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

evealing the tension between the social element (the contradiction in the object) and the
archaic, regressive moment of reality (revealed through natural history in the construction
of the constellation, and grounded in the contradiction in the concept). We can put the
point by saying that Adorno did not disagree with Benjamin’s conception of the
constellation, but rather considered Benjamin’s method ultimately unable to construct the
constellation, and instead collapsing into two unmediated views of the object, both of
which Adorno found positivistic and flawed.
Benjamin’s method, like Adorno’s, combines two strands of interpretation: the
first is a materialist critique of society, and the second, which Adorno refers to as the
“inverse theological” element of “profane illumination” [the latter is Benjamin’s term] is
the element that seeks to give voice to the non-conceptual in the object. The difference
between Adorno’s and Benjamin’s methods, as is clear time and time again in their
correspondence, consists in two (related) things: First, their interpretation of the
materialist social critique, and, second, the relation between this critique and the natural-
historical critique. The disagreement was not, however, about the natural-historical
critique itself, except insofar as, in Adorno’s view, the improper relation between the two
forms of critique actually makes the macro-structure of the natural-historical critique (the
constellation) flawed and unable to give truly critical insight into social reality. On what
follows, I briefly elaborate on these two centers of the disagreement between Adorno and
Benjamin.
As I have said, the first crux of disagreement has to do with the materialist
critique of social conditions. In the thirties, Benjamin’s materialist critique became more
and more congenial to orthodox Marxism, reading superstructural elements as
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