myth and reason

[MSalter1@aol.com]

In a message dated 07/07/97 07:48:45 GMT, :

 Jukka L writes
 
 PS. It seems that Michael Salter is referring to the same direction
 when he writes about Adorno that "it is worth reading his dialectical
 critique of the idea of pure difference/non-identity/particularity
 etc. in Negative Dialectics."  Surely Adorno wasn't on a road to
 mysticism with, say, his conception of non-identity or non-identical?
 So what might it be he's really saying...? >>

In response to Jukka: my point is more along the lines that recent attempts
to co-opt Adorno's negative dialectic's concern for particularity/difference
as a bridehead to a affirmation of unmediated difference can succeed only at
the cost of loosing not only what is specifically dialectical in NDs but also
its sense of the priority of negativity in acts of genuine thought. Such
recuperations are themselves violent impositions that debate the difference
that ND itself makes, and which make it an immanent critique of (rather than
foreplay to) deconstruction.

Michael S