CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALECTIC IN ADORNO A ...

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(1*) Negation of the verb: ‘I do not wish to be one with nature; I hate nature.’ The negated wish then undergoes projection and gives way to: ‘I do not wish to be one with nature; I hate nature because it [or its representatives] persecute me.’ Now, ‘nature’ and its primacy over behavior is visible in groups that retain traces of nature; that is, groups that recall ‘nature’ because they are not smoothly and completely assimilated into mainstream society and its male, nationalist, and racial normative self- understanding, like the Jews, the unassimilated immigrant, and women. The delusion of persecution explained in (1*) gives way to delusions of evil deeds on the part of these groups. This is how the mechanism of projection paves the way for fascist organized violence, and it is why Adorno and Horkheimer claim that any group who represents untamed nature can become the victim of fascist aggression. 203 It is in this manner that anderem Leben aufzuheben, die Scheu vor Tod und Destruktion, ist einem Glücksversprechen verschwistert, von dem in jedem Augenblick die Zivilisation bedroht war (Dialektik der Aufklärung, 56-7).. English translation by Edmund Jephcott in Dialectic of Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 26: Humanity had to inflict terrible injuries on itself before the self—the identical, purpose-directed, masculine character of human beings—was created, and something of this process is repeated in every childhood. The effort to hold itself together attends the ego at all its stages, and the temptation to be rid of the ego has always gone hand-in-hand with the blind determination to preserve it. … The fear of losing the self, and suspending with it the boundary between oneself and other life, the aversion to death and destruction, is twinned with a promise of joy which has threatened civilization at every moment” (26). To resist this threat is to resist the song of the sirens, to resist the infantile wish to return to nature and its promise of pleasure. And yet, as the frustrations brought on by civilization become ever stronger, as human beings are left with no compensation for the suffering inflicted by the process of civilization, the lure of nature becomes ever stronger and requires every greater forms of repression. 203 This element (the delusions of persecution and evil deeds from groups identified with nature) is of course not the whole explanation for fascism, but it is one of the main components. Additionally, the libidinal energy in the self needs to be garnered for the destruction of nature, a process by which the energy-reservoir of inner nature in the self expends itself for the destruction of nature within and any 218
Adorno and Horkheimer see the Shoah as stemming from the repression of nature. This first application of projection thus explains their idea that projection is a central mechanism at work in fascist excesses of violence and persecution against the Jews and other minorities that are similar in that their alleged incomplete assimilation to civilization elicits the remembrance of nature. 204 (2*) Negation of the object: ‘I do not wish to be one with nature; I wish to be one with its opposite, which in this case is mind.’ The negated wish expunges inner nature from the subject; it says ‘I am only mind.’ By application of projection, this negation of the wish becomes ‘All reality is mind.’ This second example of projection corresponds to the problem of knowledge that I discussed above as the loss of external reality. In order not to lose itself in nature, the subject replaces all of reality with its opposite: with mind, i.e., with subjective categories of reason. (3*) Negation of the subject: ‘I do not wish to lose myself in nature; he/she [some other person or group] wishes to lose him/herself in nature.’ This negation of the wish is at work in (fascist) society’s constant need and search for a group to which longing for nature and scorn for the achievements of civilization against nature can be ascribed. Though this mode of negating the repressed wish does not make symbolic reminders of nature without. I will say more about the details of Adorno and Horkheimer’s conception of the psycho-dynamics of fascism in the course of this chapter. 204 I will discuss this mechanism in more detail when I discuss the parallels between the development of enlightened rationality according to DA and the development of paranoia according to Freud’s theory. For a discussion of Adorno and Horkheimer’s attribution of fascist violence to the victim’s representation of insufficiently tamed nature, see Theses II-VII of the “Elemente des Antisemitismus,” in Dialektik der Aufklärung, in Max Horkheimer: Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 5 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 2000), 199-230. 219
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CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALEC
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CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALEC
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For my parents, Luz Marina and John
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4.3 Adorno’s resolution of the di
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FIGURES Figure 4.1: Inner contradic
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost,
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CHAPTER 1: THE PROBLEM OF DETERMINA
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in the present study, and which I t
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inadequate. In my view, O’Connor
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system, and Adorno rejects both the
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and instead examining only the assu
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In Hegel, there are three stages in
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dialectical movement in act. 16 Phi
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According to Hegel, the philosopher
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dialectic is driven forward from on
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observing consciousness has already
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consciousness to perform the operat
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and makes possible the successive a
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corresponds to the self-determining
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And yet, as I hope to have shown in
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claim; namely, that the Hegelian sy
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the system’s inability to express
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Hegel’s idea that history is in e
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irremediably caught in a situation
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defined in its essence by rationali
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zum Entsetzen verifiziert und auf d
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1.2.2 Hegelian dialectics as a form
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objectivity, but rather as an empha
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as thought, is a form of thought th
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conceptual element. It is thus ulti
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It is clear, however, that (2) is n
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ultimately blind to this problem. H
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Aber Denken darf auch nicht bei der
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The first contradiction is internal
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world, and the nature of the subjec
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undertaking of giving an account of
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eflection. 62 The idea is that, ins
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of subject and object characterizin
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then, will be to take a suitable ex
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in it as providing a stable view of
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2.2 The subject’s mediation of an
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It might be thought, then, that the
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the subject as, on the one hand, an
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of consciousness that are then said
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Note the radical nature of Adorno
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tasks of ideology: first, to mask t
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more intelligible but also to lead
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empirical subject. The transcendent
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something external to the individua
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Even the individual who explicitly
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others, and even her own self-under
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is “contradictory” and “false
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Moreover, even modern critiques of
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Einzelmensch, so wie er zu agieren
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says that the “fixity and invaria
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the subject-object relation. I cons
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the concrete living individual, exp
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Clarifying Adorno’s notion of ant
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structure of modern society maximiz
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the following points to be relative
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accordance with its own autonomous
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orthodox Freudianism, Adorno takes
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In this situation, autonomous ego-c
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Civil Society Let us now turn to an
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den Mann zu bringen, das heißt in
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elations of production inherently l
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according to which any one individu
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The State Finally, we need to consi
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The forces of production have indee
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Gewalt, der von Repression, wie ein
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political and even its military pow
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economic activity for global capita
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that social freedom, or the freedom
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and nature has actually become a th
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epression and domination for their
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case, Hegel’s model would remain
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how the potential can be fulfilled
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antagonistic relation to internal n
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Adorno’s conception of the antago
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The question I pursue in this and t
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local heteronomy, or total determin
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selbst waltende” [not merely the
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efusal to acknowledge social factor
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There is therefore a sort of social
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their own autonomously defined ends
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available to thought. By bringing t
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durch ihre einzelnen Momente hindur
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eality by the principle of exchange
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If a critical form of thought expos
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Page 191 and 192: In my view, the sublation [Aufhebun
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Page 209 and 210: Since the contradiction between app
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Page 219 and 220: However, we do not yet know how the
Page 221 and 222: CHAPTER 5: A FREUDIAN INTERPRETATIO
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Page 243 and 244: of Adorno’s negative dialectics i
Page 245 and 246: that human beings on the average ca
Page 247 and 248: 5.4.1 Development of civilization A
Page 249 and 250: The first stage of distance that Ad
Page 251 and 252: persuade it or “convince” it to
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Page 255 and 256: Threatening, wild nature is pushed
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Page 261 and 262: In his Vorlesung über Negative Dia
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Page 271 and 272: 5.5 Conclusion This chapter has dev
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Page 275 and 276: CHAPTER 6: THE DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHT
Page 277 and 278: 6.1 The dialectic of enlightenment
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necessitated by the very mechanism
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The interpretation of Dialektik der
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doing without society provides no a
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conception of historical developmen
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of the system and perhaps also taki
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alone, seemingly for its own sake.
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accordance with which social realit
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(3) Therefore, the result of regres
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from its beginnings in animism to h
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subsection (6.2.2), I briefly expla
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constraints to bring about the emer
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Just like the social-historical lev
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6.2.3 Adorno’s historical method:
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dans sa force et sa faiblesse, la s
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emplacements et de déplacements, d
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individual as ailing from a weak eg
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this point is worth emphasizing bec
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element is a necessary component of
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exchange). Moreover, I said that, f
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within, and constructs the world as
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would be the case if exchange was a
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But the relation of nature to socie
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neither can be understood as more f
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The ‘natural history’ of a phen
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Verschlingungen; darum sind ihr so
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given to the structural order of so
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principle of exchange’s primacy o
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contradiction between appearance an
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introduced in chapter 3: the elemen
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When we consider the relation betwe
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The main goal of this chapter and t
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each of the Concept (beyond the rea
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object leaves room for an idea of c
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context of the object’s origin is
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each element of Kant’s theory on
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precisely through the interpretatio
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problems of the text (or other obje
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Ängste auskennt, das ist auf der e
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The world of empirical experience,
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Adorno interprets Kant’s division
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interpretation as the dissolution o
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demonstrates that the contradiction
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ist—der Begriff des Widerspruchs
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a. The first component corresponds
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historical context. But this way of
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The concern with retrieving the non
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object, which necessarily exceeds i
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the problem seems to be inherent in
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However, this society is pathologic
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sufficiency the “Schein des Ansic
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The category of ‘inner nature’
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fragments and their rhetorical form
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TABLE 7.1 DISCURSIVE-CONCEPTUAL V.
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moreover, a critique that simply ig
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The two philosophical strands, or s
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experience of suffering or damage,
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CHAPTER 8: PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A
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adicalization of the materialist st
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Adorno’s words, nature is that wh
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One important point in Benjamin’s
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After the fall, “the judging word
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Importantly, however, language afte
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particular object is preserved in o
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that, “Was aber solche Namen als
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Die platonische Anamnesis steht die
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elements in the exemplary particula
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hat Geschichte nur noch als einen G
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Das Echte - jenes Ursprungssiegel i
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It is not my purpose here philosoph
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Adorno takes the idea of constellat
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The notion of onomatopoeia is strai
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Ausdruck kommt, in sehr entrückten
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evelation of this symbolic dimensio
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anders als in der Sprache nicht ged
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an aesthetic (artistic) ability to
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The constellation provides a field,
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constellation succeeds, and in the
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Again in agreement, Benjamin and Ad
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Adorno’s basic disagreement with
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immediately related to the economic
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[B]eide sind die auseinandergerisse
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illumination of the phenomenon that
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Adorno says that “Die Formel daß
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echen: Ihre eigene, die rücksichts
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which nature mediates social realit
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concept,” and chapter 8 gave a fi
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eality—that is, the structure of
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conceptual tensions in the object a
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conceptual oppositions that arise f
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object,” as well as in the “con
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element and in terms of its interpr
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The logical structure of paranoid p
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I do want to conclude with some ref
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If Adorno is right, this abstract l
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that they repress the non-conceptua
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Works by Adorno in the
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---. Negative Dialectics. Translate
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---. “On Some Motifs in Baudelair
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---. “Neurosis and psychosis.”
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---. Capital, Vol. I. Translated by
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