[FRA:] Jarvis: Adorno: A Critical Introduction (2)

[Alon Lischinsky]

Hi, Ralph

> I still do not understand the concept of constellation.  Language
> appears to be central to this. Language is said to have a double
> character. unlike purely formal (mathematical) concepts and unlike
> pure pictorial representation. Language has both classificatory and
> mimetic elements.  The definition of terms and fixed use of language
> is the antithesis of Adorno's method. (177-8)  I do not understand
> the sense in which language is mimetic.

I'm not claiming to have fully grasped anything, but IIRC this is
already developed in Dialektik der Aufklärung, regarding the origins
of religion. The name of the thunder god (or whatever deity A&H chose
for the illustration) is said to be not merely a descriptive label for
a range of events, but also an echo of the anguished cry of the
primitve faced with the sublime (in the Kantian sense) potency of
nature. Less convolutedly: natural language concepts are not the
product of a disembodied intelligence, concerned only with sorting
with the utmost precision the events of a world in which it does not
take part. They are shaped instead by the practical needs and the
ingrained feelings of the knowing subject.

Somewhere else (my Frankfurtian philology is in a sorry state) Adorno
gives the idea a related formulation: that concepts are tools for
survival. This implies that they do not reflect the world, and are
intended as tools to operate on it from the very beginning, which is
part of the unavoidability of instrumental reason. But it also implies
that concepts echo what we would call the "subject position" of their
originators. I believe this is the sense in which Adorno claims
language to be mimetic.

Of course, I could be utterly wrong.

Best,

Alon