[FRA:] Marcuse question

[simon smith]

In message <200602232351.k1NNpIxT011666 at electra.cc.umanitoba.ca>, 
Kenneth MacKendrick <kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca> writes
>Can you have a close reading without spending time in an archive? If 
>one wants to understand DofE it has to be read with *all* the 
>biographical information available. A close reading entails reading the 
>text and context.

One example of this is quite simple: read the 1969 preface:

"We do not stand by everything we said in the book in its original form. 
That would be incompatible with a theory which attribute a temporal core 
to truth instead of contrasting truth as something invariable to the 
movement of history."

 From the Preface to the Italian Edition (1962/66):

"The German text of Dialectic of Enlightenment is a fragment...it is 
self-evident that, with regard to terminology and the scope of questions 
investigated, the book is shaped by the circumstances in which it was 
written [i.e. the period of National Socialism]."

Throughout Adorno's post DofE writings, it is emphatically clear that he 
makes a distinction between true reason and 'irrational reason'.

Anyone with a moderate knowledge of Adorno's overall work would not be 
able to see it as a general refutation of reason. What 'post-modernist' 
would make a distinction between the 'right life' and the 'wrong life'? 
The adoption of DofE as the 'central text' in Adorno's work is deeply 
unfortunate and unwarranted, an example of lazy scholarship. No student 
should be advised to read it before a general perusal of Adorno's 
general work.

-- 
Simon Smith




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