[FRA:] Horkheimer & Adorno: Enlightenment, myth, modernity, anti-Semitism

[Ralph Dumain]

Schmidt, James. "Genocide and the Limits of Enlightenment: Horkheimer and 
Adorno Revisited," in Genocide and the Contradictions of Modernity, ed. Bo 
Strath (Peter Lang/European University Institute Press, 2000.
http://people.bu.edu/jschmidt/genocide.pdf

The more essays by Schmidt I read, the clearer my understanding of his 
arguments, and the more I get out of Horkheimer/Adorno's DIALECTIC OF 
ENLIGHTENMENT. They were concerned to counter the common wisdom of fascism 
as a regression to the primitive or the barbarism of the past, but to see 
it as thoroughly contemporary and normal.  I would say thoroughly modern, 
but the relation between enlightenment and modernity is called into 
question as well. Actually, their thesis contradicts the assumptions of 
more recent scholarship, e.g. Goldhagen (who sees the Holocaust as 
specifically German and a break from history) and Bauman (who sees the 
Holocaust as a universal problem of modern society and a new attitude 
towards nature and society). Yet neither has much to say about DofE's take 
on anti-Semitism.

Horkheimer in his correspondence insists that Enlightenment goes back to 
the very origins of thought. Hegel's Phenomenology is shown to be a 
decisive influence on D0fE (I'm used to seeing references to Nietzsche, but 
somehow I've missed mention of this), esp. Hegel's insistence on the 
dialectic of enlightenment and faith. But DofE goes even further: 
Enlightenment cannibalizes itself by progressively banishing all functions 
of reason and normative canons other than technical administration to the 
realm of myth. (I assume positivism is what's in mind here.) But this is 
not the usual Counter-Enlightenment propaganda from Burke to Gadamer. 
Enlightenment stretches back to the dawn of history, and this its 
relationship to modernity must be re-thought.

DofE was also influenced by Benjamin's theses on history. DofE sees the 
dawn of enlightenment in the transition from magical/mimetic to mythically 
based world views, which coincided with the birth of class society and the 
division between mental and manual labor. Sources to buttress this view 
were found in anthropology, sociology, and Hegel. With the progress of 
enlightenment also came the progress of fear.

After laying this groundwork, Schmidt proceeds to discuss DofE's analysis 
of anti-Semitism, first reviewing its theses. The fifth thesis is key: 
"civilization rests on the organised and rationalised control of mimesis". 
Instrumental rationality has supplanted traditional mimetic practices. 
Fascism has learned to exploit a latent mimetic rebelliousness against 
domination.  Fascism organizes the psychological mechanism of paranoic 
projection.

COMMENT: Schmidt doesn't say anything about the contemporary situation, but 
clearly there are parallels to the Christian Right and the Bush 
Administration today, i.e. the fascism we face today.

DofE's general account of mimesis and fascism is still too general to 
account for anti-Semitism. The necessary detail is not to be found in the 
book, but its perspective is consistent with other research on 
anti-Semitism undertaken by the Institute for Social Research. But the 
absence of historical specificity of both anti-Semitism and enlightenment 
(taken as a virtual synonym for reasoning) undermines the book's case. The 
Jews become an incidental scapegoat, virtually interchangeable with any 
other, which was in fact entirely untrue. DofE's generic analysis, however, 
is applicable to genocide in general and thus to today's headlines. DofE 
goes Bauman one better: its originality consists in this thesis: the 
fragile ego projects its inner conflicts onto the world, manufacturing 
external threats to be exterminated.

COMMENT: this is the American right wing today down to its toenails.

But the rage so unleashed by targeting populations seen to be different 
requires explanation, as it is hardly cold bureaucratic rationality in 
action. DofE provides a means to explain this element missing in other 
accounts.

Horkheimer and Adorno were supposed to write a sequel on how to rescue 
enlightenment, which never materialized. There is a letter from Horkheimer, 
though, on the relation between reason and language. This is uncannily 
prescient of Habermas's project in decades to come.

COMMENT: Schmidt in this essay and others enables me to grapple with DofE 
as I could not before. Aside from general historical references--early 
empires, division between mental and manual labor, etc., DofE is 
notoriously deficient from the perspective of (a) historical materialism, 
(b) cognitive science. I hesitate to use the term "cognitive science", 
which itself is imbued with technocracy, but the psychological mechanisms 
adumbrated by Horkheimer and Adorno don't provide adequate detail with 
respect to the relation between rational and irrational cognitive 
functions, let alone the specific patterns of social reinforcement that 
regulate them in the course of history. (I'm not enormously thrilled with 
Habermas either, but that's another story.) That is, the dialectic of myth 
and enlightenment emerging as primitive man discovers "civilization" is an 
idealist construct if left to itself. It's as if we are all positivists and 
irrationalists both from the dawn of time.  Perhaps in some sense this is 
true, but it remains an undifferentiated picture without further 
elaboration along the lines of historical materialism.