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

illumination of the phenomenon that arises by itself from the patchwork of images laid
over each other, Adorno argues that this method in the end simply collapses into the two
isolated and unmediated extremes in the image (rather than a sum of the extremes that
yields a flash of insight): on the one hand, the crude orthodox Marxist analysis of social
phenomena (a sort of crude positivism in Adorno’s assessment), and, on the other, an
esoteric display of archaic historical elements and their influence in the present, but
without the interpretation that alone shows them to be regressive (a ‘magical’ and
positive theology, a new mythology, rather than the inverse theology that Adorno praised
in Benjamin’s early essays). As I have already suggested, this is connected to the first
disagreement because it is precisely the failure to see how all of social reality is mediated
by the social totality as a system that in Adorno’s opinion robs Benjamin’s critique of the
ability to exhibit the specific pathological quality of the social world, and the fact that it
affects social life as a whole, in its moment of ‘illumination.’ 404 (Recall the dispute
between Adorno and Benjamin over the latter’s essay on art: In Adorno’s view, it is
because Benjamin has an incorrect assessment of the social element that he elevates
404 I am reconstructing the difference in terms of Adorno’s criticism of Benjamin: that is, in terms
of why, assuming Adorno’s view of social reality and critical thought, Benjamin’s method has to be seen as
flawed and insufficiently critical. Benjamin, of course, has philosophical reasons to prefer his method. By
using a juxtaposition of images and quotations without inserting his own views about how they are
connected in the object of inquiry, Benjamin seeks, first, to estrange the image or quotation by displaying it
without creating a context for it (thus producing a Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt in the reader), and, second,
to bring the reader’s attention away from the information conveyed by an image or quote and toward the
“ways of meaning” of the images or quotes (the term ‘ways of meaning’ is used by Eli Friedlander in his
excellent study of Benjamin’s philosophy: See Walter Benjamin: a Philosophical Portrait (Cambridge
and London: Harvard University Press, 2012). For Benjamin, the mosaic of images and quotations lets
meaning appear in a way not directed by the intention of the author or the reader, and this form of
‘unintentional presentation of truth’ is the only way in which truth can be ‘revealed’ to us. For Adorno,
however, this method is always in danger of becoming regressive. I think whether one agrees with Adorno
critique of Benjamin or not ultimately depends on whether one accepts Adorno’s conception of society as a
systematic totality characterized by pathology and repression, and therefore in need of a deeper dialectics
of suspicion. My aim here is not to defend and endorse Adorno’s critique of Benjamin, but rather only to
clarify why on the basis of Adorno’s social theory and epistemology, Benjamin’s method would be flawed.
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