speaking objects

[kenneth.mackendrick@utoronto.ca]

On Fri, 22 Dec 2000 02:03:29 EST BUDGRANT@aol.com wrote:

> what about an adorno quote that runs something like 'there may be no progress 
> from slavery to liberation, but there is progress from the slingshot to the 
> neutron bomb'? sound at all familiar?
> Paul

"In self-righteous profundity one takes the side of the terrible, slandering 
the idea of progress according to the schema that whatever human beings fail at 
is ontologically refused them, and that in the name of their finitude and 
mortality they have the duty to wholeheartedly appropriate both of these 
qualities. A sober response to this false reverence would be that while indeed 
progress from the slingshot to the megaton bomb may well amount to satantic 
laughter, in the age of the bomb a condition can be envisaged for the first 
time in which violence might vanish altogether." - Adorno, "Progress" Critical 
Models, 153.

ken