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Totality**

Totality** Totality* CARL EINSTEIN Translated by Charles W. Haxthausen Introduced by Sebastian Zeidler Published in three installments in Die Aktion, a freewheeling left-wing journal edited by his brother-in-law Franz Pfemfert, Carl Einstein’s “Totality” essay is one of the most hermetic texts from a century that had no shortage of them. Part of its hermeticism is owed to the fact that it is at once fiercely nondiscursive and intensely referential. The essay’s argument is apodictic; it does not name names, and yet it is deeply engaged in contemporary philosophical debates in order to make its case, a case for visual art as a totality that would work to disrupt models of subjectivity, which hinge on a subject’s experience of art as visual knowledge. To make matters more complicated, “Totality” is animated by a deep tension that is ultimately not resolved but rather internalizes the very qualitative difference which, according to the text, is the enabling condition of any totality—including “Totality” itself. This tension is generated by a clash between two heterogeneous intellectual resources: a number of aggressively transcendental neo-Kantian philosophemes on one hand, a Bergsonian vitalism of immanence on the other. The neo-Kantian part of the argument, most noticeable in http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png October MIT Press

Totality**

Einstein, Carl; Haxthausen, Charles W.; Zeidler, Sebastian
October , Volume Winter 2004 (107) – Jan 1, 2004
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References (19)

Publisher
MIT Press
Copyright
© 2004 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ISSN
0162-2870
eISSN
1536-013X
DOI
10.1162/016228704322790926
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Totality* CARL EINSTEIN Translated by Charles W. Haxthausen Introduced by Sebastian Zeidler Published in three installments in Die Aktion, a freewheeling left-wing journal edited by his brother-in-law Franz Pfemfert, Carl Einstein’s “Totality” essay is one of the most hermetic texts from a century that had no shortage of them. Part of its hermeticism is owed to the fact that it is at once fiercely nondiscursive and intensely referential. The essay’s argument is apodictic; it does not name names, and yet it is deeply engaged in contemporary philosophical debates in order to make its case, a case for visual art as a totality that would work to disrupt models of subjectivity, which hinge on a subject’s experience of art as visual knowledge. To make matters more complicated, “Totality” is animated by a deep tension that is ultimately not resolved but rather internalizes the very qualitative difference which, according to the text, is the enabling condition of any totality—including “Totality” itself. This tension is generated by a clash between two heterogeneous intellectual resources: a number of aggressively transcendental neo-Kantian philosophemes on one hand, a Bergsonian vitalism of immanence on the other. The neo-Kantian part of the argument, most noticeable in

Journal

October – MIT Press

Published: Jan 1, 2004

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