ADORNO ONE LAST TIME

[Ralph Dumain]

Does the chronic silence of this list indicate that its participants have
retreated into their individual worlds to concentrate on their own
research, or could it indicate the actual exhaustion of this subject matter
itself?

Towards the end of the year I enquired as to what books in critical theory
people found most inspiring, and received one or two responses.

Some time prior to that, I asked Dennis Redmond, in response to the first
two chapters of his dissertation, just what he thought was special about
Adorno's negative dialectics that made it of contemporary global relevance,
unlike rival theoretical projects.

His last words on the subject were these:

At 01:16 PM 12/18/1999 +0000, Dennis R Redmond wrote:
>Tools: the constellation, the conceptual cast, theories of 
>non-identity, theories of monopoly capitalism, and much else 
>besides. Use: smashing the system, by thinking beyond its 
>boundaries.

And ....

>It starts with concepts of monopoly capitalism, then moves on 
>to the multinational and, ultimately, the global level. 
>There's also an aesthetic analysis of William Burroughs, 
>Heiner Mueller, and William Gibson, focusing on their leading 
>works in the 60s, 70s and 80s, respectively. 

At this point I dropped the subject.  Not long after, Dennis got mixed up
in a debate on the Bourdieu list in which he defended the proletarian
status of grad students and also his own work, both theoretical and
practical, in fighting the system.

My interest here is not to single out Dennis, but it is one occasion among
several of recent vintage that evokes my skepticism.  I'm not as cynical
about the status of grad students as exploited labor as some others on the
Bourdieu list were, but I am skeptical of the revolutionary claims being
made by our gung-ho young colleague, esp. about the revolutionary nature of
his intellectual work--actually not so much of his work, which is not yet
intelligible to me, but of whatever use can be made out of Adorno.  Such a
statement as "smashing the system, by thinking beyond its boundaries" might
well evince a certain tongue-in-cheek reaction among more persons besides
myself.  But I would go further, to question even whether Adorno gives one
much to think about beyond the system's boundaries.  I too have hopes of
using Adorno's negative dialectics for certain limited aims, but I have
reason to suspect I'm giving Adorno a lot more credit than he deserves.

I'm not the only one to notice that Adorno's philosophy ultimately comes to
a situation of utter defeat, of near total capitulation to hopelessness.
The resistance it provides is pretty lame and futile.  I think one of the
best analyses I've seen is Bronner's essay on Adorno in OF CRITICAL THEORY
AND ITS THEORISTS, which I mentioned a couple of months ago.
 
In this light, any claims of being able to smash the system using Adorno
would seem to belong to the realm of the unintentionally comic.  Perhaps
Dennis will one day shed more light on the usability of Adorno and prove
there's much more to it than there seems to be.

One might wonder why I would give any credence at all to Adorno given my
harsh remarks about him on many occasions, my rejections of key components
of his perspective, such as his views on aesthetics and the culture
industry.  If there was one thing I admired about him, it was his critiques
of philosophy, not his own ability to construct one of his own, but his
ability to take apart certain others.  And while I wouldn't make universal
claims for the applicability of negative dialectic, it seems to me to be
the best attempt I've ever seen to elevate irony into a philosophical
method.  And since the philosophy of humor is the only theoretical
enterprise that I take seriously any more, I find the concept of
non-identity useful, up to a point.

However, I began to suspect that there was less to all this than meets the
eye.  And other reading I've done in recent months confirms this feeling.
Just a few days ago I picked off the shelf my copy of Jack Lindsay's THE
CRISIS IN MARXISM, which I had once read, before I was familiar with many
of the thinkers he engages, and I read the chapter on Adorno and the
Frankfurters.  (It's really about Adorno, with the others as virtually a
footnote.)  With a clarity that is rare in these matters, Lindsay proceeds
to take apart all of Adorno's weaknesses in a way that truly reveals how
unproductive his ideas are.  He effectively rips apart Adorno's views on
aesthetics and the culture industry and Adorno's attempts to link them to
political economy and commodity fetishism.  He gives some little credit to
Adorno's negative dialectic, which he also characterizes as a form of
irony, though he pinpoints Adorno's weakness here too.

At this point I am already getting fed up, even before I have read all the
books I need to read.  I still have plenty more of Adorno I want to read,
concentrating on the strictly philosophical works, which I anticipate are
of great value with the exception of the despicable DIALECTIC OF
ENLIGHTENMENT.  I still need to read more Kracauer.  I will have to force
myself to learn more of the fellow-traveller Benjamin though I'm not
attracted to him at all.  And I'm thinking maybe I should read Honneth's
THE STRUGGLE FOR RECOGNITION.  But overall, I feel as if I'm just trying to
catch up on an autopsy on a body of thought that has no real future.

But maybe I'm too pessimistic.  Anybody out there who think there's some
life in the old girl yet?