Latency – On the genesis of the aesthetic as a historical category
Latency is a tentative concept: that which is conceived in it imposes itself before it is conceived. It is obvious that aesthetics plays a role in this: its historical source value lies in uncovering latencies, the latent that changes in history. As a relay of the futures that are acute but unrealized in everything and everyone that is said, the truth of art and literature does not lie in indeterminacy or infinity, but is subject to a historical economy of latentness. Not everything is possible, latent is not virtual.
“The writer: he always says more and less than he thinks. […] What he finally writes corresponds to no real thought.” (Valéry, Tel Quel).
Clov “There are so many terrible things”. Hamm “No, no, there aren’t so many anymore.” (Beckett, Endgame – Adorno, Attempt to Understand the Endgame)
