4. Adorno, Brecht e la politica dell’arte

The paper proposes a critical interpretation of the Adorno’s and Brecht’s conceptions of engagement and politics of literature. The two notions are in contrast with each other but both could be considered representative of the two predominant polarized positions within the aesthetics debate of the last century. Adorno founds the political nature of literature on autonomy and liberation of the form. According to him the political nature of art springs from the refusal of the discourse, from the aggressive removal of meaning, from the exhibition of the negative. His conception of engagement in the arts is elitist and it subordinates the artistic to the philosophical discourse. Brecht founded the politics of literature on the awareness that experience is filtered by the media. It can be revolutionary only the author who reflects on the media bias of artistic production and creates works that are not expression of a subjective perspective but tools for transforming the function of the devices and of the institutions in which they act.