one another, a concept of aesthetic experience that meets the hermeneutic objection is developed, in which the central idea is that art, through its negativity, poses a threat to our non-aesthetic discourses that cannot be overcome by reason.