TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHETIC, MADE REAL A ...

knowable “as a combination of atoms of writing”: “It is not possible to conceive of a
starker opposite to the artistic symbol, the plastic symbol, the image of organic totality,
than this amorphous fragment which is seen in the form of allegorical script” (OGT 176).
In its function as the interpretation of that symbol, allegory stands as its unfinishable
interruption, interpretation, and explanation.
In thinking about what it is that constitutes the substance of allegorical content,
instead of the implications of its mode of expression upon the reality that it cites, it is
possible to see how this way of thinking about allegory makes a new contribution to
Critical Theory in distinction from past critical encounters with Benjamin and Adorno‟s
work that focuses on teasing out its application within traditional hermeneutic practices
and theories. Benjamin and Adorno‟s theories about allegory have had a wider
institutional application, pace Eagleton‟s swimming signifiers, than they would have felt
justified in giving warrant. Understanding how Adorno adapts Benjamin‟s understanding
of natural history is of some consequence if we are to know better how Benjamin‟s sense
of taboo allowed him to theorize a distinctly modern form of allegorical expression and
for how Adorno both borrows from and changes that theory.
The natural history of Adorno
It is Benjamin‘s understanding of natural history, one that makes the king the
sporting object of natural vicissitudes that Adorno forgets. Adorno, while retaining some
of Benjamin‘s broader claims concerning the actual historical essence of the monad in its
putatively ideal manifestations, uses natural history somewhat capriciously, given
Benjamin‘s attention to the historical and aesthetic changes that undergirded the advent
of the trauerspiel. Adorno‘s purpose was quite apposite to Benjamin‘s, afterall; he
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