[FRA:] recent reading in critical theory

[Ralph Dumain]

Even though I just read this book, my memory has already faded.  But I 
don't quite recognize what either of you fellows have suggested.  Benjamin 
cozied up to Brecht, though he was far more esoteric a thinker, and Adorno 
rejected Brecht's conception of art.  Does this entail "caught between"?  I 
don't know exactly what this means.

As for Adorno failing Benjamin, I don't know what this means, 
either.  Benjamin seems to have been Adorno's major influence, but Adorno 
objected to what he saw as Benjamin's lapses, which is also what he 
objected to in surrealism: the lack of a theoretical mediation beyond the 
description and juxtaposition of constellated phenomena.  Adorno would have 
thought, I suppose, that Benjamin failed him.  But I don't quite know what 
you are getting at.

At 08:33 AM 4/27/2006 -0400, James Rovira wrote:
>Didn't Buck-Morss present Benjamin as caught between Brecht, the
>doctrinaire communist, and Adorno, the critical theorist?  Or is that
>Martin Jay?
>
>Jim R.