Rethinking T.W. Adorno (5)

[Ralph Dumain]

My notes to the question-answer session that followed the four speakers may 
be even less helpful than my notes on the speakers themselves.  The first 
question came from me, and I can't even remember it.  I have written notes 
only on the response.  I believe I made some comment about the last three 
presentations.   While Rubin's list of criticisms of Adorno are familiar 
(Eurocentrism, his remarks on jazz, apolitical resignation, etc.) to me, 
and I've made some of them myself, I'm not so much concerned with them 
anymore, given that they reflect the concerns of a different time and 
place, and now the reach of our cultural inheritance goes way beyond the 
provincialism of European culture.  I would have argued that Adorno had an 
insufficient grasp of American popular culture, but I find his criticisms 
potentially more relevant now than they were when they were made. I would 
agree with the applicability of the critique of the cultural industry 
today, because I think that American culture is bankrupt now as opposed to 
decades past when it was first coming into its own.  What interests me is 
not the limitations of Adorno in his context and as compared to ours, but 
in the detachability of his ideas from their context and the possibility of 
making them live and breathe in very different conditions.  I have learned 
the most from Shapiro's presentation.  While I am not up on all of the 
current work on critical theory in the USA, I get the impression that 
instead of applying the abstract ideas afresh to very different empirical 
content, much that goes on in the American academic world is second-rate 
footnote-whoring, and I would like to know how Adorno's ideas can be 
applied under contemporary conditions.

I may have said something along these lines.  The first response was from 
Shapiro.  On listening: the categories are applicable to all [....?] their 
experience, not limited to Adorno's context.  Shapiro: I studied with 
Adorno.  Students would present papers laced with jargon; Adorno, 
exasperated, would insist that they state their thoughts in their own 
words.  Philosophy is about formulating, personally grounding ideas.

Kelley agreed with me on the present state of the culture industry, but has 
the critical function of society truly halted?  There is a challenge to 
students.

Query 2:  for Bronner: DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT (D/E) is a Manichean 
work, based on Weber though it condemns him.  (Odysseus = Weber 
[??])  (Some argument: Nelson vs. Marcuse who said math is 
totalitarian.)  Adorno on regressive listening ....

A: Math--yes.  Do an immanent critique of Adorno.  Instrumental reason a 
bad concept -> no politics.  I don't see Adorno as translatable.

3
Q: fascism & neofascism, politics & metapolitics.  Fascism-philosophy 
/metapolitics.
A: Adorno--metatheory.  Counter-Enlightenment.  Fascism: Bloch on his Nazi 
friend: does it for love, not understanding, feeling over reflection.  Am 
now writing on Enlightenment.  There was no monolithic Enlightenment, and 
it never turned to fascism.

4.
Q: Adorno's limitations are known.  Is his philosophic work still 
relevant?  Which are his best works?  John Holloway [change world?] -> 
NEGATIVE DIALECTICS.  There is no real barrier to Adorno in activist circles.

A:
RUBIN:  right: NEGATIVE DIALECTICS (ND).  Problem of dialectical 
description of society.  Dialectical method difficult to teach.

BRONNER: ND is an extension of D/E, but better ... why philosophy can 
continue to exist.  Philosophy -> aesthetics: moment of resistance.  Adorno 
would blast the Zapatistas.  He would rather preserve the authenticity of 
expression.  For him there is not even a cultural politics.  (cf. 
anchoring[?] in ND)

5.
Q: I've had a similar teaching experience.  For Bronner: a sequel to 
D/E?  Can we still see thought in the aesthetic moment?  Like Adorno, rely 
on modernism?  Progression of form?  This is no rejected in the art 
world.  AESTHETIC THEORY is all negative.  Is it all over?

A (SHAPIRO): Stretching experience .... the only possible art now is 
NEGATION.  European art is over.  Political issues now--ecology.  See 
Adorno on primacy of object, non-identical thinking.

6.
Q: Zionism important to Adorno?  Dialectic ...  music: totality is given, 
unlike social reality.

A.
RUBIN:  Zionism--no.  Anti-semitism a concern,

SHAPIRO: the F.S. in the 1930s tried to be more complex than orthodox 
Marxism.  The F.S. remained stuck in the 1930s except Marcuse.  Adorno fed 
on mere summaries of the social situation.  1940s: psychoanalytic theory 
applied to study of fascism, social science, but nothing later.

7.
Q: No alternative in Adorno.  Aesthetics + French post-1968: 
depressing.  British Cultural Studies: Gramsci the answer.  Autonomous art 
is dead.  Collective communal experience is what matters.  I teach black 
students.

A (BRONNER): AESTHETIC THEORY: art is like 
fireworks.  innovation.  permanent revolution of subjectivity.  Adorno also 
criticizes the cultural elite.

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I would have liked to challenge #7.  The questioner's remarks are quite 
typical of stupid white radicals talking about black people.  In actual 
fact, what matters most now is recovering the unnamed individual 
experiences of black people which are ruthlessly repressed by the racial 
absolutism of the whole of the culture industry and especially black 
popular culture, with the bankruptcy of religious and political culture not 
far behind.  Collective experience is just what there is too much of, and, 
if you care, it's really something quite different from political 
solidarity.  And anybody who is responsible for teaching black students 
ought to understand a number of essential ingredients of the current scene; 
inter alia: (1) in capitalist America today everyone stands alone and there 
are no support structures for anybody; (2) the urban areas of America are 
filled with highly intelligent and exceptionally motivated black girls who 
suffer from social isolation and intellectual frustration having to attend 
substandard public schools and live in environments that do not stimulate 
their intellectual curiosity or provide meaningful connection to their 
inner world.  Having to listen to well-meaning but naive stupid shit gets 
my goat.  If individual autonomy mattered, it matters now more than ever.

Afterwards, I had some brief but stimulating conversation with some of the 
panelists, including the moderator, Michael Thompson, who is editor of 
LOGOS.  I shared with him my concern with popularization and my idea that 
Adorno, though very difficult to popularize, nonetheless speaks to a 
general audience in a way that academics generally do not.  It is a 
paradox, but Adorno was highly conscious of his place in the division of 
labor, and though his audience is necessarily restricted to a more educated 
segment of the populace, in some sense he is speaking to 
everyone.  Thompson shared my enthusiasm for the universal applicability of 
ideas garnered from Adorno and for the need for popularization.