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

element and in terms of its interpretation from the non-conceptual natural element (i.e.,
the “contradiction in the concept”).
(3) Return to the structure of the contradiction in the object: The natural-
historical interpretation of the non-conceptual element in the object dissolves the
“contradiction in the concept” into an account of the object’s original socio-historical
life-world and its relation to the social order in the present, and this marks a return to the
structure of the system, the “contradiction in the object.” The moment that the geistige
Erfahrung of “contradiction” between concepts and nature reaches expression in the
concept, it becomes subsumed under the systematic structure of concepts. This is
because concepts are essentially subsumptive; the moment we give expression to an
object in terms of concepts, the concepts inherently seek to encompass the object fully,
and the fact that this claim to encompass the object is in the end spurious has to be once
again demonstrated at a higher level of analysis through a confrontation between the
discursive-conceptual elements that now define the object in a more encompassing way
and the natural-history of the object. The structure of the system (the “contradiction in
the object”) always returns to subsume the structure that opposes the natural element to it
(to the conceptual element, which is itself structured as the system).
The reason for this ever-recurrent subsumption is explained once again by the
logic of paranoid projection, which after all (for Adorno) structures both thought and
reality (for us, at least), and thus always brings recalcitrant elements back under its
internal order. In fact, the point is not so much that it brings nature back into the system,
but rather that the system is never escaped, for the contradiction between the conceptual
element in the object and the natural-historical interpretation of the object are in the end
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