ABSTRACT
Blanchot’s “Ars Nova” thus presents an opportunity to examine how Blanchot transforms Adorno from one of his potential challengers to an imaginary comrade in arms. An analysis of Blanchot’s essay discloses the strategies he employs to blur their differences and present him as an ally for his own thinking. In the course of this process, Blanchot formulates his own vision of the “new music.” Adorno and Blanchot contributed in important ways to discussions about the nature and intensity of the rupture of tradition that occurs in modernist art. Blanchot associates culture with civilization’s impulse to give answers, build systems, and create order. Culture is what shields us from the authenticity of chaos and uncertainty. Genuine art has the power to counteract this falsity. The deception exerted by culture is, for Blanchot, largely independent of its concrete historical and social manifestations.
