speaking objects

[Dennis R Redmond]

On Fri, 22 Dec 2000 kenneth.mackendrick@utoronto.ca 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 addition to the quote identified by Ken, there's also this gem from
"Negative Dialectics":

"Universal history is to be construed and to be denied. The assertion of
an all-encompassing world-plan of betterment manifesting itself in history
would be, after the catastrophes and in view of those yet to come,
cynical. This however is not license to deny the unity which welds
together the discontinuous, chaotically fragmented moments and phases of
history, that of the subjugation of nature, advancing in domination over
human beings and ultimately over internalized nature. No universal history
leads from savagery to humanity, but one indeed from the slingshot to the
H-bomb. It concludes in the total threat of organized humanity against
organized human beings, in the incarnation of discontinuity". (Negative
Dialectics, pp 313, my own translation)

-- Dennis