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

symbolized (the concrete ‘reference’ of the symbol) is also conceived as necessarily
attached to the same meaning or sense. To use the language of structuralism, we could
say that the signifier (the sensory symbol) is necessarily attached to the signified (the
signification or meaning), and the signified is in turn necessarily attached to the thing
designated. 228 For example, the ‘hairs’ of the person involved in a magical ritual
symbolize the particular person to whom they once belonged, and are thus necessarily
attached to a particular sense or signified, while this sense in turn corresponds to the
particular thing designated: the actual, living person. In sacrifice, similarly, the thing
coveted by the god or spirit is conceived as necessarily attached to a particular sense or
signified (for example, the first-born as the head representative of common identity in the
family or tribe) that is in turn also necessarily attached symbolically to the thing
sacrificed (e.g. the first-cast animal as the best representative of its pack, and thus as a
suitable stand-in for the first-born), and in each specific sacrificial ritual the concrete
object chosen for sacrifice depends on the specific thing or person it is supposed to
symbolize. Thus in symbolic representation, while the symbol and the thing designated
are differentiated, they are connected in that the symbol is necessarily tied to a specific
sense or signified, which in turn is also necessarily tied to the thing designated.
The differentiation between symbol and symbolized, however, entails the
establishment of some separation between the subject and nature, for the symbolic
representation’s role in magical rituals is motivated by the wish to control nature—to
228 What I mean by calling the tie between symbol and signified ‘necessary’ is that it is conceived
as grounded in the concrete qualities embodied by the sensory symbol, on the one hand, and the thing
designated, on the other, so that the symbol necessarily and non-arbitrarily signifies the signified.
Similarly, what I mean by calling the tie between the symbolized thing and the signified ‘necessary’ is that
it is conceived as following directly from the concrete qualities embodied by the thing, so that the thing is
necessarily and non-arbitrarily designated by the signified.
238