Art after Auschwitz: Responding to an Infinite Demand

Jul 6, 2026

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This paper examines German artist Gustav Metzger’s works as a response to Theodor W. Adorno’s dictum on writing poetry after Auschwitz. It argues that culture in the Adornian sense is inseparably barbaric simply by existing after Auschwitz, because ethics and justice arrive infinitely deferred. The study links Metzger’s aesthetic practices to a “new categorical imperative,” treating art and writing as ruptures that confront complicity rather than yielding a barbarism-free escape.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages31

Reading Time48 min

Adorno’s Claims Revised

Writing Poetry after Auschwitz

Various Facets of Barbarism

AUTHOR’S VERSION PLEASE CITE THE PUBLISHED VERSION Nosthoff, A-V. (2014)“Art after Auschwitz – Responding to an Infinite Demand. Gustav Metzger's Works as Responses to Theodor W. Adorno's “New Categorical Imperative”, Cultural Politics 10(3) , pp. 300–319. [http://culturalpolitics.dukejournals.org/content/10/3/300.full](http://culturalpolitics.dukejournals.org/content/10/3/300.full) Title Art after Auschwitz: Responding to an Infinite Demand: Gustav Metzger’s Works as Responses to Theodor W. Adorno’s “New Categorical Imperative” Abstract This paper explores the works of German artist Gustav Metzger as a potential response to Theodor W. Adorno’s dictum . It argues that culture, as understood in the Adornian sense, is inextricably barbaric as a result of simply being after Auschwitz . Culture must acknowledge the finitude in its own ability to live up to an ethical demand in response to justice, whose arrival is infinitely deferred. In spite of this, culture and art, in particular, must not refrain from the very act of writing. Metzger’s works are discussed as aesthetic responses to the “new categorical imperative” of Adorno , who addresses art ’s failure in light of Auschwitz by pointing to aporias that constitute the inescapable condition of “barbarism .” This paper suggests that Metzger’s aesthetic articulations are non-barbaric ruptures in that they challenge our living on irresponsibly within the condition of barbarism via a constant confrontation with complicity. Keywords Theodor W. Adorno, Gustav Metzger, negative dialectics, art after Auschwitz, ethics “Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism . To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric . And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today.” —Theodor W. Adorno, Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft (Cultural Criticism and Society , 1949) “I do not want to soften my statement that it is barbaric to continue to write poetry after Auschwitz . . . . The abundance of real suffering permits no forgetting; Pascal’s theological ‘On ne doit plus dormir’ [‘Sleeping is no longer permitted’] should be secularized. But that suffering—what Hegel called the awareness of affliction—also demands the continued existence of the very art it forbids; hardly anywhere else does suffering still find its own voice, a consolation that does not immediately betray it.” —Theodor W. Adorno , Commitment (1962) Adorno’s Claims Revised Writing Poetry after Auschwitz Theodor Adorno’s frequently cited dictum,“Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben ist barbarisch”(“Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”) and its subsequent reformulations have been misunderstood and misrepresented from their first appearance in Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft (1949) .1 Too often, these reformulations have been considered a verdict to silence writers or poets in the name of “that which happened,” as articulated by Primo Levi, who attempted to use words to express the unnamable. While it is generally agreed that Adorno’s saying did not call for the “end of art” but pointed to an aporetic situation in which being itself is determined, this paper rereads Adorno’s statement with a focus on the various facets that inform his usage of barbaric. The paper argues that decoding the miscellaneous resonances of barbaric implicit in his writings can shed light on the intricacy of the difficulties that these resonances add to responding to Auschwitz, specifically to its constitutive barbaric impulse, which continues to resonate in late modernity. The upshot of examining the manifold frames of reference that haunt Adorno’s usage of barbaric is that his broader concept of “barbarism” rests upon a fundamental ambiguity. Adorno understands culture to be inextricably barbaric as a result of simply being after Auschwitz—it is part of a barbaric “whole.” This ontologically aporetic condition forces art to ackn

FAQs

What central argument does the paper make about Gustav Metzger’s art after Auschwitz?

The paper treats Metzger’s works as a potentially “adequate praxis” that responds to Adorno’s imperative by making forms of barbarism visible through confrontation.

How does the paper interpret Adorno’s idea that writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric?

It reframes the dictum as describing an aporetic condition: culture’s post-Auschwitz existence is ethically strained because justice and ethical fulfillment are infinitely deferred.

Why does the paper say culture and art must not refrain from writing?

Because writing is presented as an escape route from the inescapable condition of barbarism, especially when understood through Adorno’s “new categorical imperative.”

Jul 6, 2026

Upload by Riley