Relevance of the later Adorno

[MSalter1@aol.com]

In a message dated 16/07/97 01:37:07 GMT, Dennis writes:

<< Probably we need to dump the whole notion of worshipping a single Great
 Thinker of whatever stripe, and instead forage, Java-style, for the
 thinkware which we need to run whatever theory-web we're employing at a
 given moment. For me, this would mean using Adorno for models of an
 immanent dialectics, Sartre for a transcendent dialectics, Fredric Jameson
 for a media/video dialectics and Pierre Bourdieu for a Eurostate
 dialectics, but then, I'm weird. Other folks will choose other
 strokes (and indeed ought to do so!).
  >>
I'd agree with a lot of this. But Adorno's dialectic combines in a unity of
opposites both immanent (early but vital stage) with transcendent (goal from
the start) in what represents a break out from within, or "immanent
transcendence". Habermas attempts this critique in Between Facts and Norms
1996 but disables himself to a large extent by his neo-kantian discourse
theory. As for sartre, and despite everything, there is surely a need for a
critical re-appropriation of much of the spiriyt of his CRD work. Also
Jameson's work is pretty Adornian it seems to me (I'm currently enjoying his
Late Marxism. I can't detect a really independent theory within his specific
field of application. BTW Has anyone read Bhaskar on dialectics - I would add
him to my list of dialecticians worth reading, although in his case it is
pretty hard to follow. The Bhaskar list has a reading group on his
"Dialectics - the pulse of freedom" book 1993

Michael Salter