Rethinking T.W. Adorno (5)

[matthew piscioneri]

Ralph,

I've got an idea. Let's have a party. can we come over to your house?

MattP.




>From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain@igc.org>
>Reply-To: frankfurt-school@lists.village.virginia.edu
>To: frankfurt-school@lists.village.virginia.edu
>CC: marxistphilosophy@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: Rethinking T.W. Adorno (5)
>Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2003 01:37:15 -0400
>
>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.
>
>------------
>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.
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