Mimesis on the Move: Theodor W. Adorno's Concept of Imitation 9783261042088, 3261042087

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Karla L. Schultz

Mimesis on the Move Theodor W. Adorno’s Concept of Imitation

PETER LANG Berne • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Paris

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CIP-Titelaufnahroe der Deutsches BibUothek

Schultz, Karla L.: ^ (^/ Mimesis on the move: Theodor W. Adorno’s concept of imitation / Karla L. Schultz. - Berne; Frankfurt am Main; New York; Paris: Lang, 1990 ~ -(New York University Ottendorfer series; N.F., Bd. 36) r> S) ) ISBN 3-261-04208-7 / NE: New York University: New York University . . .

© Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., Berne 1990 All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, offset strictly prohibited. Printed by Weihert-Druck GmbH, Darmstadt (West Germany)

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For Nani andN ico, my young mother and son

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I n t r o d u c t io n Notes

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L F r o m E n a c t m e n t t o A g g re s s io n : F iv e H i s t o r i c a l S c e n a r io s The Argument The Perspective Rationality’s Double Agent Preparing the Stage First Scenario: The Sorcerer and the Demon Second Scenario: The Hero and His Gods Third Scenario: The Libertine and Nature The Contemporary Results Fourth Scenario: The Consumer and HisGoods Fifth Scenario: The Nazi and His Jew Types and Tbpoi Notes

15 17 22 25 28 29 31 35 41 42 47 51 53

II. H o m e r a n d S a d e : D e s ir e F o r th e O t h e r Odysseus’ Travels The Defeat of the Sirens The Land of Idle Dreams One-eyed Polyphemus Circe’s Magic The Visit to Hades Form as Remembrance The Tbrtures of the Libertine Juliette and Justine Perverse Love for the Other The Sadian Tableau Notes

6i 63 65 67 69 71 75 77 79 82 87 90 92

III. H O l d e r l i n a n d B e c k e t t : F r o m S o n g t o S i l e n c e Ontology’s Abuse of HOlderlin The Language of Separation “Der Einzige” Language as Song The Grammar of Utopia Endgame Making Sense of Non-Sense The Communication Game Language at a Standstill The Polemics of Silence Notes

97 99 105 108 110 114 118 119 122 128 133 136

IV. E r o s O b j e c t i f i e d : A d o r n o ’s A e s t h e t i c T h e o r y

143 144 149 153 158 161 167 169 171 174 178 182

The Pleasure of the Tfext In Pursuit of the Fragment Punctuation Of Names and Titles For the Love of Words Asthetische Theorie The Form of the Content The Content of the Form Memory Tteces The Image as a Model Notes W o r k s C it e d

187

I n t r o d u c t io n These petrified conditions must be made to dance by singing to them their own melody. Karl Marx1

What does mimesis, the art of imitation, imitate? Does it mime or make present, reveal or conceal, lie or speak true, reflect or detect? Is it basic or incidental, spontaneous or contrived? Is it farce or force, ploy or play? Is it anything at all? These and similar questions run through the history of Western aesthetics and continue to be raised today. The present study concentrates on the response given by the philosopher and theorist of modernism, Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), a response that contains the vicissitudes and vitality of the phenomenon in a multi­ dimensional concept. We will situate it first. The mimesis of the artist, Plato warns in his Republic, is fraught with danger for the well-governed state. It is misleading and in fact /' superfluous. The identifications it invites through dramatization undermine the moral education of the young, and the likenesses it produces through depiction represent nothing but mere appear­ ances. Artistic imitation is thrice removed from the truth of eternal forms, which is perceived conceptually by philosophy, obscurely present to the senses in matter, and even more obscurely repres­ ented by art. A copy of a copy, it is distra£tiy£-at best, subversive

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Mimesis on the Move

at worst, because it “awakens and nourishes and strengthens the feelings and impairs the reason.”2 Its main perpetrators, the poets, are liars. They««teet!ra“besbanned to the outskirts of the city. His pup^Aristotle’sijwre integrative philosophy defines mimesis as man’s prodtietive^mitation of nature’s creativeness. His artistic making of things by means of color, shape, rhythm, speech and melody expresses a drive that is natural to him, “is implanted in man from childhood . . . being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons.”3 Mimesis is both natural and artful, generative and dependent. Its result is not truth but plausibility. These two ancient authorities on the concept represent opposing i albeit related views. Mimesis-as-imitation stresses its derivative, ; secondary aspect in regard to an original, which in Plato’s case are eternal forms, while mimesis-as-production emphasizes its means and craft. It is a species-specific technique in regard to a model, the I ways of nature. One alludes to the idea of (ultimately useless) •. repetition contained in the prefix of the word we traditionally use, j representation, the other implies an empathic kind of making I associated with the word’s body: presence. Much debated, the notion of imitation gained or lost currency depending on contemporaneous metaphysics. It gained in classicist theories upholding a universal truth to which art works, through symbolic representation, allegedly aspire; and it lost in romantic ones attached to a relative truth, which the work (or process) of art supposedly incorporates. Conversely, the notion of production was less favored by a world view sure of being directly connected to Truth than by a view unsure of such linkage.4 Twentieth century debates address mimesis in terms of art’s realism, itself a controversial term, as the argument over expression­ ism during the Thirties demonstrates.5 The Fifties and Sixties gave the word renewed currency. Erich Aueihach!s-3/im«is (1946), a humanist study of “the interpretation of reality through literary representation or ‘imitation,’”6 holds that figurative language accu­ rately captures the everyday human condition. It conveys historical truth without needing to be legitimized by a metaphysical referent.

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Introduction

3

Similarly, though from a different ideological position, Georg Luk£cs, in Die Eigenart des Asthetischen (1963),7 conceives of mimesis as the aesthetic endeavor to incorporate the typical in concrete and sensuous form. Mimetic reflection ( Widerspiegelung) makes the objective world present not only in its social totality but also as it appears to the senses directly. Both attribute to mimesis a truth-*1 ✓ revealing function. Neither queries its literary medium, asks “how I / t h e sheer fact of reproducing the world as sign, the world as lan( guage, may expose and call into question precisely those convenv tions meant to systematize and objectify representation.”® This question has been at the center of the post-modernist debate. Current post-structuralist discussions of mimesis focus on its implications of hierarchy, the uneven relationship between original and copy, model and reproduction that is inscribed in the concept. In the spirit of deconstruction the very term, its doubleness and elusiveness, is problematized: Although it has variously been translated as imitation, representation, reproduction, resemblance, identification, simulation, mimicry, analogy, it is also inextricably involved with presentation/presencing, production, appropri­ ation, the original, the model and the authentic. And ultimately it overflows all these concepts and remains untranslatable, “foreign,” ^appropriable.9

J

In particular Jacques Derrida makes “mimesis” an undecidable term. As the in-between posted between literature and philosophy, the go-between commissioned to guard the split between meta­ phorical and conceptual language, mimesis is neither true nor false, good nor bad but an intriguing, powerful device to install one thing (truth/fiction) to disinstall the other (fiction/truth). It flickers be­ tween word and meaning, plays signifier against signified witjiout } being anything but ambivalent ploy in a system of difference^.10 { This view of the world as a play of textual strategies and tactics unsettles the truth-notions of referentiality and plausibility attributed A to mimesis. It signals a crisis of representatior^^f_“shcwin g,” makingV sense of reality of/many form One response to the crisis is Rene Girard’s concept of_acquis[1 i tive/antaponistic mimf^i* F ic anthropological theory foregrounds the r

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Mimesis on the Move

aggressive behavior of mimetic identification, which reaches for the object (truth) impelled by violent competition and contest. It in fact determines “truth,” is an instinct anterior to representation. It makes for (and thus can undo) the coherence of cultural systems through a rivalry of desires directed at a scapegoat: “The represen­ tations that describe an episode of collective violence taking place Iat the height of a social crisis are made more rather than less trustworthy for being juxtaposed to the most fantastic accusations against the victims.”11 For Girard, the competition of and within texts exceeds the problematics of signification. As the fiction of a real event, representation points toward the extra-textual truth of victimage—of which Christ’s passion is the exemplary instant. By attaching ourselves to this figure in an imitatio Christi, conflictual mimetic desire will turn into its opposite: cooperative, non-violent love. Ultimately, the entire history of the concept of mimesis revolves around the form and meaning of the artful text in relation to actual “raw” experience: whether and how it misleads or prefigures, wheth­ er it has/can have any meaning at all. The artistry of mimesis is undisputed—but is it instinctual or rational, desirous or cognitive, mobile or fixed? Pre-Platonic uses of the verb mimesthai, from 'which mimesis derives, seem to suggest mocking, bodily perform­ ances that congeal, with the advent of nominal language, into fixed representations: mimesthai seems to denote originally a “miming” or mimicking of a person or animal by means of voice and/or gesture . . . Out of this primaiy idiom, whose vigor we still find unimpaired in Aristophanes, there developed a second, more colorless one: to “imitate” another person in general, to do as or what he does. At the same time or not much later, and particularly in the secondary derivative mimema, the concept of mimicry was trans­ ferred to material “images”: pictures, statues, and the like.12

This trajectory from the dynamic to the inscribed character of the mimetic appears historicized in Adorno’s work. His theory of mimesis, which permeates his writings yet is nowhere (and for good reason) systematically articulated, is the most provocative yet. Subtle

Introduction

5

and subversive, it lays claim to a double-edged potential: mimesis'} can affirm as well as criticize, is instinctive and rational in one. ~ Situated between structuralism and deconstruction, formalism and semiotics, Adorno’s philosophy as yet has had little impact on today’s discussions of mimesis.13 This is partly due to the intricate, hermetic style of his writing, and partly his anti-systematic, contextu­ al delineation of this and other key concepts. Adorno belongs to roughly the same generation and intellectual tradition that includes Auerbach and Luk&cs. But in contrast to both he does not use mimesis as a category. He is not concerned with (I the representation o f objects but with an historically significant, L somatic relationship to them. This relationship is expressed ( in "miming” gestures as well as in “imaging” language, the expressive/repressed nature of which is constituted by social rela­ tions. While the desirous force of mimetic behavior as suggested by r Adorno reminds of Girard (it wants the object, “longs” for the other), his conception of it as a critique of rationality anticipates major themes of Derrida: the deconstruction of logocentrism, identi-1 ty and singular meaning.14 From one perspective, his work belongs i to semiotics (formerly ideology criticism), investigating the collabora­ tion between forms of language and social interests. From another it is a critical hermeneutics that attempts, through a close reading of modernist, non-representational art, to recuperate a meaning for history that this history has long suffocated and buried. The term mimesis appears dispersed throughout his writing, the concept multi-layered and elusive. Adorno, who viewed culture as a force-field of interests, privileges the essayistic as form of inquiry, which does not exclude rigorous, highly specialized analysis. He never so much defines concepts as he shows their interrelationship and the dialectic that animates them. A second complicating factor is his densely metaphorical, allusive style. His intricate writings are criss-crossed with historical, sociological, musical and literary refer­ ences, and a concept can never quite be disentangled from its text and context. As Adorno once reminded his students at the Universi­ ty of Frankfurt, “a philosophy can be understood only if its terms are understood. But it is true also, and this is the correlative, that

6

Mimesis on the Move

the terms generally can be understood only if the philosophy in which they appear is understood as a whole.”15 A third factor that / fconcerns the elusiveness of especially this concept is that mimesis is J jideeplv duplicitous, both poison and cure. While its positive force is confined to a socially marginal art, its negative expressions in gener­ al social life are shaped by dominant instrumental reason. Put broadly, it is conceived as a movement of imitation based on instinct, which shows up in the behavior of a subject toward its other. The term subject, in this context, means the consciousness of an ego whose unity and coherence is a socio-linguistic construct. Fragile and ephemeral, this ego rests its identity on reason: “The k subject, by positing itself, is illusory, yet at the same time historically ^ \ very real.”16 The other is that which is different, incommensurable^/ with it—nature, the body, the unconscious: “The subject, in fact, is object as well, but in the process of claiming autonomy it has for­ gotten what constitutes it.”17 Imitation is a subconscious gesture that aims at experiencing the other; the subject wants to be like it in order to get to know it. Adorno’s understanding of this gesture seems profoundly shaped by the Freudian notion of identification, which is libidinal in origin, ambivalent in objective, and cognitive in its own special way: “A path leads from identification by way of imitation to empathy.”18 Adorno calls it innervation and insight, “the capability to experi­ ence,” which has not yet atrophied in children and is recuperated by the playful “as if ’ of art. The movement of identification is both regressive and utopian, appropriative as well as self-effacing. Accordingly, there are “bad” and “good” displays of ^mimesis in Adorno’s writing, depending on the self-consciousness otf the subject, on whether it knows its deter­ minations or not. While the subject in social history is determined by a context of power-relations and forced to see the other as thing (it wants to “have” it, thinks it “knows” it), the artistic subject, confined to the realm of make-believe, is without actual power. Its object is the material, which it gets to know by giving itself up to it in the process of reshaping and making it new.

Introduction

7

A major aim of this study is to contribute to making Adorno’s way of thinking and formulation more accessible in English.19 This is not an easy task, lo a sheer painful, exhilarating degree his medium is his message—not the German language as such but what he does with it. As one of his translators remarked, his untranslatability “is his most profound and cruel truth.” This remark sets the stage as it were for what we might call Adorno’s own critical-utopi­ an practice—a writing that reaches for the other: If the English-speaking reader is barred from participating in Adorno’s most brilliant successes, where he hits the mark and language becomes thought, there may be consolation in the fact that the untranslatability of those successes traces the contours of a failure—the failure of language to say what must be said, its estrangement from itself—whose shadow even the most brilliant success only darkens.20

Mimesis on the Move investigates a mobile, context-oriented concept which itself describes the mobility and plasticity of the imitative urge. The first chapter examines Adorno’s philosophy of history as set forth in Dialectic o f Enlightenment (1947), providing the basic frame for mimesis in social history. We will extrapolate certain “scenarios” to dramatize the frightful progression of an identification that arises from fear: the sorcerer and the demon, the myth-making hero, the rationalizing libertine, the deluded consumer, the furious fascist. The second chapter traces in detail the utopian content of the mimetic gesture as suggested by the two literary excurses of the book, the section on Homer’s Odyssey and the section on Sade’s VHistoire de Juliette. A transitional chapter, it shows how Adorno’s positive notion of mimesis is prepared. The third chapter correlates two major literary essays by Adorno, “Parataxis. On Holderlin’s Late Poetry” (1964), and “Trying to Understand Endgame” (1961), to delineate—like the synopsis that connects Homer with Sade—a trajectory from early to late modern­ ism, from song to silence. The fourth chapter, finally, selects four essays on writing (and on Adorno’s own work) from Noten zur Literatur (1958-1974) to

8

Mimesis on the Move

foreground the playful, erotic nature of identification. More accessi­ ble than his complex Aesthetic Theory (1970), they are preludes to the main theme of the Theory: mimesis, by imaging what exists, lets us imagine what doesn’t. In a certain sense art does not imitate reality but asks that reality imitate art. H ie mimetic is the salient part of Adorno’s critique of domina­ tion—the power-structure that pervades society, the economy of the self, the order of symbolic language^.21 Throughout history the ruling subject’s warped imitations respond to its own repressed nature (desire, sensation, a sense of connectedness) in a chain of identifica­ tions that ends in catastrophe. Art, on the other hand, is reason without domination. As artistic technique it finds a temporary “home” or identity in its material (language, music), which it forms into a new text or composition. It “reads,” interprets, experiments, plays. Without material it is nothing, just as spirit is nothing without matter, the mind nothing without the body. By objectifying itself in play, spirit/subjectivity awakens its objects (and itself) from reifica­ tion. Its dynamic recalls what the young Marx considered the key to criticizing ideology: making petrified relations dance by playing to them their own tune.

Introduction

9

N o tes 1 Karl Marx, Critique o f Hegel's ‘Philosophy of Right', trans. Annette Jolin and Joseph O’Malley (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press, 1970) p. 134. [“Man muss diese versteinerten Verhaltnisse dadurch zum Tanzen zwingen, daB man ihnen ihre eigne Melodie vorsingt!”] Karl Marx, “Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung.” In Karl Man. Friedrich Engels. Werke, I, ed. Institut fiir Mandsmus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED (Berlin: Dietz, 1981), p. 381. 2 Plato, The Republic and Other Works, trans. B. Jowett (New York: Anchor Press, 1973), p. 299. 3 Aristotle, The Poetics, trans. S.H. Butcher (London: Macmillan and Co., 1923), p. 15. 4 For a brief overview, see the section on mimetic theories in Alex Preminger, ed., Princeton Encyclopedia o f Poetry and Poetics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 640-641: “What the various theories have in common is the tendency to look to the nature of the given universe as the clue to the nature of poetry.” See also the excellent “Editor’s Introduction” on theoretical varia­ tions on Plato and Aristotle in Mihai Spariosu, ed., Mimesis in Contemporary Theory (Philadelphia and Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1984). 5 The major participants in the controversy, known as the Expressionismusdebatte, were Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin and Georg Lukdcs, with the first three defending a nonrepresentational realism. For an English presentation of the debate see Aesthetics and Politics (London: New Left Books, 1977).

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Mimesis on the Move

6 Erich Auerbach, Mimesis, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 554. 7 Georg Luk£cs, Die Eigenart des Asthetischen (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1963). 8 John D. Lyons and Stephen G. Nichols, Jr., ed., Mimesis. From Mirror to Method, Augustine to Descartes (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1982), p. 3. 9 Mihai Spariosu, Literature, Mimesis and Play. Essays in Literary Theory (Tubingen: Gunter Narr, 1982), p. 54.

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C ^^m bivalent, playing with itself, escaping from itself, fulfilling itself only by emptying itself, good and evil at once, undecidably mimesis is related to the pharmakon.n Jacques Derrida, “La pharmacie de Platon,” in La dissimulation (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1972), p. 160, trans. Steven Rendall. 11 Rend Girard, To Double Business Bound (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 193). 12 Gerard E Else, “ ‘Imitation’ in the Fifth Century,” Classical Philology 53, No. 2 (1958), p. 84. 13 An exception is Michael Cahn, “Subversive Mimesis: TW. Adorno and the Modem Impasse of Critique,” in Spariosu, ed., Mimesis in Contemporary Theory, pp. 27-64. The essay defines Adorno’s “counter-concept” as the homeopathic strategy of a postKantian objective critique that “is subversive not of governing ratio­ nality, but of the distinction between affirmation and critique. Being a critique of critique it is subversive of the mimetic which can only maintain its critical relevance by mimetically giving it up” (p. 50). While Cahn’s important contribution is the only systematic treat­ ment in English, it tends to make the concept abstract to the point

Introduction

11

of parody. Spariosu, by contrast, deftly situates Adorno as an expo­ nent of “bioanthropological mimesis," comparable to Girard. Martin Jay, in his monograph Adorno (Cambridge, Massachu^setts: Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 155-159, calls the mimetic the utopian moment in Adorno’s thought, as does Susan Buckit- Morss in The Origin o f Negative Dialectics. Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt Institute (Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1977), p. 131, or Richard Wolin in “The DeAestheticization of Art: On Adorno’s Aesthetische Theories Telos Q ) 41 (1979), who characterizes mimesis as “an important corrective,”(• ) as “that ineffable dimension that remains occluded in pure concep­ tualization” (pp. 117, 119). One study in German addresses mimesis extensively in Adorno’s musicological writings, Martin Zenck, Kunst als begnffslose Erkenntnis (Munchen: Fink, 1977); others more cursorily, such as Friedemann Grenz, Adornos Philosophie in Grundbegriffen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974), pp. 23-44, Ulrich Schwarz, Rettende Kritik und antizipierte Utopie (Munchen: Wilhelm Fink, 1981), pp. 209-213; Alo Allkemper, Rettung und Utopie. Studien zu Adorno (Paderbom: Ferdinand Schoningh, 1981), pp. 144-161; Rolf Wiggershaus, Theo­ dor W. Adorno (Munchen: Beck, 1987), pp. 40-47. Two pertinent essays are found in Burkhardt Lindner und W. Martin Liidke, ed., Materialien zur asthetischen Theorie Th. W. Adornos. Konstruktion der Modeme (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980): Bernhard Lypp, “Selbsterhaltung un^asthetische Erfahrung. Zur Geschichtsphilosophie und asthetischen Theorie Adornos,” (pp. 187-218) and Dieter Kliche, “Kunst gegen Verdinglichung. Beriihrungspunkte im Gegensatz von Adorno und LukScs,” pp. 219-260. 14 See Michael Ryan’s chapter “Deconstruction and Dialectics” in his Marxism and Deconstructionism: A Critical Articulation (Bal­ timore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 73-81. In a curious reversal of chronology Ryan implies that Adorno might learn from Derrida—not the other way around.

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Mimesis on the Move

15 Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophische Terminologie I (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973), p. 14 (my translation). 16 Theodor W. Adorno, “Zu Subjekt und Objekt,” in Stichworte. Kritische Modelle 2 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969), p. 164 (my transla­ tion). 17 Adorno, “Zu Subjekt und Objekt,” p. 163 (my translation). 18 Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis o f the Ego, trans. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1959), p. 42. 19 lo date, there are three valuable books in English that con­ centrate on Adorno: Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin o f Negative Dialectics. Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt Institute (Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1977), Gillian Rose, The Melancholy Science. An Introduction to the Thought o f Theodor W. Adorno (London: Macmillan, 1978), and Martin Jay, Adomo (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984). Each situates him intellectually: Buck-Morss stresses the profound influ­ ence that Benjamin’s concept of immanent criticism had on him, Rose his concept of reification in relation to that of LukScs and Marx, Jay a force-field of five distinct poles: Marxism, aesthetic modernism, a “mandarin” cultural conservatism, Jewish messianism, and a Nietzsche-inspired deconstructionism. Books that devote substantial portions to Adorno are Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form: TWentieth-century Dialectical Theories o f Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), Eugene Lunn, Marxism and Modernism: an Historical Study o f Lukdcs, Brecht Benjamin and Adomo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), and Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm and Utopia: A Study o f the Foundations o f Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). 20 See Samuel M. Weber’s introductory essay, “Translating the Untranslatable,” in Theodor W. Adorno, Prisms, trans. Samuel and

Introduction

13

Shierry Weber (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1981), p. 15. 21 There are striking affinities between Adorno’s critique and Julia Kristeva’s analysis of symbolic language. In fact, one might call Kristeva’s project the contemporary feminist counterpart to Adorno’s. She, too, negates the barriers of disciplines that separate psychology from history, literature from philosophy. She, too, ana­ lyzes the language of the social order in terms of repression, posit­ ing an objective force anterior to subjective rationality. She, too, calls Holderlin and Beckett the two poles for experimental modern­ ism—the laboratory where language polemicizes against language. Her concept of the semiotic, in particular, resembles Adorno’s understanding of the mimetic. Analyzing the poetic and scientific moments of language in their contradiction and interrelationship, she conceives of a pre-Oedipal play of libidinal forces inside lan­ guage, comparing it to the infant’s attachment to the maternal body and contrasting it to the symbolic order that separates the infant from the mother and makes it subject to the Law of the Father: meaningful, rational discourse. The semiotic is the other within language, with its material, rhythmical qualities emphatically at work in poetry. Like the mimetic impulse it unsettles the order we speak and that speaks us, showing “in its most disruptive form (unreadable for meaning, dangerous to the subject), . . . the constraints of a civilization dominated by transcendental rationality.” Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language, trans. Gora, Jardine, Roudiez, New York: Columbia University Press, 1980, p. 140.

I

F r o m E nactm ent to A g g r e ssio n : F iv e H isto r ic a l S cen a rio s As a system of signs, language is required to resign itself to calculation in order to know nature, and must discard the claim to be like her. As image, it is required to resign itself to mirror imagery in order to be nature entire, and must discard the claim to know her. Dialectic o f Erdightenmerii*

Adorno’s understanding of mimesis or, more precisely, the imitative disposition of a self toward an other, is part of a radical critique of rationality, the dominant cognitive mode of the Western tradition. This mode is abstract, oppositional and hierarchical. It employs concepts that level the specific differences of what exists and that position the subject over and against what it declares as separate from and beneath itself. Rationality, moreover, is class-and gender-based. By subjecting its objects it tacitly assumes that the one who “knows” is male and in charge.2 Mimesis, on the other hand, is responsive and concrete. It works through images rather than concepts and approaches the other (nature, the unconscious, social others) as something different yet related, more “powerful” than the self. It responds emotionally, intuitively. Through gestures and movements it sets forth the self’s

16

Mimesis on the Move

experience of what it feels apart from yet also a part of, assuming—for the moment—the features of the other. These two modes of apprehending, one to know mentally, the other bodily, are dialectically related. We could call them man’s reason and imagination but might lose the specific weight and dynamic Adomo ascribes to them. If form is sedimented content, the term “rationality” carries an entire history of enlightened domi­ nation, while “mimesis,” reminiscent of mimicry and thus its biologi­ cal origin, speaks of a history of cunning and repression, survival ploys and thwarted attachments. We will turn to these histories as described by Adorno’s Dialec­ tic o f Enlightenment. The book, co-authored with Max Horkheimer,3 gives an alarming review of the course taken by civilization. Written in the early 1940’s, it proceeds from the premise that the history of progressive thought is propelled by man's domination of nature. This domination, an external as well as internal process that aims at both the “enemy” without and within, takes the form of repression. Internal nature is maimed while external nature is subjugated. Man—not a generic but pointedly specific term—confronts nature as separate, foreign and inimical to himself, relegating physis and instinct (together with social inferiors such as women and laborers) to the category of “other.” The myth of nature-as-other serves to legitimize his power and rationalize his fear. Myth becomes enlight­ enment. Yet such enlightenment generates yet another myth, that of man as the identical, self-same, fully rational subject. It suppresses the elements constitutive of his subjectivity: a dependence on power and distorted relation to the body and the unconscious. Enlighten­ ment turns into myth. This analysis of the rational subject’s determination to be in control also alludes to his passion to imitate, to “return” to nature through a certain kind of psychosomatic behavior that recalls the dimension he has excluded. Dialectic o f Enlightenment, in fact, suggests an entire, ill-fated story of mimetic behavior that secretly accompanies the history of rational thought. As Adorno and Hork­ heimer point out in one of their “Notes and Drafts,” “Unter der bekannten Geschichte Europas lauft eine unterirdische. Sie besteht

From Enactment to Aggression

17

im Schicksal der durch Zivilisation verdrangten und entstellten menschlichen Instinkte und Leidenschaften” (DA, p. 207). [Europe has two histories: a well-known, written history and an underground history. The latter consists in the fate of the human instincts and passions which are displaced and distorted by civilization (DE, p. 231)]. Man’s progressive independence of nature—the stated pur­ pose of his enlightenment—is thus tied to an increasingly troubled and regressive connection to it.4 His mimesis becomes the foil and counterpart to his reason, making visible what rationality hides.

The Argument Adomo and Horkheimer’s main topic of inquiry is the history of rationality in light of its results. Or, formulated in terms of the question the historical moment urged them to pursue, “warum die Menschheit, anstatt in einen wahrhaft menschlichen Zustand einzutreten, in eine neue Art von Barbarei versinkt” (DA, p. 1); [why mankind, instead of entering into a truly human condition, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism (DE, p. »)]. By responding to the fascism rampant in Nazi-Germany and the culture industry that confronted them in the United States, the two exiles meant to shed light on the contradictions of Western civilization, on its promises and betrayals, its proclaimed ideals and actual machinations. They also hoped that their investigation would clear the path for a new notion of enlightenment, a concept of reason not based on power, not prompted by profit, not issuing from repression. “Die . . . an der Aufklarung geiibte Kritik soli einen positiven Begriff von ihr vorbereiten, der sie aus ihrer Verstrickung in blinder Herrschaft lost” (DA, p. 5). [The . . . critique of enlightenment is intended to prepare the way for a positive notion of enlightenment which will release it from entanglement in blind domination (DE, p. xvi)]. Put positively, Adorno and Horkheimer understand enlighten­ ment as an all-encompassing concept for human liberation. Together with the liberation of society from divisive class-structures (its objective aspect) goes the single member’s liberation from psycho­ logical repression (its subjective aspect). Yet neither the period in

18

Mimesis on the Move

intellectual history known as the age of Enlightenment nor the development that has occurred since has made good on this mean­ ing. Worse yet, historical enlightenment throughout, beginning with the advent of abstract thought in ancient Greece, has been regres­ sive in its progression, has produced new forms of enslavement. Like primitive man's relations to nature, modern social relations, together with their characteristic structures of feeling and thinking, are marked by a dialectic of power and fear. The social order has turned into a “natural" one, into second nature.5 The autonomous subject, so emphatically proclaimed by Immanuel Kant, has never existed in reality. Instead, the subject, from its inception the mental construct of one who controls, has been dependent on actual and imagined power over others: “Das Erwachen des Subjekts wird erkauft durch die Anerkennung der Macht als des Prinzips aller Beziehungen” (DA, p. 12). [The awakening of the self is paid for by the acknowledgement of power as the principle of all relations (DE, p. 9)]. While the argument Adomo and Horkheimer put forth in their book is in one sense a plea for a new and open, object-related subject embodying their notion of true enlightenment, it is first of all a sustained polemic against the myth of a “pure” subject, a disinterested rationality that reasons “objectively.” They do not believe that reason is purely a matter of mind but is tied, as con­ sciousness is to the body, to certain socio-historic conditions. The earliest and fundamental condition of Western rationality is the division of labor. Valued unequally, it creates a split between those who produce and those who benefit, the latter being interest­ ed in laying claim to that which they benefit from as their own. From this condition arises a reasoning that is motivated by private property.6 With the advent of property the line between self and other becomes the chasm between subject and object, owner and possession, knower and known. The subject assumes a single-minded identity and identifies everything else unilaterally as opposite and object. Everything that is different, diverse and diffuse receives its identity from being not this subject—who is male and of the domi­ nant class.6 With such division and hierarchy, a poverty of interre­

From Enactment to Aggression

19

lationships, of actual and possible affinities sets in. One identity is pitted against another, man against nature, subject over object The trajectory suggested by Dialectic o f Enlightenment reaches from prehistory to the middle of the 20th century. It begins with a fledgling self and ends with the fascist subject, marking as turning points the emergent, still myth-oriented subject of Greek antiquity and his eventual successor, the “fully" rational subject of the late 18th centuiy. During the prehistoric phase, divided into the times of mana and magic, a self emerges by gradually establishing itself vis-&-vis nature. This is the phase in which language and self-consciousness take shape. Learning to manipulate nature while shifting from nomadic to settled existence, this self changes into the emergent subject, who simultaneously learns to manipulate myth. The history that follows is the history of a subject that claims to be in control. Here, Adorno and Horkheimer focus on the bourgeois era, again divided into two periods, the late 18th century as the time of ratio­ nality triumphant, and the mid-20th century when reason runs amok. In the process, the so-called rational subject turns into a phobic, subjugated self—the distorted after-image, as it were, of his ancient predecessor, primitive man. The development is not presented in linear fashion, however. The five essays that make up Dialectic o f Enlightenment—pointedly subtitled “Philosophical Fragments"—meditate on this development selectively and in what has been called stereoscopic fashion, that is, each point of analysis opens up to past and future implications, to economic determinants and psychosocial results, to epistemological positions and their psychoanalytic dimensions. The aim is not to provide a linear and comprehensive survey (a method that would contradict Adomo and Horkheimer’s critical project profoundly), but to give a multidimensional view of particular uses and abuses of reason at certain historical moments. Still, we can detect a scheme. The unself-conscious primitive, responding to nature by instinct, experiences its forces as diffuse. As he develops the notion of self through language, he personifies and localizes these forces as “powers." Partially self-conscious man,

20

Mimesis on the Move

while still submitting to such personifications in the form of divini­ ties, begins placing them into a system, a mythology. A system is knowable, hence manipulable; it is a structure that objectifies. Once the decisive step of demythologizing the system is taken by unmask­ ing the divinities and erstwhile “powers” as mechanical forces, nature can be identified as man’s (the subject’s) defeated other. It becomes an object of knowledge. The alienation between man and his objects (nature, women, other men) is based on conquest and domination. It arises with the kind of “rational” social organization that insures private property and domesticates desire. Its hierarchical and divisive order structures society into rulers and ruled, laborers and beneficiaries. It also provides the model for a new kind of reasoning: abstract thought. This thinking subsumes difference under identity, ignores the partic­ ular for the sake of the universal: “Die Allgemeinheit der Gedanken, wie die diskursive Logik sie entwickelt, die Herrschaft in der Sphare des Begriffs, erhebt sich auf dem Fundament der Herrschaft in der Wirldichkeit” (DA, p. 16). [The universality of ideas as developed by discursive logic, domination in the conceptual sphere, is raised up on the basis of actual domination (DE, p. 14)]. The new social/mental order is oppressive as well as repressive; it alien­ ates men from each other, from women and children, and from themselves. The rational subject, the ruler himself, must subjugate his psyche to the system he created: “Nicht blofl mit der Entfremdung der Menschen von den beherrschten Objekten wird fur die Herrschaft bezahlt: mit der Versachlichung des Geistes wurden die Beziehungen der Menschen selber verhext, auch die jedes Einzelnen zu sich” (DA, p. 28). [It is not merely that domination is paid for by the alienation of men from the objects dominated: with the objectifi­ cation of spirit, the very relations of men—even those of the indi­ vidual to himself—were bewitched (DE, p. 28)]. Adomo and Horkheimer’s two-pronged critique thus addresses the rational subject’s own subjugation along with his longstanding domination of others: Western civilization’s aborigines, slaves, serfs, servants, and laborers. The element of repression is of central importance to the scheme. Nothing in Adomo and Horkheimer’s dialectical history is

From Enactment to Aggression

21

lost. Instead, it is transformed and aufgehoben—not in the Hegelian sense of “overcome and sublated” but with Freud’s meaning of “changed but conserved.” Ignorance, irrationality, and subjugation have not been overcome but have changed into instrumental reason, methodic exploitation, and fearful exclusion. The desire for knowledge has not been the antagonist of igno- / ranee but of fear; it has repressed fear, has fed on it in its hunger for domination, has metabolized it into power. Adomo and Horkhei­ mer cite as an “enlightened” exponent of such knowledge Francis Bacon, who at the dawn of modernity praised knowledge as power, reason as an instrument of conquest inherited from (and turned against) nature, “lechnik ist das Wesen dieses Wissens. Es zielt nicht auf Begriffe und Bilder, nicht auf das Gluck der Einsicht, sondern auf Methode, Ausnutzung der Arbeit anderer, Kapital” (DA, p. 8). [Technology is the essence of this knowledge. It does not work by concepts and images, by the fortunate insight, but refers to method, the exploitation of others’ work, and capital (DE, p. 4)]. An analysis of the sophisticated marketing techniques used by the culture industry, and of the ingenious political manipulation employed by German fascism, illustrates the operation of this knowl­ edge in the present. Similarly, rationality has not been the antagonist of irrationality ✓ but has worked against all that is changing and diverse. It has forced diversity first into unity, then equivalence, promoting the rational, coercive system. This assessment aims at a logic whose abstract reasoning has engendered the all too concretely applied notions of calculability and exchange: “Die formale Logik war die groBe Schule der Vereinheitlichung . . . Dieselben Gleichungen beherrschen die burgerliche Gerechtigkeit und den Warenaustausch” (DA, p. 10). [Formal logic was the major school of unified science . . . The same equations dominate bourgeois justice and commodity exchange (DE, p. 7)]. Finally, the consciousness of being a self, in the history of the rational subject, has not been set in relation to the body and the S unconscious but has been pitted against a not-self, a threatening other than must be repressed. Self consciousness is defined by way

Mimesis on the Move

22

of exclusion and turns into a rigidly defensive identity. Ultimately, for the phobic fascist only totalitarianism will do. “Es darf iiberhaupt nichts mehr draufien sein, weil die blofie Vorstellung des Draufien die eigentliche Quelle der Angst ist” (DA, p. 18). [Nothing at all may remain outside, because the mere idea of outside is the very source of fear (DE, p. 16)].

The Perspective Dialectic o f Enlightenment is the impassioned response to a world in shambles. A critique of reason, it was written as the collab­ orative project of two German scholars in exile who were of the enlightened bourgeois tradition themselves. As critical theorists they wanted to bring to bear the traditional disciplines of sociology, psychology, and epistemology on their investigation, but found that the structures of enlightened thinking together with the language of science presented the first obstacle. Their self-reflective history thus begins with a statement of their position on the possibilities and limitations of enlightenment, on the hope it harbors and the regres­ sive moment it hides: Wir hegen keinen Zweifel . . . daB die Freiheit in der Geseltschaft vom aufklflrenden Denken unabtrennbar ist Jedoch glauben wir, genauso deutlich erkannt zu haben, daB der Begriff eben dieses Denkens, nicht weniger als die konkreten historischen Formen, die Institutionen der Gesellschaft in die es verflochten ist, schon den Keim zu jenem RUckschritt enthalten, der heute aberall sich ereignet. Nimmt Aufkiarung die Reflexion auf dieses rQckiaufige Moment nicht in sich auf, so besiegelt sie ihr eigenes Schicksal (DA, p. 3). [We are wholly convinced . . . that social freedom is inseparable from enlightened thought. Nevertheless, we believe that we have just as clearly recognized that the notion of this very way of thinking, no less than the actual historic forms—the social institutions—with which it is interwoven, already contains the seed of the reversal universally apparent today. If enlightenment does not accommodate reflection on this recidivist element, then it seals its own fate (DE, p. xiii)].

From Enactment to Aggression

23

The five essays that follow trace the histoiy of enlightenment by analyzing both its turning points and its current expressions. The last two essays investigate the contemporary scene; they presuppose several of the empirical studies carried out by the Institute of Social Research during the Thirties and Forties.7 They also exhibit the passion of their authors most clearly, since they concern what prompted the critique in the first place: administered culture and fascist aggression. The essay on the culture industry shows up so-called popular culture as a palliative for an alienated work world, while “Elements of Anti-Semitism: Limits of Enlightenment” reveals the psychological and economic mechanisms that mark fascist mentality and behavior. The introductory essay, “The Concept of Enlightenment,” links selfserving rationality with hierarchically structured societies based on class divisions and explores the prehistory of enlightenment. The second and third essay, called Excursus I and II, consist of Adorno’s interpretation of two literary texts, one from the dawn of enlighten­ ment, “Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment,” the other from its eclipse at the end of the 18th century, “Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality.” The Homer interpretation presents Odysseus as the prototype for the emergent rational subject, while the essay on Sade discusses the philosophy of the fully rational libertine. The twenty-four notes and drafts that follow range from aphoris­ tic entries of a few lines to short essays of several pages, from comments “Against Being Tbo Clever” to thoughts on “The Genesis of Stupidity.” The longest essay, “Man and Animal,” reviews the history that has been assigned to women by a thoroughly patriarchal tradition, together with the places allotted to animals, children and Jews in the fascist society this tradition has engendered. Adomo and Horkheimer warn as much against the barbaric stupidity of the Hitler regime as they do against the well-informed rationality of those who did not think “it” was possible: “Hitler war gegen den Geist und widermenschlich. Es gibt aber auch einen Geist, der widermenschlich ist: sein Merkmal ist wohlorientierte Uberlegenheit” (DA, p. 187). [Hitler was opposed to spirit and to humanity. But

24

Mimesis on the Move

there is also a spirit which is anti-human: its sign is cleverly posi­ tioned superiority (trans. mine)]. Convinced that truth is historical, that it arises from the critical reflection on one’s own situation, they make a strong case for the style and structure in which they present their philosophy. In the face of growing totalitarianism and technologically ever more effi­ cient social administration, they find it necessary to resist the sys­ tematic, abstract approach. Their writing illustrates distrust of the positivistic method of taking inventory, of presenting a “rational,” streamlined package of argument designed for consumption: “Wenn die Offentlichkeit einen Zustand erreicht hat, in dem unentrinnbar der Gedanke zur Ware und die Sprache zu deren Anpreisung wird, so muB der Versuch, solcher Depravation auf die Spur zu kommen, den geltenden sprachlichen und gedanklichen Anforderungen Gefolgschaft versagen” (DA, p. 1). [When public opinion has reached a state in which thought inevitably becomes a commodity, and language the means of promoting that commodity, then the attempt to trace the course of such depravation has to deny any allegiance to current linguistic and conceptual conventions (DE, p. xii)]. Their language, examining the repression of gestures, images, and mindful concepts, becomes part of their message. The book, published in Holland after the war, remained under­ ground reading for a long time. When it was issued anew in 1969, Adomo and Horkheimer noted that part of what they had written twenty-five years earlier was no longer adequate to the current situation. It had to be considered documentation for a particular historical moment, that of the National Socialist terror. On the other hand, they stood by their general analysis—which seems to have lost none of its urgency today: . In der Periode der politischen Spaltung io QbergroQe BlOcke, die objektiv dazu gedrflngt werden, aufeinander zu prallen, hat das Grauen sich fortgesetzt. Die Konflikte in der Dritten Welt, das emeute Anwachsen des Ibtalitarismus sind so wenig nur historische Zwischenfaile, wie, der Dkdektik zufolge, der damalige Ffeschismus es war (DA, p. ix).

From Enactment to Aggression

25

[In a period of political division into immense power-blocks, set objectively upon collision, the sinister trend continues. The conflicts in the Third World and the renewed growth of totalitarianism are just as little mere historical episodes as, according to the Dialectic, was Riscism in its time (DE,p.ix)].

Rationality’s Double Agent Scattered throughout Dialectic o f Enlightenment are brief refer­ ences to mimetic behavior, understood as the protective device by a self that adapts to its environment, that wants to become like the power it perceives. In pre-history, this behavior takes the form of enacting concretely experienced “demons;” in advanced civilization it appears as the rigid mask of a reified consciousness that is struc­ turally like the society it inhabits: “Der Zauberer macht sich Damonen ahnlich; um sie zu erschrecken oder zu besanftigen, gebardet er sich schreckhaft oder sanft. Wenngleich sein Amt die Wiederholung ist, hat er sich noch nicht wie der Zivilisierte . . . fiirs Ebenbild der unsichtbaren Macht erklart” (DA, p. 12). [The magician imitates demons; in order to frighten them or to appease them, he behaves frighteningly or makes gestures of appeasement. Even though his task is impersonation, he never conceives of himself as does the civilized man . . . as the image of the invisible power (DE, p. 910)]. With progressive enlightenment and man’s alienation fron3 nature, mimetic (pre-historic), mythical (ancient), and metaphysical (early modem) modes of behavior are “left behind” yet remain secretly conserved. The fear of nature that initiates imitation contin--1 ues throughout and shows itself in the display of a progressively rigid self-image. What gets lost is early mimesis’ fluidity and the aspect of play.* The gestures, movements and actions that bodily express the subject’s psychology eventually turn into deadly serious business. Adomo and Horkheimer’s carefully placed allusions and refer­ ences to mimesis form a network of their own.9 Their densely metaphorical style, attentive to the history that is inscribed in a given term, frequently assumes the shadings and subsense of literary language. Embedded in this intricate text we find the thread to the

26

Mimesis on the Move

vicissitudes of mimetic behavior. From biological mimicry to “magi­ cal” impersonation, from Odysseus’ cunning to Sadian torture, from the mask of reason to fascist projection—all contain an imitative ^jelement that illuminates man’s relation to nature. Pressed into /service by instrumental reason,\rpimesis changes from child’s play to (compulsion, from erotic attitude to destructive fury] The change proceeds dialectically, tied to the progressive/regressive movement of a reason that reaches its limits in anti-Semitic phobia: Der Antisemitismus beruht auf falscher Projektion. Sie ist das Widerspiel zur echten Mimesis, der verdrangten zutiefst verwandt, ja vielleicht der pathische Charakterzug, in dem diese sich nieder-schiagt. Wenn Mimesis sich der Umwelt ahnlich macht, so macht falsche Projektion die Umwelt sich ahnlich. Wird ftlr jene das AuBen zum Modell, dem das Innen sich anschmiegt, das Fremde zum Vertrauten, so versetzt diese das sprungbereite Innen ins AuBere und pragt noch das Vertrauteste als Feind (DA,p.l67). [Anti-Semitism is based on false projection. It is the counterpart of true mimesis, and fundamentally related to the repressed form; in fact, it is probably the morbid expression of repressed mimesis. Mimesis imitates the environment, but false projection makes the environment like itself. For mimesis the outside world is a model which the inner world must try to conform to: the alien must become familiar; but false projection confuses the inner and outer world and defines the most intimate experiences as hostile (DE, p. 187)].

f

The passage, by differentiating between “true” and “false” 1 mimesis, shows the two ultimately related. They are distinct as historical phenomena, compounded as manifestations of the same impulse. Adomo and Horkheimer point to the historical result of a dialectic in which an adaptive and imaginative mode of behavior is repressed at the expense of rationality and continues to return. Characteristic for this movement is the Freudian figure of the return ^ of the repressed.10 The place of Freudian theory in Dialektik der Aufldarung is usually overlooked,11 even though the overall project of the Frank­ furt Institute of Social Research was to bring together psychoanalyti­ cal findings about the self with a Marxist understanding of the

From Enactment to Aggression

27

society that these selves inhabited.12 Adomo himself began his career with a Habilitationsschrij't (superseded by a second one on Kierkegaard) on the concept of the unconscious in transcendental psychology, where he explicitly sides with Freud. Some of his later essays, such as “Die revidierte Psychoanalyse,” “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda,” “Zum Verhaltnis von Soziologie und Psychologie,” investigate the relationship between psychology and sociology. Although he clearly gives priority to the latter, he nonetheless points to the important function of psycholo­ gy: “Die Irrationalitat des rationalen Systems kommt zum Vorschein in der Psychologie des eingefangenen Subjekts” [The irrationality of the rational system comes into focus in the psychology of the impris­ oned subject (trans. mine)].13 This psychology is made visible by the subject’s mimesis, lie d to the history of his reason, it ranges from enactment to aggression, ^ transformed—and eventually perverted—by repression, yet conserved as imitative impulse nonetheless. The ill-fated development assumes concrete shape if we extrapo­ late from the five essays of Dialectic o f Enlightenment a series of scenarios. These scenarios, stage settings and plots for the subject’s mimetic performance as it were, will follow the points on which Adomo and Horkheimer’s philosophy of history turns: the pre­ historic phase of “mana” and “magic” (suggested by the first essay), followed by the historical phase marked by the stages of Greek mythology and 18th-century reason (the second and third essay), and, finally, the contemporaiy scene of mid-20th-century culture and politics (the fourth and fifth essay). The alluded to “sub-terranean history of the instincts and pas­ sions” proceeds via these stages, ranging from the sorcerer enacting nature’s power within a “magic” circle to the fascist acting out repressed nature within a concentration camp: physical proof for reaching the limits. Or, as Adorno and Horkheimer summarize the course from its “rational” side, “So ist die Bahn der europaischen Zivilisation verlaufen. Die Abstraktion, das Werkzeug der Aufklarung, verhalt sich zu ihren Objekten wie das Schicksal, dessen Begriff sie ausmerzt: als Liquidation” (DA, p. 15). [Hence the course of

28

Mimesis on the Move

European civilization. Abstraction, the tool of enlightenment, treats its objects as did fate, the notion of which it rejects: it liquidates them (DE, p. 13)].

Preparing the Stage At the dawn of human existence, “mana” is the uneasy exclama­ tion in the face of eveiything that is foreign, changing, and diffuse. A still indistinct, quasi-religious feeling places the unfamiliar beyond the familiar, eventually turning the inexplicable into something sacred and fearful. The reaction of the primitive does not mean that he responds to a spiritual substance that is of a higher order than the material one, but that he experiences isolation and helplessness in the face of external nature. At this stage, human existence is still nomadic and socially unstructured. However, a mental structure takes shape with the experience of unfamiliarity: / v

Der Ruf des Schreckens, mit dem das Ungewobnte erfohren wird, wird zu seinem Namen. Er fbdert die Thtnszendenz des Unbekannten gegenQber dem Bekannten und damit den Schauder als Heiligkeit. Die Verdoppelung der Natur in Schein und Wesen, Wirkung und Kraft, die den Mythos sowohl wie die Wissenschaft erst mOglich macht, stammt aus der Angst des Menschen, deren Ausdruck zur Erkiarung wird (DA, p. 17). [The outcry of fear which accompanies the experience of the uncanny becomes its name. It fixes the transcendence of the unknown in relation to the known, hence terror as sacredness. The doubling of nature as . appearance and essence, effect and power, which makes possible both myth and science, originates in human fear, the expression of which becomes explanation (trans. mine)]. "2

In Adomo and Horkheimer’s analysis, speech articulates con­ sciousness, signifying language self-consciousness. Once “mana” changes from being an exclamation to being a name, and from being a name to being a sign, the basic structure of being self-conscious is expressed: being separate from, yet connected to, an other—to nature. The raising of nature to religion, of physis to mito-physis, arises from fear. Religious perception marks the transition from l

From Enactment to Aggression

29

expressive language (the naming of things) to signifying language (the giving meaning to names). Once the tree is no longer just “tree” but a place where “powerful” mana resides, language ex­ presses the contradiction that something is and is not what it is: nature becomes power, the human being a self.

First Scenario: The Sorcerer and the Demon When we come to the second stage of this phylogenetic devel­ opment, we can envision the first mimetic scenario: the sorcerer’s impersonation of the demon, or, in psychological terms, his tempo­ rary identification with the demon’s power. In the course of social development, the primitive, now orga­ nized in tribal communities, attributes demons to the places and occasions of his fright. He can thus single them out and approach nature, perceived in such moments as other, on a one-to-one basis. An as yet struggling self, he practices magic to appease the threat­ ening forces he experiences. These forces include internal as well as external nature, instincts and environment. But the primitive’s notion of self is still fluid and open, determined by particular situa­ tions: “Es war nicht der eine und identische Geist, der Magie betrieb; er wechselte gleich den Kultmasken, die den vielen Geistem ahnlich sein sollten” (DA, p. 12). [Magic was not ordered by one idential spirit: it changed like the cultic masks which were supposed to accord with the various spirits (DE, p. 9)]. Through spell-casting and impersonation the emergent self expresses its desire to survive. The space where this happens is temporary and imaginary, a theatrical space of movements and masks. The sorcerer draws a magic circle, steps into it and, for the duration of his performance, becomes the demon. He practices identification. This kind of mimesis, practiced in early tribal commu­ nities, means to protect the group from a hostile environment and internal enemies such as sickness and disruption. The object of magic is always specific and concrete. Although the sorcerer’s rela­ tion to nature is manipulative (he uses the magic circle to trap the demon; his mimetic enactment wants to cause certain effects), he

30

Mimesis on the Move

y acknowledges nature on its terms, counteracting the power he perceives by imitating or “borrowing” it. The sorcerer's representational (steUvertretend) behavior does not identify nature as an object of knowledge, but shows his identifi­ cation with it, his getting-to-know it as a specific other. The mime­ sis of this early stage is magical indeed. It works by imitating some­ thing imaginary yet concrete, such as the powerful wind, the un­ known sickness, the absent enemy. The gestures always adapt to the specific situation, exhibit a correlation: they are timid if the purpose is to appease, frightful if they mean to frighten. For the duration of 'the performance, the sorcerer is the other; he vanishes through identification. The subject of the fear becomes the object of fear, makes fear present. Representation, in Adomo and Horkheimer’s vocabulary, means standing in for someone because of an affinity: Vertretbarkeit. “In der Magie gibt es spezifische Vertretbarkeit. Was dem Speer des Feindes, seinem Haar, seinem Namen geschieht, werde zugleich der /1 Person angetan . . . Die Beziehung ist nicht die der Intention 1 sondem der Verwandtschaft” (DA, p. 13). [In magic there is specific representation. What happens to the enemy's spear, hair or name, also happens to the individual. . . The relation is one not of inten­ tion but of relatedness (DE, p. 10-11)]. Just as mimetic behavior is considered characteristic for early phylogenetic development, identification figures importantly in the ego-establishing processes described by psychoanalysis. Freud calls identification the earliest expression of an emotional tie with anoth­ er person. The child wants to be like the parent, eventually (uncon­ sciously) wanting to replace the parent of the same sex. At the very beginning of ego-development, identification is indistinguishable from making the parent an object of libidinal energy, from wanting to have the object. The double function of wanting to be and wanting to have characterizes the primitive oral stage, where sexual instinct has not yet separated from the survival or hunger instinct “Identification, in fact, is ambivalent from the very first; it can turn / ''into an expression of tenderness as easily as into the wish for someone’s removal. It behaves like a derivative of the first, oral

From Enactment to Aggression

31

phase of the organization of the libido, in which the object that we long for and prize is assimilated by eating and in that way annihi­ lated as such.”14 The adaptive/tender as well as the regressive/threatening aspect of this psychic mechanism compares strikingly to mimesis' dualw"" aspect of imaging/replacings Concerning representation, Vertretbar­ keit, Adorno and Horkheimer note that it is both the vehicle of progress and of regression. A helpful analogy for the historical development of mimesis is] Freud’s comment about a later stage of ego-development. After the( two basic instincts of hunger and sex have separated, the ego, still feeble, becomes aware of the tendency of the id to attach its needs to objects and, depending on the strength of the superego, “either acquiesces in them or tries to fend them off by the process of repression.”15 He further notes that “where there is repression and where the mechanisms of the unconscious are dominant, objectchoice is turned back into identification—the ego assumes the char- ^ acteristic of the object”16 —an uncomfortable reminder of where i our trajectory will lead: to the commodity fetishism of the 20th-j century consumer.

Second Scenario: The Hero and His Gods The scenario of the early historical phase, the stage of mytholo­ gy, positions man as hero and trickster against a deified nature. He adapts to the power of the gods by using tricks, by simulating earlier phylogenetic stages to insure his survival, yet he also has means to stand his ground. Bowing to the divine, he practices the cunning of reason, “die List der Vemunft.”17 The imaginative yet concrete space of the sorcerer is replaced by a contract, a mythological (mythical and logical) agreement between the hero and his gods: while they demand what he must do, he does what he must for purposes of his own. Logic is designed in his favor. He exploits the ] contract by fulfilling it, duping the divinities with regression. jv Odysseus is the prototype, an early cultivator of dissimulation. \ On occasion of his travels he plays dead (the Sirens episode), !

t

*

32

Mimesis on the Move

pretends anonymity (the Cylcops episode), or substitutes sacrifice to appease the gods (the Hades episode). We will examine these and other “adventures” in detail in the next chapter, concentrating for now on the qualitative change in the development. The social order that corresponds to this stage is feudal. Grounded in fixed property relations, society has become “civilized” compared to the tribal movements and communal relations of the magic stage: “An die Stelle der lokalen Geister und Damonen war der Himmel und seine Hierarchie getreten, an die Stelle der Beschworungspraktiken des Zauberers und Stammes das wohlabgestufte Opfer und die durch Befehl vermittelte Arbeit von Unfreien” (DA, p. 11). [In place of the local spirits and demons there ap­ peared heaven and its hierarchy; in place of the invocations of the magician and the tribe the distinct gradation of sacrifice and the labor of the unfree mediated through the word of command (DE, p. 8)]. Subjectivity begins by mythologizing nature, by organizing experi­ ence into a rational—albeit mythical—system. Images and stories based on particular phenomena and concrete occurrences are placed within a certain topography whose order, with its hierarchical power relations, corresponds to the social order. The fact that Adomo and Horkheimer locate the origin of the Western bourgeois subject as far back as ancient Greece reflects a notion of history in which history and nature, self-determination and the determinations of the self are intricately intertwined. History is understood not primarily as a history of class struggle but as a history of nature.18 f /[M im etic behavior pre-dates the subject[ Patterned after biologi­ cal mimicry, it begins in pre-history with the formation of a self (a conscious singularity that purposefully responds to its environment through imitation), whereas rational, non-derivative behavior begins with history, with the formation of a subject (someone who already has power, who no longer needs to “borrow” it). Even though the emergent subject continues to practice mimesis (he, too, wants to survive the confrontation with nature), his mimesis is shaped by his social position. It takes on the rational feature of deceit, of tricking nature rather than appeasing it. A careful reading of Dialectic o f

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Enlightenment suggests that the shift from “magic” to “rational^ mimesis shows the qualitative jump from pre-history to history, from! j identification with the power of natural forces to an identity based on social power. However, this does not mean that nature is overJ come; it only means that it is now set in a heavenly system that looks strikingly like the one which man created on earth. Nature is embedded in the topography of myth, where each god has an assigned place and function, and where the highest divine attributes are light, spirit, paternal protection and omnipotence. Adomo and Horkheimer’s point that the chthonic, threatening deities of the earth are replaced by the religions of light and their solar and patriarchal myths corresponds to the Greek account of the rise of Zeus. Zeus, according to mythology the strongest and wisest of the gods, defeats his father Cronus, the “power” of time. Not yet ft c able to accomplish this alone, he is aided by his grandmother Gaia, the “power” of earth, who is soon relegated to the “dark” age, * ( struck into oblivion. “None of the gods is able to accomplish any- ^ thing against the will of Zeus, nor can they displace him from his pre-eminence. For if a golden chain were suspended from Olympus and all the other gods were to pull it with all their might, they would not be able to drag Zeus, the orderer of the world, from his throne on Olympus.”19 Inscribed in this image is the feudal order, the socio-economic reality of ancient Greece. The metaphysical world becomes as fixed and orderly as the social one, partitioned by ownership and regulated by law. With this order, the Greek myths—initially stories recounting specific experiences of nature—turn into explanations that follow the principles of repetition and necessity. Repetition means that experience can be known only if it is predictable: “Die Lehre der Gleichheit von Aktion und Reaktion behauptete die Macht der Wiederholung ubers Dasein” (DA, p. 14). [The doctrine of the equivalence of action and reaction asserted the power of repetition over reality (DE, p. 12)]. Adomo and Horkheimer illustrate the structure of repetition with the story of Persephone’s abduction into Hades. Originally the tale coincided with the occurrence of nature dying, expressing the shudder that is felt with each death. Each fall

34

Mimesis on the Move

the occurrence was mourned by telling the tale anew. But mythology makes the tale tell of a “first,” a “true” time. Thus the experience of nature dying turns into the notion that nothing is new under the sun, that concrete experience is the repetition of a far-removed first time. Repetition of a mythical first time generates the notions of S inevitability and necessity, which are early counterparts to the rational law of cause and effect. But generalization and abstraction, the tools of enlightenment, are found not only in mythological “literature;” it is early “science” that thrives on them. Adomo and Horkheimer refer to the formal logic of Plato and Aristotle, in which the laws of identity (A=A) and non-contradiction (A#-A) arise from the same basis that generates the mytho-logical principle of repetition: “Je weiter aber die magische Illusion entschwindet, um so unerbittlicher halt Wiederholung unter dem Titel Gesetzlichkeit den Menschen in jenem Kreislauf fest, durch dessen Vergegenstandlichung im Naturgesetz er sich als freies Subjekt gesichert wahnt” (DA, p. 14-15). [But as the magical illusion fades away, the more relentlessly in the name of law repetition imprisons man in the cycle—that cycle whose objectification in the form of natural law he imagines will ensure his action as a free subject (DE, p. 12)]. Homer’s epic about the travels of Odysseus shows how subjectiv­ ity “escapes from pre-history”, how the pre-capitalist subject is determined by being in charge of others and himself. It also shows •/now mimesis helps subjectivity to advance. Odysseus’ adventures present temptations to lose himself, while at the same time giving him the opportunity to assert himself. He adapts to each situation in order to negotiate his escape. We know him as always already a hero, clever enough to outwit nature,, strong enough to ultimately assert who he “really” is—someone with power. He owns a name, an estate, servants, a wife. The subject is shown in his emergence, as having to pass between Scylla and Charybdis, navigating as it were between the pull to regress and the push to advance. The mimesis of the magic stage concerned a specific representa­ tion based on affinity. During the mythological stage this standingin-for-another becomes more general and removed, becomes substi-

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35

tution and simulation. An act no longer is another while being performed, but signifies another. Adomo and Horkheimer describe this change by referring to the ritual of sacrifice. When an animal is slain during the magic stage, the god residing in it is slain as well. * But in the mythological stage, the animal slain to satisfy the god is sacrificed in lieu of the first bom. In both cases, though, the animals I have special qualities to fulfill the holiness of the hie et nunc: in magic it is that particular animal, in myth that particular species. Specific representation moves to general representation. In the history of progress, with “mythical" logic turning into “enlightened" science, the place of sacrifice will shift from the altar to the laboratory, the offering from special representatives to ex­ changeable specimens. Offered to God Reason rather than reason­ able gods, these specimens will be purely and entirely functional: “Vertretbarkeit schlagt um in universale Fungibilitat" (DA, p. 13). [Representation is exchanged for the fungible—universal interchan­ geability (DE, p. 10)]. For mimesis this means that impersonation ^ changes to simulation, and, over the course of history, to fantasy.

Third Scenario: The Libertine and Nature With the late 18th century we reach Enlightenment proper, an age that declares reason to be universal. The subject has matured; he may use reason “without tutelage.”20 Adomo and Horkheimer’s third essay, “Excursus II: Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality,” concentrates on a moralist sui generis, the Marquis de Sade, whose chronicles of detached passion and unfettered libertinage painfully recall “das homerische Epos, nachdem es die letzte mythologische Hiille abgeworfen hat: die Geschichte des Denkens als Organs der Herrschaft” (DA, p. 106); [the Homeric epic with its last mythologi­ cal covering removed: the history of thought as an organ of domina­ tion (DE, p. 117)]. The Sadian libertine faces nature, his demythologized antago­ nist, as an object of knowledge. This object, confined within the enclosure of his consciousness, takes physical shape in the victims he confronts in his torture chambers. Mimesis takes a turn inward. In

36

Mimesis on the Move

his elaborate hide-aways the libertine goes about experimenting with others as living things Yet as the rational subject he is forever distant from his objects; he therefore vents his frustration through vicarious torture and mutilation. “Das Werk Sade’s . . . steigert das szientifische Prinzip ins Vemichtende” (DA, p. SS). [The work of the Marquis de Sade . . . makes the scientistic the destructive principle (DE, p. 94)]. While Adorno and Horkheimer do not describe the scenario, they examine its conditions. Their essay, mapping the terrain be­ tween Kantian rational and Nietzschean biological idealism, aims at the question of morality, of how the empirical subject—enlightened by universal reason—treats his others. Although Kant proves reason to be universal, the subject of reason, by virtue of social reality, remains an idea. Kantian philosophy both completes and eclipses the age. By linking the empirical to the universal (that is, in society non-existing) subject and deducing morality from reason,21 it ex­ presses both the hope and the failure of progress: “Die Wurzel des kantischen Optimismus, nach dem moralisches Handeln auch dort vemiinftig sei, wo das niedertrachtige gute Aussicht habe, ist das Entsetzen vor dem Riickfall in die Barbarei” (DA, p. 78). [The root of Kantian optimism, according to which moral behavior is rational even if the mean and wretched would prevail, is actually an expres­ sion of horror at the thought of reversion to barbarism (DE, p. 8586)]. Although Kant was right in establishing the limits for our understanding, he ignored the fact that the universal subject had little in common with the empirical one. The maxim for moral behavior is not the categorical imperative but the subject’s selfserving rationality.22 Let us retrace the salient steps: Kant’s philosophy establishes the limits for our understanding. These limits are irrevocable in terms of rationality ( Verstand), because they are derived from ra­ tionality’s highest court of appeal, from the unity of the self—from reason ( Vemunft). In order to have true knowledge, that is, a knowledge aware of the conditions for its possibility, the objects of knowledge must adapt to the forms of our perception, and not, as used to be believed, perception to the objects. According to Kant,

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knowledge starts with perceptions, proceeds to concepts, and ends with ideas. Our perceptive understanding, our sensuous, real knowl­ edge of the world around us, is conditioned by a priori ideas (syn­ thesis, totality, truth—which translate into unity and universality of the self), by a priori concepts (space and time), together with the categories derived from them (quantity, quality, relation, modality), and by their sub-categories. Kant thus distinguishes between the world of phenomena, which we can understand, and the world of things-in-themselves which we cannot. The separation between subject and object is declared categorically and unilaterally. Morality, in Kant’s scheme, is an idea. It is absolute. In contrast to the passions, it is not dependent on experience or empathy but can be deduced formally. Adorno and Horkheimer take issue pre­ cisely with the formalism of such morality, since it excludes social history and does not address the question of competitive ends by empirical subjects. Without the universal subject manifesting itself, that is, without everyone together adhering to the law of mutual respect, Kantian reason is an empty construct that continues to be “filled” by a social subject with power over others. Kant’s Begriffe sind doppelsinnig. Vemunft als das transzendentale Uberindividuelle Ich enthait die Idee eines freien Zusammenlebens der Menschen, in dem sie zum allgemeinen Subjekt sich organisieren und den Widerstreit zwischen der reinen undj^f empirischen Vemunft in der bewuBten Solidariat des Ganzen aufheben. Es stellt die Idee der wahren Allgemeinheit dar, die Utopie. Zugleich jedoch bildet Vemunft die Instanz des kalkulierenden Denkens, das die Welt fQr die Zwecke der Selbsterhaltung zurichtet und keine andere Funktionen kennt als die der Praparierung des Gegenstandes aus bloBem Sinnenmaterial zum Material der Unteijochung (DA, p. 76). [Kant’s concepts are ambiguous. As the transcendental, supra-individual self, reason comprises the idea of a free, human social life in which men organize themselves as the universal subject and overcome the conflict between pure and empirical reason in the conscious solidarity of the whole. This represents the idea of true universality: utopia. At the same time, however, reason constitutes the court of judgment of calculation, which adjusts the world for the ends of self-preservation and recognizes no

38

Mimesis on the Move function other than the preparation of the object from mere sensory material in order to make it the material of subjugation (DE, p. 83-84)].

The enlightened, “autonomous” subject treats his objects with uniform detachment. He treats them as things-for-him to confirm and enhance his power. As Adomo and Horkheimer point out, history needs almost 150 years to produce totalitarian fascism, but: “Die Hand der Philosophie hatte es an die Wand geschrieben, von Kants Kritik bis zu Nietzsches Genealogie der Moral; ein einziger hat es bis in die Einzelheiten durchgefiihrt” (DA, p. 79). [It was the hand of philosophy that wrote it on the wall—from Kant’s Critique to Nietzsche’s Genealogy o f Morals; but one man made out the detailed account (DE, p. 86)] Sade’s novels, written during and immediately after the French Revolution, shocked the reading public then and for a long time after. While the author was jailed for his real transgressions, his writings were suppressed for their imaginative ones.23 Yet it is here where we find the scene of a transformed mimesis, a mimesis after the definitive split between subject and object The libertines endlessly discuss how to achieve the state of moral apathy, of perfectly rational behavior, of passion-as-power. Liberation means being free of scruples, guilt, shame, remorse, and any other affect that could disrupt the stoic equilibrium, the firm rationality of the self. Their practice of crime, sacrilege and perver­ sion, methodical and efficient, is designed to test the limits of physical sensation and mental pleasure. It is the sinister inversion of Kantian morality, based on reason and apathy. The body is there to test the capacity for pleasure and pain, the mind to analyze the means to reach and verify the limits. The means are discipline and control, the end self-mastery in the image of a rationally perceived, “cruel” nature. Or, in Sade’s words: “In general, through practice strive to acquire enough control over your expression and reactions as finally to be master of them, and to be rid of the habit of dis­ playing your secret emotions upon your face; calm and imperturb­ ability and impassiveness should reign there, and train yourself to

From Enactment to Aggression

39

appear utterly unmoved even when gripped by the most powerful feelings.”24 The libertine impersonates his own rationality; his body practices ^ mimesis by adapting to the power of the mind. This “self-surrender” to one’s own subjectivity is not far from Freud’s definition of sec­ ondary narcissism, in which the libido is withdrawn from the outer world and directed toward the ego, specifically, toward the ego’s ideal.25 Although in Freudian theory this ego-ideal is called con­ science, the gratification of which substitutes for the gratification of the lost childhood-ego, the libertine’s denial of conscience is its exact counterpart. His rationality watches him at every moment, demanding that he measure up. Libertine rationality proclaims that morality, the duty of power, is based entirely on the “naturalness” of power. In a circular, per­ fectly rational argument, power is natural because nature (not social relations) has endowed the libertine with power. Hence his license in regard to others. He has no need of conventional morality, which is nothing but the protective guise of the weak. By living up to his ideal, his conscience is as clear as his behavior. Adorno and Horkheimer stress Sade’s connection to Nietzsche, the correspondence that exists between the rational-libertinarian and a biologically oriented ethics. This is what Noirceuil teaches Juliette: I comply with the laws of Nature who, as you must observe everywhere, requires that such beings [i.e. the weak] crawl and fawn; intellect, talents, parts, wealth, and influence separate some from the other creatures whom Nature made to comprise the class of the weak; and when . . . exceptions merit inclusion ir^ the class of the strong, they automatically fall heir to all the rights and (perquisites of the latter; tyranny, oppression, impunity, and the liberal exercise of every crime—these are entirely permitted to them . . . Ah! commit your fill of crimes and more, we are presently acquainted with the workings of your imagination, we expect much of you, and we guarantee that whatsoever you do, it shall be done with impunity.26

The weak ones are victims, exchangeable objects of experimenta­ tion. In his chambers, the libertine experiments “objectively” and in quantitative fashion, concluding that three orifices are better than one and that three victims yield thrice the pleasure. Each victim is

40

Mimesis on the Move

the same as another because its quality can be measured and quan­ tified, made equivalent. Ironically, the scope for such experimenta­ tion is infinite; it can go on forever, object after object, thing after thing, ending only when the subject itself is dead. Consequently, the Sadian libertine displays a fury that pursues the torture, mutilation, and eventual death of his victims—though he \ seeks an other, he only finds himself in his objects. They are arbi\ trary victims who allow him to experience suffering vicariously. Just as the representation of the magic stage changed to substitution in mythology, so substitution, at the height of enlightenment, makes /way for exchange. The holy victim, after becoming the victim-inlieu-of, becomes the arbitrary victim. , In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, sadism is described as a dis* placement of the death instinct, turning it away from the ego and directing it toward the object. The tendency to aggress and to destroy, a component of the early instinctual state, later appears in the sexual instinct as one aspect of the love-hate configuration there. Through the formation of ego-love, aggression (hate) is turned outward. The death instinct is part of the pleasure principle, according to which the organism tries to reduce tension and achieve a state of constancy, that is, death: the “peace” of inorganic matter. Although sadism aggresses toward the object, having been diverted from an ego that gathered its libido into itself (or its ideal), it nevertheless expresses identification with the object in fantasy, in vicarious suffering. Adomo and Horkheimer put it this way, refer­ ring to the “strong” individual who represses his fear of nature by identifying with nature-the-aggressor: “Er identifiziert sich mit Natur, indem er den Schrei, den er selbst nicht ausstofien darf, in seinen Opfem tausendfach erzeugt” (DA, p. 101). [He identifies himself */w ith nature when he hears his victims utter over and over again the cry that he dare not himself emit (DE, p. 112)]. For the mimesis practiced within the enclosure of rational subjectivity the dual tendency to adapt and to regress has collapsed into one. The libertine keeps his features under control because he wants more power in terms of quantity, in terms of repeating his power over and over again. Sade’s endless and monotonous varia-

From Enactment to Aggression

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tions on the same theme illustrate the movement The libertine loves discipline and repetition. His stoic face, his studied gestures, his arrangement of orgies into tableaux, the ultimate sameness of each experience: all testify to an adaptation to his own, catatonic rationality. He is the master of his affects to the same degree that he is the master of others. But at the same time his adaptation is regression to a fearful and powerful nature. His torture of others, their mutilation and death, is also his own, just as inflicting pain means suffering it in the intricacies of sadism-masochism. Thus he adapts/regresses to the nature of his reason—to the state where power and fear are one. Adorno and Horkheimer comment on this development from the aspect of “enlightened” thinking: Das Denken wird vOtlig zum Organ, es ist in Natur zurQckversetzt. Far die Herrschenden aber werden die Menschen zum Material wie die gesamte Natur fQr die Gesellschaft. Nach dem kurzen Zwischenspiel des Liberalismus, in dem die BUrger sich gegenseitig in Schach hielten, offenbart sich die Herrschaft als archaischer Schrecken in faschistisch rationalisierter Gestalt (DA, p. 79). [Thinking becomes an organic medium pure and simple, and reverts to nature. But for the rulers, men become material, just as nature as a whole is materia] for society. After the short intermezzo of liberalism, in which the bourgeois kept one another in check, domination appears as archaic ✓ terror in a fascistically rationalized form (DE, p. 87)].

The Contemporary Results The last two essays of Dialectic o f Enlightenment find that the bourgeois subject is no longer part of a particular class. Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis of the culture industry and of German fascism shows mid-20th-century Western society polarized between an invisible economic power elite and a collection of producing/consum­ ing “individuals” in one case, and between a prominent political power elite and a disciplined collective of followers in the other. The focus is on the manipulation and behavior of the consumer and the fascist, neither of whom has any real say, but both of whom practice the power their system forces on them: to buy things and

42

Mimesis on the Move

to destroy others. Each expresses self-alienation stemming from the “rational” bourgeois tradition: Der BOrger, dessen Leben sich in Gcschaft und Privatleben, dessen Privatleben sich in Repr&sentatioa und Intimitft, dessen Intimitat sich in die mOrrische Gemeinschaft der Ehe und den bitteren "frost spaltet, ganz allein zu sein, mit sich und alien zerfallen, ist virtuell schon der Nazi, der zugleich begeistert ist und schimpft, Oder der heutige GroBstadter, der sich Freundschaft nur noch als "social contact,” als gesellschaftliche BerQhrung innerlich Unberflhrter vorstellen kann (DA, p. 140). [The bourgeois whose existence is split into a business and a private life, whose private life is split into keeping up his public image and intimacy, whose intimacy is split into the surly partnership of marriage and the bitter comfort of being quite alone, at odds with himself and everybody else, is already virtually a Nazi, replete both with enthusiasm and abuse; or a modern city-dweller who can now only imagine friendship as a “social contact”: that is, as being in social contact with others with whom he has no inward contact (DE, p. 155)].

Within such parameters we will envision the last two mimetic scenarios. The one involving the consumer still concerns a form of identification, while the other, presenting the fascist’s phobic projec­ tion, becomes mimesis to the second power. Mimetic behavior selfdestructs, that is, with the destruction of others it destroys the condition for its own possibility.

Fourth Scenario: The Consumer and His Goods The scene is the capitalist market as reflected within the con­ sciousness of the consumer. The culture industry, part of an econo­ my based on alienating labor, promotes the reification of conscious­ ness.27 This industry sells images for “self-realization.” The con­ sumer, wishing to become a “real” individual, introjects his adver­ tised image by buying goods, thus identifying with the power of a commodity.28 Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis makes clear the imitative/repetitive movement: “In den nach Schnittmustem von Magazinumschlagen konfektionierten Gesichtem der Filmhelden und Privatpersonen zergeht ein Schein, an den ohnehin keiner mehr

From Enactment to Aggression

43

glaubt, und die Liebe zu jenen Heldenmodellen nahrt sich von der Befriedigung dariiber, daB man endlich der Anstrengung der Individ­ uation durch die freilich atemlosere der Nachahmung enthoben sei” (DA, p. 140). [On the faces of movie heroes and private individuals patterned and cut after magazine covers vanishes a pretense in which no one believes anyhow; the popularity of the hero models is fed by the secret satisfaction that the effort to achieve individuation has at last been replaced by the more breathless one to imitate (trans. mine)]. The culture industry advocates the consumption of pleasure, organized fun for consumers who are producers during the day. When they escape from the mechanized work process into “recre­ ation” (to be fresh for the same work the next day), they find pre­ packaged entertainment that merely repeats the form of the work process. The essentially boring amusements of such ready-to-swallow culture do not provide the self-abandonment of distraction29 but the repetition of already familiar association. The pleasure offered by the culture industry is full of empty promises; it does not liberate an experientially as well as emotionally starved individual; it does not give nourishment, only “the stone of the stereotype”—which is repetition of the same. The culture industry’s provision for all via its sponsors (corpo­ rate industry)' is predicated on a consumer behavior that has been charted and quantified. Adorno and Horkheimer point out that the' unification of individual consciousness according to predictable group patterns is one of the most insidious pursuits of contemporary rationality. People do not have to think about their perceptions, they are urged to buy what they see. Experiential data are processed and classified in advance for easy dissemination and consumption. “Die Leistung, die der kantische Schematismus noch von den Subjekten erwartet hatte, namlich die sinnliche Mannigfaltigkeit vorweg auf die fimdamentalen Begriffe zu beziehen, wird dem Subjekt von der Industrie abgenommen” (DA, p. 112). [Kant’s formalism still expected a contribution from the individual, who was thought to relate the varied experiences of the senses to fundamental concepts; but industry robs the individual of his function (DE, p. 124)].

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Mimesis on the Move

The products of the culture industry have a dual purpose: to increase consumption (and thus production and profit) and to reinforce the economic exchange system on the psychological level By consuming instead of experiencing culture, individual conscious­ ness adapts to what Marx calls the commodity structure. That is, we buy a thing that is made to sell, a product whose value lies solely in its exchange. Even art works are affected. Despite their tradition of being commodities, whether made under the feudal patronage system or within the “enlightened” public sphere of the early bour­ geoisie,30 the use values of enjoyment and reflection on the buyer’s part, and of experimentation and expression on the producer’s, were once present together with the exchange value. The products mar­ keted now show a change in their internal structure. “Das Prinzip der idealistischen Asthetik, ZweckmaBigkeit ohne Zweck, ist die Umkehrung des Schemas, dem gesellschaftlich die burgerliche Kunst gehorcht: der Zwecklosigkeit fur Zwecke, die der Markt deklariert” (DA, p. 142). [The principle of idealistic aesthetics—purposefulness without a purpose—reverses the scheme of things to which bour­ geois art conforms socially: purposelessness for the purposes de­ clared by the market (DE, p. 158)]. The use value of a given prod­ uct, whether a book, concert or painting, vanishes into exchange value. By using it for purposes of conformity, prestige or investment, the consumer confirms only its exchange value. The culture indus­ try’s “public service,” its delivery of culture free of charge via elec­ tronic media, museums or libraries, covers up the fact that this service is made possible by private profit—the interests of which reach out artfully to convince the “public” of its necessity. Basically, it is advertisement for the system. Advertising effectively links culture with industry, consciousness with the structure of commodities. Everything and everyone first of all has a function—and thus can be replaced and exchanged. Through advertising, industry announces the system, not to help buyers decide which products are suitable for their needs but to force-feed consumers with images of power. On the individual level, advertising segments and pieces together the consumer into a sum of abstract pieces. Having culture means not only knowing or ac-

From Enactment to Aggression

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quiring things, but having a certain image. Psychologically, the role of advertising is to make the self-image of the “individual” congru­ ent with consumer behavior: Die intimsten Reaktionen der Menschen sind ihnen selbst gegendber so vollkommen verdinglicht, daB die Idee des ihnen EigentUmlichen nur in fluQerster Abstraktheit noch fortbesteht: personality bedeutet ihnen kaum mehr etwas anderes als blendend weiBe Zahne und Freiheit von AchselschweiB und Emotionen. Das ist der Tfiumph der Reklame in der Kulturindustrie, die zwangshafte Mimesis der Konsumenten an die zugleich durchschauten Kulturwaren (DA, p. ISO). [The most intimate reactions of human beings have been so thoroughly reified that the idea of anything specific to themselves now persists only as an utterly abstract notion: personality scarcely signi-fies anything more than shining white teeth and freedom from body odor and emotions. The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consum-ers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them (DE, p. 167)].

Pieced together by market analysis as a member of a given consumer group, fragmented again by advertising to enhance the components that make up such an individual, the targeted consumer emerges in all his reification. His compulsive behavior is his mimetic^^ response to the smartly designed image of a “real” individual. Adorno and Horkheimer use the term “mimesis” only once in their essay. Psychoanalytically, compulsion (Zwang) describes a form of behavior that the subject feels forced to follow in order to avoid a mounting anxiety. The subject may consciously separate himself from his action, while subconsciously being compelled to carry it out. The consumer likewise is driven by the anxiety of not having any identity or “individuality” at all, unless he identifies with the images that the market presents. For example, when the movie-goer identifies with Joe- Averageas-Hero on the screen, he adapts to the paradoxical notion that being “average” means being “special.” He adapts to a statistical construct via an actor who lends features to the abstraction and thus allows him to identify with someone. But this someone (who is lucky

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Mimesis on the Move

by not being “average”) merely plays what the movie-goer is urged to accept as his image to begin with. The culture industry constantly issues invitations to identify with something, such as a hero, a winner, an anti-hero, but at the same time withdraws the invitations. Everyone could be the lucky one—but only one is. The star is carefully selected by the industry under the pretense of just follow­ ing chance. He or she must fit the statistically calculated stereotype that will bring commercial success. The notion of mathematical probability gives an equal chance to all, but to each one this chance is practically nil. Identification is thus vicarious, and is understood as such. The “average” consumer is intelligent enough to understand probability for what it is: it renders him insignificant in real life and unique in his daydreams. He can buy daydreams and fantasize, but in real life he had better adapt to the notion that he is only a number, an insignificant function whose “self” is an illusion. While the Sadian subject with his actual power over others still had a basis in social reality, the abstract individuality of the consum­ er has no basis other than his singular insignificance. Whereas the libertine at least had his own—albeit sick—imagination, the consum­ er has only purchased, standardized fantasies. The psychoanalytical analogue to his mimesis is this: he introjects the pleasurable aspects of his self-image, takes objects (imaginary ones) and their “good” qualities into his ego through fantasy. Everything painful is rejected and left on the outside, including whatever within the ego gives rise to pain. The difference between incorporation and introjection refers to the way in which something is taken in, whether through the body or in fantasy. For example, the consumer incorporates the mouth­ wash and thereby introjects the promise of romantic success that ' advertising attaches to it. According to Freud, the psyche, like the i external world of perceptions, contains a pleasurable and painful part, characterized by the pleasure and the reality principle, which i can split in such a way that the ego identifies with everything that ’ gives pleasure, and projects everything painful on an external object A “purified” pleasure-ego emerges. “For this pleasure-ego the outside world is divided into a part that is pleasurable, which it has

From Enactment to Aggression

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incorporated into itself, and a remainder that is alien to i t A part of itself it has separated off, and this it projects into the external world and regards as hostile.”31 The culture industry cultivates an individuality who incessantly consumes goods that promise pleasure, who is urged to affirm his identity by identifying with illusions. His pleasure is the flight from the real contradiction that the self counts only as consumer, not as a member of a society.

Fifth Scenario: The Nazi and His Jew In this final scenario the Nazi confronts his own distorted nature in his image of “the Jew.” Phobic projection, acted out through furious aggression, takes place within a tight yet all too real enclo­ sure: the concentration camp. The last essay gives an impassioned critique of repression and its political deployment in Nazi-Germany. State capitalism in the form of national socialism erects an order that benefits from the lessons of the culture industry: “Der Faschismus aber hofft darauf, die von der Kulturindustrie trainierten Gabenempfanger in seine regulare Zwangsgefolgschaft umzuorganisieren” (DA, p. 145). [Fascism, however, hopes to use the training the culture industry has given these recipients of gifts, in order to organize them into its own forced battalions (DE, p. 161)]. The fascist exhibits conformity with the social order and para­ noia about the forces that allegedly threaten it. He bows to power exercised from above and revels in power he can exercise over those below. Economically, he occupies the place of a producer who reproduces the system while his labor is exploited. His repressed anger, his revolutionary impulses, are channeled toward a scapegoat. Under the pretext of race, a certain group is excluded from a socially divisive system to provide a target for the frustrations of those who continue their alienating work within the system. The Jews, an historically powerless group, are made to embody images of frustrated helplessness and longing; they are hated for what the fascist dare not think:

48

Mimesis on the Move Der Gedanke an GlUck ohne Macht ist unertraglich, weil es Qberhaupt erst GlUck ware. Das Himgespinst von der VerschwOrung Itlstemer jUdischer Bankiers, die den Bolschewismus finanzieren, steht als Zeichen eingeborener Ohnmacht, das gute Leben als Zeichen von GlUck. Dazu gesellt sich das Bild des Intellektuellen; er scheint zu denken, was die anderen sich nicht gOnnen, und vergieBt nicht den SchweiB von MUhsal und KOrperkraft. Der Bankier wie der Intellektuelle, Geist und Geld, die Exponenten der Zirkulation, sind das verleugnete Wunschbild der durch Herrschaft Versttlmmelten, dessen die Herrschaft sich zu ihrer eigenen Verewigung bedient (DA, p. 155). [The thought of happiness without power is unbearable because it would then be true happiness. The illusory conspiracy of corrupt Jewish bankers financing Bolshevism is a sign of innate impotence, just as the good life is a sign of happiness. The image of the intellectual is in the same category, he appears to think—a luxury which the others cannot afford—and he does not manifest the sweat of toil and physical effort. Bankers and intellectuals, money and mind, the exponents of circulation, form the impossible ideal of those who have been maimed by domination, an image used by domination to perpetuate itself (DE, p. 172)].

The psychoanalytical element of anti-Semitism is phobic projec­ tion. Freudian theory distinguishes between normal and phobic projection, between “adjusting” reality to the instincts in order to cope with them, and distorting reality due to inordinate fear of being overpowered by them. Similarly, Adorno and Horkheimer differentiate between the mechanism for self-survival, or conscious projection, and “false” (phobic) projection that perceives the most intimate experiences as hostile invasions from without. The latter works by means of an object that is both imaginary aggressor and prospective victim. But while the individual paranoiac does not choose his victim, collective paranoia is instigated for a purpose. It is politicized behavior. The mad fascist does not learn to reflect on his projective behavior; he blindly confuses his own frightful image with the object. The process works on two levels. On the first, the fascist transfers socially tabooed impulses to “the Jew,” such as the desire for an existence free from power relations, fears, restrictions, and

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49 /

the desire for living in material abundance. The impulse is revolu­ tionary, but even such repressed longing is subversive and must be projected. “Gleichgiiltig wie die Juden an sich selber beschaffen sein mogen, ihr Bild, als das des Uberwundenen, tragt die Ziige, denen die totalitar gewordene Herrschaft todfeind sein mufl: des Gliickes ohne Macht, des Lohnes ohne Arbeit, der Heimat ohne Grenzstein, der Religion ohne Mythos” (DA, p. 178). [No matter what the Jews as such may be like, their image, as that of the defeated people, has the features to which totalitarian domination must be completely hostile: happiness without power, wages without work, a home without frontiers, religion without myth (DE, p. 199)]. On the second level, this image of longing is superimposed by one of hatred, which is the self-hatred produced by a long history of denial and repression. It is the image of the Jew as the aggressor, the enemy, the racial other who opposes “biological destiny.” “Im Bild des Juden, das die Volkischen vor der Welt aufrichten, driicken sie ihr eigenes Wesen aus. Ihr Geliist ist ausschlieBlicher Besitz, Aneignung, Macht ohne Grenzen, um jeden Preis” (DA, p. 151). [The portrait of the Jews that the nationalists offer to the world is in fact their own self-portrait. They long for total possession and unlimited power, at any price (DE, p. 168-69)]. The projective process thus works by fusing two dialectically related true images of the subject while falsely attributing them to the object. The anti*'* Semitist secretly envies the Jews for what they supposedly have, and openly attacks them for what he himself wants out of frustration. He practices identification with an imaginary aggressor in order to be a real aggressor himself. Such “poisoned imitation” of a pseudo-object lacks the element of reflection. In their essay on the limits of enlightenment, Adomo and Horkheimer establish the limits of mimesis from two directions. Biological mimicry constitutes one pole, psychological automation of mental processes in society the other. Plants and lower animals adapt to ambient nature with mimicry, a protective device of the organism to become “invisible.” Certain human idiosyncrasies recall these archaic biological schemata: suddenly frightened, we react with raised hair, numb skin, stiff muscles, arrested circulation—in short,

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by becoming “inanimate.” The condition for gaining ^//-conscious­ ness is the transformation of reflex behavior (mimicry, or uncontrolled mimesis) into reflective behavior, or controlled mimesis. This condition ceases to exist when reflection is ruled out. A totalitarian social order does just that with the help of highly advanced technol­ ogy. The aim is to automate the consciousness of the population to better manipulate it, to run a social machinery in which adaptation to the environment once again becomes adaption to death.

y

Tkchnik vollzieht die Anpassung ans Tbtc im Dienste der Selbsterhaltung nicht mehr wie Magic durcb kOrperlicbe Nachahmung der fluBeren Natur, soodcrn durcb Automatisierung der geistigen Prozesse, durcb ihre Umwandlung in blinde Abiaufe. Mit ihrem THumph werden die menschlichen AuBerungen sowohl beherrschbar als zwangsmassjg (DA, p. 162-63). [Tbchnotogy no longer executes adaptation to death for the sake of survival through physical imitation of external nature as was the case with magic, but by automating the mental processes, by converting them into blind cycles. With the triumph of technology human expressions become both controllable and compulsive (trans. mine)].

/

The compulsion to project is at the same time a compulsion to imitate what is forbidden. For the anti-Semitist, the image of the Jew as the aggressor is coupled with the image of dirty and barbaric nature. The propaganda literature of Nazi-Germany is full of hairraising, heart-stopping examples. Poisoned imitation is the order of the day. “Kein Antisemit, dem es nicht im Blute lage, nachzuahmen, was ihm Jude heiBt” (DA, p. 164-65). [There is no anti-Semite who does not basically want to imitate his mental image of a Jew (DE, p. 184)]. The despised “Jewish” nose becomes the psychoanalytical emblem for the Nazi's mimetic behavior. The act of smelling, the least “civilized” of the senses, combining perception and the per­ ceived into one, testifies to the primitive urge to be one with na­ ture. “man darf dem verpdnten Trieb fronen, wenn aufier Zweifel steht, dafi es seiner Ausrottung gilt” (DA, p. 165). [The prohibited impulse may be tolerated if there is no doubt that the final aim is its elimination (DE, p. 184)].

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This kind of mimesis is a return to nature with a vengeance, encouraged by a fascist society as an outlet for the destructive urges this society stimulates. The self-representation of the entire society, in fact, is the poisoned imitation of early mimesis, is magic practice to the second degree. If the pre-historic sorcerer impersonated the demon to borrow imagined power, the fascist state plays sorcerer en masse to exercise its brutally real power. Rituals, parades, uniforms, symbols, and formulas, all contribute to the charade of a “autono­ mous” collective that needs the holocaust for its confirmation: Der Sinn des faschistischen Formehvesens, der ritualen Disziplin, der Umformen und der gesamten vorgeblich irrationalen Apparatur ist es, mimetisches Verhalten zu ermOglichen. Die ausgeklQgeiten Symbole . . . die TbtenkOpfe und Vermummungen, der barbarische 'ftommelschlag, das monotone Wiederholen von Worten und Gesten sind ebensoviel organisierte Nachahmung magischer Praktiken, die Mimesis der Mimesis (DA, p. 165-66). [The purpose of the Fascist formula, the ritual discipline, the uniforms, and the whole apparatus, which is at first sight irrational, is to allow mimetic behavior. The carefully thought out symbols . . . the skulls and disguises, the barbaric drum beats, the monotonous repetition of words and gestures, are simply the organized imitation of magic practices, the mimesis of mimesis (DE, p. 185)].32

"types and Topoi Dialectic o f Enlightenment, while written as a history of rationali­ ty, clearly shows the traces of a “story” that makes this histoiy painfully visible: the tragedy of mimesis. The imaginative dimension that inhabits man’s relation to nature, after turning magic into myth, eventually changes to brutal fantasy and, ultimately, fantastic brutali­ ty. It extends from the magic circle drawn by the sorcerer to trap the demon to the barbed-wire walls of the concentration camp, from survival spells to the silence of death, from magic “play” to real paranoia. Man’s relation of dependency, repressed by his reason, appears as the return of the repressed.

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The story suggests both a typology and topography. As the “magic” and as yet fluid and multiple self enters history, it begins to harden and shrink into the “heroic,” eventually the “rational” sub­ ject. With the shift from sorcerer to hero a mimetic shift from specific to general representation occurs, which over the course of history and the attendant demythologization of nature is followed by the change from substitution (or general representation) to equiva­ lence and fantasy. The fully “rational” subject, embodied by the Sadian libertine who suffers/enjoys his fear vicariously in the agony of others, is at bottom an irrational one who prefigures both the consumer introjecting pleasure to forget his fear and the Nazi who projects it in order to abreact his aggression. Each practices mimesis with characteristic regard to the “power” of nature that the rationality cultivated by his social order dictates: the sorcerer of the tribal community, impersonating the demon, confronts nature directly; the hero of the feudal system, meaning to escape nature, pacifies his gods by simulating submission; the liber­ tine of early industrial society, claiming to be liberated, tortures an antagonist who resides within yet in fantasy becomes his object and victim. The consumer, a contemporary fantasizer turned passive, swallows the illusions produced by the market of his managerial social order, while the Nazi, his action-oriented counterpart under totalitarian rule, projects nature-as-aggressor in order to annihilate those he designates as its embodiments. Mimesis has changed from identification to phobic projection, from an essentially erotic disposi­ tion to destructive fury.

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N o tes 1 [Als Zeichen soil Sprache zur Kalkulation resignieren, um Natur zu erkennen, den Anspruch ablegen, ihr ahnlich zu sein. Als Bild soli sie zum Abbild resignieren, um ganz Natur zu sein, den Anspruch ablegen, sie zu erkennen.] Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Auflkarung (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1980), p. 19. Translation by John Cumming, Dialectic o f Enlightenment (New York: The Seabury Press, 1972), p. 18. All further quotations are taken from these editions and are indicated by DA (German) / DE (English) and page number in the text. Where it was necessary to improve the translation, the change is marked with “trans. mine.” 2 The context of Dialectic o f Enlightenment makes the point: “Frauen . . . haben keinen selbstandigen Anteil an der Tuchtigkeit, aus welcher diese Zivilsation hervorging . . . Die Frau ist nicht Subjekt . . . Ihr war die vom Mann erzwungene Arbeitsteilung wenig giinstig. Sie wurde zur Verkorperung der biologischen Funktion, zum Bild der Natur, in deren Unterdriickung der Ruhmestitel dieser Zivilisation bestand” (DA, p. 221). [Women have no personal part in the efficiency on which this civilization is based . . . Woman is not a being in her own right, a subject. . . The division of labor imposed upon her by man brought her little that was worthwhile. She became the embodiment of the biological function, the image of nature, the subjugation of which constituted that civilization’s title to fame (DE, p.247-48)]. 3 Adorno and Horkheimer write concerning their collaboration: “Kein AuBenstehender wird leicht sich vorstellen, in welchem MaB wir beide fur jeden Satz verantwortlich sind. GroBe Abschnitte haben wir zusammen diktiert; die Spannung der beiden geistigen Temperamente, die in der Dialektik sich verbanden, ist deren Lebenselement” (Zur Neuausgabe, Dialektik der Aufklarung). [No outsider will find it easy to discern how far we are both responsible for every sentence. We jointly dictated lengthy sections;

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and the vital principle of the Dialectic is the tension between the two intellectual temperaments conjoined in it (Preface to Dialectic o f Enlightenment)]. Though true in principle, the essays on Odysseus and on antiSemitism were written by Adorno, while the introductory essay and the one on the culture industry were written by both. See also Friedemann Grenz, Adornos Philosophic in Grundbegriffen (Frank­ furt: Suhrkamp, 1974), p. 257, note #26. 4 With this conception, Adorno's and Horkheimer’s history of reason implicitly criticizes Hegel’s notion of spirit internalizing nature for its own (good) purposes. s Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980), p. 75. 6 This theory is presented in detail by Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Intellectual and Manual Labour, trans. Martin Sohn-Rethel (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1978). 7 Several such studies from that time are Theodor W. Adorno, “Uber den Fetischcharakter in der Musik und die Regression des Horens,” Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung VII, 3 (1938); “On Popular Music,” Studies in Philosophy and Social Science IX, 1 (1941); “A Social Critique of Radio Music,” Kenyon Review VII, 2 (Spring 1945); The Authoritarian Personality (New York, 1950); Max Horkheimer, Studien uber Autoritat und Familie (Paris, 1936); “Art and Mass Culture,” Studies in Philosophy and Social Science IX, 2 (1941); “Die Juden und Europa,” Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung VII, 1/2 (1939); “Notes on Institute Activities,” Studies in Philosophy and Social Science IX, 1 (1941). For a more complete list of titles that includes other Institute members, see the bibliography in Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagi­ nation (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973).

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* H. Koller, in his study Die Mimesis in derAntike. Nachahmung, Darstellung, Ausdruck (Bern: Dissertationes Bemenses, 1954), p. 119, concludes that the Greek verbal form of mimesis initially meant expressing an experience through dancing. 9 See also Martin Zenck, Kunst als begriffslose Erkenntnis (Miinchen: Fink, 1977), p. 93. 10 This is a psychological mechanism that produces distorted manifestations of what is repressed. In his essay “Repression” Freud traces several forms of psycho-neurosis (anxiety, regression, obses­ sion) that show a “return of the repressed.” Because of repression, an illusory strength of instinct develops in fantasy, “it ramifies like a fungus, so to speak, in the dark and takes on extreme forms of expression, which when translated and revealed to the neurotic are bound not merely to seem alien to him, but to terrify him by the way in which they reflect an extraordinary and dangerous strength of instinct.” John Rickman, ed. General Selection from the Works o f Sigmund Freud (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1957), p. 90. 11 A notable exception is the article by Bernhard Lypp, “Selbsterhaltung und asthetische Erfahrung. Zur Geschichts-philosophie und asthetischen Theorie Adornos,” in Materialien zur dsthetischen Theorie Th. W. Adornos. Konstruktion der Modeme, ed. Burkhardt Lindner and W. Martin Liidke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980), pp. 187-218. 12 In 1932 Erich Fromm, then a member of the Frankfurt Insti­ tute of Social Research, wrote a programmatic essay, “The Method and Function of an Analytical Social Psychology. Notes on Psycho­ analysis and Historical Materialism,” reprinted in Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt, The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (New York: Urizen Books, 1978). Fromm states: “Clearly, analytic psychology has its place within the framework of historical materialism. It investi­ gates one of the natural factors that is operative in the relationship

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between society and nature: the realm of human drives, and the active and passive role they play within the social process” (p. 495). 13 Theodor W. Adomo. Gesellschaftstheorie und Kulturkritik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975), pp. 100-101. 14 See especially Freud's discussion of identification in Group Psychology and the Analysis o f the Ego, trans. James Strachey (new York: Norton, 1959), pp. 37-42. 15 Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id, trans. Joan Riviere (New York: Norton, 1962), p. 19. 16 Freud, Group Psychology, p. 39. 17 Friedemann Grenz in Adornos Philosophic in Grundbegiiffen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974) elaborates on this “cunning”: “Das Verhalten des Listigen ist die Selbst-behauptung durch Selbstverleugnung.” In the context of the Odysseus-essay, it is “Mimikry an das, dem sich das rationale Bewufitsein entrang. Danach ist das rationale Verhalten des Uberlegenen durchsezt von Regression auf den voremanzipativen Zustand. In der Krise der Auseinandersetzung mit dem iibermachtigen Vorweltlichen . . . verzichtet der rationale Arbeiter willentlich auf das ohnehin prekare Gleichgewicht von Regression und Emanzipation und lafit sich auf die ‘amorphe’ Stufe zuriickfallen. Theoretischen Wert gewinnt das Argument, wenn es auf den philosophiegeschichtlichen Begriff der Aufklarung iibertragen wird, an dem die Verflochtenheit von Rationalitat und Vorwelt nicht mehr evident ist” (pp. 22, 23-24). 18 Grenz, p. 59. 19 Sabine G. Oswalt, ed., Concise Encyclopedia o f Greek and Roman Mythology (Glasgow, Chicago: Follett/Larousse, 1969), p. 302.

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20 See Kant’s essay, “Was ist Aufklarung?” in Kants Werke VIII (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1910). 21 In Kant’s Critique o f Practical Reason, the “moral self’ (die sittliche Personlichkeit) faces the imperative to be ethical. In contrast to the objects of pure knowledge, which are given to the rational self, the objects of the will (practical knowledge) are given as a task to the moral self. The ethical realm, where autonomous beings treat each other as ends-in-themselves, must be distinguished from pure reason by its modality, says Kant, that is, it is a postulated realm. Adorno and Horkheimer take issue with this distinction because the ethical imperative is justified on rational grounds and supposed to be free from affects. “Aufklarung laBt sich nicht tauschen, in ihr hat das allgemeine vor dem besonderen Faktum, die umspannende Liebe vor begrenzten, keinen Vorzug.” (DA, p. 92); they state that “Sein [Kant’s] Unterfangen, die Pflicht der gegenseitigen Achtung, wenn auch noch vorsichtiger als die ganze westliche Philosophic, aus einem Gesetz der Vemunft abzuleiten, findet keine Stiitze in der Kritik” (DA, p. 78). [Enlightenment is not deceived; for enlightenment, the general has no advantage over the particular fact, and all-encompassing love is not superior to limited love (DE, p. 102) . . . His (Kant’s) at­ tempt (even though more careful than Western philosophy as a whole) to derive the duty of mutual respect from a law of reason finds no support in the Critique (DE, p. 85)]. 22 The categorical or ethical imperative states: “Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature.” Immanuel Kant, “Theory of Ethics,” in Theodore M. Greene, ed., Kant. Selections (New York: Charles Schribner’s Sons, 1957), p. 302.

23 Adorno and Horkheimer repeatedly point to the connection between the Sadian imagination and 20th-century fascism: “Die todliche Liebe, auf die bei Sade alles Licht der Darstellung fallt . .

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. verfahrt in Spiel und Phantasie so hart mit den Menschen wie dann der deutsche Faschismus in der Realitat” (DA, p. 102). [That fatal love which Sade highlights . . . imagined in play or fancy, deals as harshly with men as German Fascism does in realty (DE, p. 113)]. Pasolini’s film Salo, based on Sade’s The 120 Days o f Sodom , makes the link to fascism explicit. 24 The Marquis de Sade, Juliette, trans. Austryn Wainhouse (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 635. 25 “On Narcissism: An Introduction,” in General Selection from the Works o f Sigmund Freud. See especially p. 116. 26 Sade, Juliette, pp. 207-208. 27 The concept, central to Luk£cs’ History and Class Conscious­ ness, is discussed in detail in the section “The Phenomenon of Reification”: “The commodity character of the commodity, the abstract, quantitative mode of calculability shows itself here in its purest form: the reified mind necessarily sees it as the form in which its own authentic immediacy becomes manifest and—as reified consciousness—does not even attempt to transcend it. On the con­ trary, it is concerned to make it permanent by ‘scientifically deepen­ ing’ the laws at work.” Georg Lukacs, History and Class Conscious­ ness, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1971), p. 93. 28 See previous note. Grenz, in Adornos Philosophie, comments on Adorno’s use: “DaB Adomo die Verdinglichung als Strukturmerkmal menschlichen Lebens iiberhaupt faflt, ist an seinem Bediirfnisbegriff zu sehen. Bei Marx ist die Bediirfniskategorie an den Begriff des Verlangens gekniipft. Gebrauchswerte sind definiert als Bediirfnisse befriedigende Arbeitsprodukte. Der gesellschaftliche Zustand, der durch die Verdinglichung, wenn nicht hervorgerufen, so doch begleitet wird, modifiziert nach Adomo die Unmittelbarkeit, sprich Naturlichkeit, des Bediirfnisses” (p. 45).

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29 Distraction is a central concept in Walter Benjamin’s optimis­ tic assessment of the revolutionary uses of technology in culture. In MThe Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” he explains the political use-value of distraction as the public’s ability to take in cultural products “absent-mindedly.” This ability replaces individual absorption and fosters a critically distanced reception. “The mass is a matrix from which all traditional behavior toward works of art issues today in a new form. Quantity has been trans­ muted into quality. The greatly increased mass of participants has produced a change in the mode of part-icipation.” Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969), p. 239. Adorno and I Horkheimer do not agree. They see the process of mass integration / as systemic-economic manipulation from above, not as a disruptive! movement from below. 30 Jurgen Habermas, in Strukturwandel der OJfentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der biirgerlichen Gesellschaft (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1965) introduces the concept of the public sphere as a model for understanding the political and social element of cul­ ture. The disintegration of the (enlightened bourgeois) public sphere occurs in the transition from the critical discourse on culture by private (property-holding) citizens to its uncritical mass consumption. The transition is based on technological innovations such as an expanded book market and electronic media. 31 “Instincts and their Vicissitudes,” in A General Selection from the Works o f Sigmund Freud, p. 82. 32 Leni Rienfenstahl’s film, Der Triumph des Willens, presents this fascist ritual behavior on grand scale.

H o m e r an d Sa d e : D e s ir e f o r t h e O t h e r Dialectics interprets every image as writing. It shows bow the admission of its falsity is to be read in the lines of its features—a confession that deprives it of its power and appropriates it for truth. Dialectic o f Enlightenment

The development appears to leave little room for the positive notion of enlightenment that Adorno and Horkheimer mention in their preface. If reason is impelled solely by domination, then mimesis, yoked to its course, is nothing but repression made visible. But perhaps we should re-examine the dynamics of the combination. While the rational subject exploits his mimetic inclination for pur­ poses of self-control, he involuntarily betrays an attachment to what he fears. His imitation, conscious in intent, is unconscious in wish. This contradictory movement is inscribed in his fictions—two of which are central to Dialectic o f Enlightenment. The book’s unusual composition is itself a liberating device to open up reason to the imagination. Two of the essays, innocuously called Excursus I and Excursus II (one written by Adorno, the other by Horkheimer),2 address fictions that at first glance make strange companions. The Odyssey, mainstay of the Western literary canon, is juxtaposed with VHistoire de Juliette, an infamous work relegated to

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underground reading even today. Ibgether they appear like civiliza­ tion’s promise and threat, like auspicious beginning and final perver­ sion. The place of the two works within the Dialectic draws attention to Adomo and Horkheimer’s distrust of so-called objective writing, of a method that relies on a clean separation of “fact” from “fic­ tion,” of documentary evidence from imaginative narrative. But it is precisely the latter which shows, through its tropes and images, its formal tensions and caesuras, the repressed along with the official layer of history. Most importantly, it shows the process of repression, the movement of desire as inscribed in the form. Homer’s epic and Sade’s novel are cases in point As works of art they are artfully mimetic, sly in what they portray, true in what they reveal. In presenting the rational subject’s emergence and triumph they also exhibit his fears and struggles, his insecurities and maneuvers. The imaginary exploits of the ancient traveller, like those of the modem libertine, display the fissures of instrumental reason with a vividness that eludes a fact-oriented historiography. They show, in Adomo and Horkheimer’s reading, the change from ambivalent desire to despondent fixation: “Die Ratio, welche die Mimesis verdrangt, ist nicht bloB deren GegenteiL Sie ist selber Mimesis: die ans Tbte” (DA, p. 53). [The ratio which supplants mimesis is not simply its counterpart. It is itself mimesis: mimesis unto death (DE, p. 57)]. This fictively mediated adaptation proceeds in the spirit of the Freudian reality-principle. But the self’s adaptation to the social order is shot through with regressive elements, elements that nega­ tively express the prospect of man’s conciliation (Versohnung) with nature. Just as the general conception of Dialectic o f Enlightenment is guided by a negatively formulated hope (Adomo and Horkheimer ask why history has led to catastrophe, why it has not led to “a truly ! human condition”), so its concept of mimesis is shaped by a promj ise: a subject/self that is capable of identification is not quite identical with itself, not fully closed off from what is other: “Die Angst, das Selbst zu verlieren und mit dem Selbst die Grenze zwischen sich und anderem Leben aufzuheben . . . ist einem Gliicksversprechen

J

Homer and Sade

63

verschwistert, von dem in jedem Augenblick die Zivilisation bedroht war" (DA, p. 33). [The dread of losing the self and of abrogating together with the self the barrier between oneself and other life . . . is intimately associated with a promise of happiness which threat­ ened civilization in every moment (DE, p. 33)]. The fitful process of adaptation, not yet rigidified in man’s fictions as it has in his facts, forms the scope of the “excursions.” We will trace the mimetic moves explicit or suggested, and turn to the literary texts themselves whenever necessary. Separately and together the two chapters intimate the part that mimesis will assume in Adorno’s aesthetic theory. It is not only a psychosomatic response on the part of the subject to perceived threats but also the produc­ tive, subliminal force in art that prompts the making of images. As such it harbors a utopian dimension, “a promise of happiness.” Mimesis, under the guise of regression and the pretext of narration, is desire for the other carried by future-directed remembrance: Die Definition des Novalis, derzufolge alle Philosophic Heimweh sei, behfllt recht nur, wenn das Heimweh nicht im Phantasma eines verlorenen Altesten aufgeht, sondem die Heimat, Natur selber als das dem Mythos erst Abgezwungene vorstellt (DA, p. 71). [Novalis’ definition, according to which all philosophy is homesickness, holds true only if this longing is not dissolved into the phantasm of a lost remote antiquity, but represents the homeland, nature itself, as wrested from myth (DE, p. 78)].

Odysseus’ Travels Excursus I thematizes this wish. Home is not something lost and regained but a site yet to be established—a real utopia. To be sure, the Homeric epic of voyage and return conjures up home as a place one re-tums rather than turns to, but for Adorno the falsity of the image proves the truth that gave rise to it. The hero’s Odyssey is motivated by a true impulse, the desire for a place where the natural and social may co-exist: nature in history. “Heimweh ist es, das die Abenteuer entbindet, durch welche Subjektivitat, deren

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Urgeschichte die Odyssee gibt, der Vorwelt entrinnt” (DA, p. 71). [It is homesickness that gives rise to the adventures through which subjectivity (whose fundamental histoiy is presented in the Odyssey) escapes from the pre-historic world (DE, p. 78)]. The episodes addressed are taken from Books IX-XII of The Odyssey. They present the past adventures of the hero as told by him during his stay with the civilized Phaeacians. Contrary to tradi­ tional interpretations of the sequence as a catharsis,3 Adorno considers Odysseus’ tale primarily one of self-assertion. It is told by a subject who boasts with his escape, who has ordered and orga­ nized the bewildering encounters of his voyage: “Die Vorwelt ist in den Raum sakularisiert, den er durchmisst. . . Die Abenteuer aber bedenken jeden Ort mit seinem Namen. Aus ihnen gerat die ratio­ nale Ubersicht uber den Raum” (DA, pp. 44-45). (The prehistoric world is secularized as the space whose measure the self must take . . . the epic adventures allow each location a proper name and permit space to be surveyed in a rational manner (DE, p. 46)]. On his way back to his island the wily Odysseus is driven through various myths, adventures that suggest the as yet frail unity of his self while presenting occasions to prove himself the subjectin-control: he is tempted by sensuous song and forgetfulness (the Sirens and the Lotus-eaters), threatened by animal strength and female sexuality (Polyphemus and Circe), jeopardized by memory and his own mortality (the Hades episode).4 But he emerges the hero. By subjecting himself to earlier phylo­ genetic stages and proving he can “escape,” he internalizes his social identity and returns to the terra firma of Ithaca, the kingdom where he is in charge, lb each situation he adapts by regressing, although each of his regressions employs means that the new order cultivates: ambiguity, control, and sacrifice. But going back to the early, mythi­ cal places also betrays a longing: the wish for a life not based on a hierarchical division between hero and follower, master and slave, man and woman. A prototype of the rational subject, Odysseus “grows” from adventure to adventure to finally show himself master and king. He meets the earliest stage of conscious life, represented by one-eyed

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Polyphemus, with playful deception, then confronts the magic of sex wielded by Circe with his own powerful “magic” provided by his gods. He vanquishes his fear of death as well as that of life by shielding himself with substitution: in Hades he offers the blood of sheep instead of his own; at sea he protects himself from the Sirens with his labor force. He mimetically meets like with like, or what appears to be like—he escapes animal strength under animal cover, controls sexual lust with phallic power, and placates death with sacrifice. Throughout, his imitative behavior is impelled by an unconscious wish to “return” to nature, while his conscious aim is to defeat nature-the-antagonist—a configuration that leaves means and ends profoundly at odds.

The Defeat o f the Sirens The episode with the Sirens, discussed once in the introductory essay, then again in “Excursus I,” is of pivotal importance.5 It shows how mytho-logic and enlightenment, longing and labor are entangled, how the subject, by subjecting others, imprisons himself, and how the pleasures of perception become painful indulgence. The Sirens sing of unheard of pleasures. Their song, promising full immediacy, threatens temporal order and spatial control, two mainstays of Odysseus’ identity. The encounter prefigures the bour­ geois’ impotent relation to beauty, to the self’s abandon to visual and auditory joy. Odysseus contemplates such pleasure at a distance, disbelieving its promesse de bonheur and suffering it as alienated “art” instead. Eager to listen yet uneager to let go of himself, he takes certain precautionary steps. He plugs the ears of his men and makes them tie him to the mast. The men, deafened by toil, row him past the dangers of his affect, while he, a master enslaved by his slaves, passively listens, hearing the promise but dissociating it from his pragmatic present. By merely suffering the song, he experiences its power as harmless entertainment. Adorno’s verdict on such socially integrated art is clear: “Solange Kunst darauf verzichtet, als Er-

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kenntnis zu gelten, und sich dadurch von der Praxis abschlieBt, wird sie von der gesellschaftlichen Praxis toleriert wie die Lust” (DA, p. 33). [So long as art forfeits its role in cognition and thereby closes itself off from practice, social practice tolerates it as it tolerates indulgence (trans. mine! Beauty, in this episode, becomes expend­ able—it dies. The Sirens sing of pre-histoiy, of the childhood before the rational subject, the “identical, purposive and virile nature of man” (DE, p. 33) was formed—a memory that would alter the charted course. The Sirens, so the myth tells, are hybrid creatures, half birds of prey, half beautiful women, whose island is littered with the bones of nameless men too weak to resist. But once a man is cunning enough to listen to them without leaving ship, they will turn to rock and to silence.6 This man is Odysseus. He has a name, he has power, and he has the labor of others at his disposal. He is the first to face the Sirens on his terms. Though he gives in to his desire to listen, he prudently restrains himself. But his self-imposed constraints make for an image full of irony: in acting out his posi­ tion he enacts the fate of the Sirens—he turns rigid. The condition (and constraint) for this encounter is power over others. Odysseus has laborers who row his boat, who tighten his ropes, who carry out his commands. While the men are tied to their job, the master listens and escapes. But what he really does is maneuver, caught within the bounds of his identity. Though he does not surrender to the power of the Sirens, he is forced to surrender to his own. He is bound by his relation to the men: “Sie produzieren das Leben des Unterdriickers in eins mit dem eigenen, und jener vermag nicht mehr aus seiner gesellschaftlichen Rolle herauszutreten” (DA, p. 34). [They reproduce the oppressor’s life together with their own, and the oppressor is no longer able to escape his social role (DE, p. 34)]. Odysseus’ mimesis reveals the loss that accompanies his gain. The subject’s protection from his senses is achieved at a price. His patriarchal myth, which confounds nature with woman, desire with danger, sings the praise not of liberation but of phallic imprison­ m ent Odysseus’ enactment of his position is his imitation of what

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he has vanquished, beauty and song. The Sirens have turned to stone. Yet his mimesis unto death, audible in his cries for release, portrays his longing for a state in which beauty is no longer a danger, desire no longer devitalized: Er kann mit aller Gewalt seines Wunsches, die die Gewalt der HalbgOttinnen selbcr reflektiert, nicht zu ihnen, denn die ruderoden Gefflhrten mit Wachs in den Ohren sind taub nicht bloB gegen die HalbgOttinnen, sondern auch gegen den verzweifelten Schrei des Befehlshabers. Die Sirenen haben das Ihre, aber es ist in der bQrgertichen Urgeschichte scbon neutralisiert zur Sehnsucht dessen, der vorOberfahrt (DA, p. 55). [Despite all the power of his desire, which reflects the power of the dcmigoddesses themselves, he cannot pass over to them, for his rowers with wax-stopped ears are deaf not only to the demi-goddesses but to the desperate cries of their commander. The Sirens have what is theirs, but in primitive bourgeois history it is neutralized to become merely the wistful longing of the passer-by (DE, p. 59)].

The Land o f Idle Dreams The episode with the Lotus-eaters focuses on the position of Odysseus’ men. They are anonymous slaves who do not have “ad­ ventures” but succumb to “illusions.” Wishing to forget, they re­ gress to a state of blissful vegetation. Since they cannot afford to savor beauty, they escape into stupor, precipitating the worker who gets drunk on Friday night to forget while the beneficiary of his work, the bourgeois, rigidly listens to a concert Odysseus and his men prefigure bourgeois and proletarian in their economic interde­ pendence and cultural distinction. Phylogenetically, eating the Lotus corresponds to the “primitive” stage. It precedes the carnivorous “barbarism” of the Cyclopes, which in turn precedes the transformative “magic” of Circe and her warnings of the deadly “art” of the Sirens. The men who taste the flower forget the social identity assigned to them and behave, in civilized terms, irresponsibly. They drop o u t Psychoanalytically they regress to the primal stage of identification, where the self ingests the other.

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Adomo considers the land of the Lotus an image of sheer nostalgia, a paradise that never was. History cannot be undone, though the conditions for its course can be changed. In this sense the regression of the men is passive resistance. The image of illusory happiness criticizes the order that prompts it: “Solche Idylle, die doch ans Gluck der Rauschgifte mahnt, mit deren Hilfe in verharteten Gesellschaftsordnungen unterworfene Schichten Unertragliches zu ertragen fahig gemacht wurden, kann die selbsterhaltende Vernunft bei den Ihren nicht zugeben” (DA, p. 58). [This kind of idyll, which recalls the happiness of narcotic drug addicts reduced to the lowest level in obdurate social orders, who use their drugs to help them endure the unendurable, is impermissible for the adherents of the rationale of self-preservation (DE, p. 62-63)]. Odysseus is not even tempted by the Lotus; he shepherds those not yet lost back to the ship. He is right in leading his men away from the dreamland, though not in the sense that makes sense to him. Whereas the escape into dreams merely affirms their situation, their remembrance of the dream will make them conscious of their role and allow them to negate it. Unconscious bliss does not erase history, but the image of bliss reminds men of giving their history a new direction: toward a society in which happiness is no longer an escape.7 History, as Adomo writes elsewhere, is made; it is not repetition of the same but constituted by the new.8 The episodes of the Sirens and the Lotus, taken together, show an intricate interplay of power and helplessness. In each situation a self wants to survive by adapting to his social role—the worker no less than the hero. Each practices mimesis by regressing to nature, though from opposite directions. While the worker turns oblivious, the hero turns rigid; while one wants to “return” to nature to forget his role, the other wishes to keep distant to remember his. One escapes into organic existence, the other plays dead. The mimetic behavior of each is predicated on the position of the other: the master cannot be master without a slave, and the slave cannot be slave without a master. Both adapt by regressing: Odysseus pretends helplessness to hold fast to his power, while the men, helplessly

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falling for an illusion, want to forget the power that rules them in real life. The Lotus-episode ends with melancholia. Both master and slaves leave the dreamland M with heavy hearts,” sad without knowing why.9 The subject has become a stranger to nature, the non-sub­ jects strangers to themselves.

One-eyed Polyphemus The vegetative bliss of the Lotus-eaters is succeeded by the primitive happiness of the Cyclopes, one-eyed giants who live in a state of abundance by gathering, harvesting, and herding their food. Ignorant of agriculture and regulatory law, they appear barbaric to the writer of The Odyssey: “Die Bestimmung der Barbarei fallt fur Homer zusammen mit der, dafi kein systematischer Ackerbau betrieben werde und darum noch keine systematische, iiber die Zeit dispondierende Organisation von Arbeit und Gesellschaft erreicht sei” (DA, pp. 59-60). [For Homer, barbarism can be defined as the absence of any systematic agriculture, and the lack of any systematic organization of labor and society governing the disposal of time (DE, p. 64)]. The abundance that nature provides for the giants is perceived with secret envy and open contempt. They are primitives who trust in nature and their strength, who do not fear the gods and love/kill the weak according to whim. Their social organization, though patriarchal, is still tribal and communal, their thinking anar­ chic and rhapsodic. Polyphemus shows his “stupidity” by falling for Odysseus’ tricks. He cannot fathom the duplicity of his visitors, who pretend to be “one” with animals as they escape from him unseen by clinging to the underside of his sheep, nor can he grasp the sophistry of Odys­ seus, who uses his proper name as a pun. The cyclops is truly oneeyed, endowed with one-dimensional vision. He can only perceive for himself, for his immediate needs. “Das eine Auge mahnt an Nase und Mund, primitiver als die Symmetrie der Augen und Ohren, welche in der Einheit zweier zur Deckung gelangender Wahrnehmungen Identifkation, Tiefe, Gegenstandlichkeit iiberhaupt erst

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bewirkt” (DA, p. 59). [The single eye recalls the nose and the mouth, more primitive than the symmetry of eyes and ears, which, with the security guaranteed by two unified perceptions, is the virtual prerequisite of identification, depth, and objectivity (DE, p. 64)]. Compared to the Lotus-eaters, however, Polyphemus is ad­ vanced. The Lotophagi show their affinity to plants by ingesting and thus becoming like them; they appear in the epic as an anonymous collective. The cyclops has accomplished individuation to the degree that he associates with a higher species—he is “friends" with his sheep. He feels distinct for being male, for being physically stronger than others, and for having speech, which lends him a nominal identity, “Polyphemus.” Odysseus, unlike his men unable to regress to the stage of the Lotophagi, can imitate the stage in which the giant exists: he escapes from him by becoming “one” with animals, then tricks him with the double-meaning of his name. Physically weaker, he deceives Polyphemus with a language that is “stronger” than the giant’s, whose idiom means what it says. Odysseus’ language, however, means and does not mean what it says. When he shouts to Polyphemus that he is called “Nobody,” he plays his name for being a word, thus outwitting the primitive who cannot conceive of a system of signs. But the duplicity of Odysseus’ language also points to a basic truth: he is “nobody” for matching the giant’s natural strength. Adomo writes that both Homer and his hero have been justly accused of being too talkative. Their eloquence, a “speech-thatruns-away-with-itself,” suggests the predicament of the speaker who means to elude nature by wanting to duck a physical threat. Like Odysseus, this speaker can—and often does—escape, though only for the price of having distanced himself from his own bodily reality. In his “defeat” of the stronger he denies his physical weakness with manic speech: Die Rede, welche die physiscbe Gewalt Qbcrvorteilt, vermag nicht innezuhalten . . . Darum ist der Gcscheitc—dem Sprichwort entgegen—immer in Versuchung, zuviel zu reden. Ihn bestimmt objektiv die Angst, es mOcbte,

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wenn er den hinfSlligen Vorteil des Warts gegen die Gewalt nicht unabiassig festhfllt, von dieser der Vorteil ihm wieder entzogen werden. Denn das Wort weiB sich als schwflcher denn die Natur, die es betrog. (DA, p. 63). [Speech, though it deludes physical force, is incapable of restraint . . . Therefore it is intelligent tongues (contrary to the proverb) that are always ready to talk by the dozen. The clever man is objectively conditioned by the fear that if he does not unfailingly affirm the nonexistent superiority of the word over force, that superiority will once again be taken bom him by force. For the word knows that it is weaker than the nature it has deceived (DE, p. 68-69)].

The formula for Odysseus’ behavior is his ability to do (or say) one thing and mean another. His trick is adaptation, his purpose to deceive: “Es ist die Formel fur die List des Odysseus, daB der abgeldste, instrumentale Geist, indem er der Natur resigniert sich einschmiegt, dieser das Ihre gibt und sie eben dadurch betriigt’’ (DA, p. 54). [The formula for the cunning of Odysseus is that the redeemed and instrumental spirit, by resigning itself to yield to nature, renders to nature what is nature’s, and yet betrays it in the very process (DE, p. 57)].

Circe's Magic Unlike the simplistic cyclops, the enchantress Circe is ambigu­ ous. The promiscuous daughter of the sun and granddaughter of the sea, she embodies contradictory elements, reflected in the dubious pleasure she grants to men: “Die Hetare gewahrt Gliick und zerstort die Autonomie des Begluckten, das ist ihre Zweideutigkeit” (DA, p. 64). [The courtesan assures happiness and destroys the autonomy of the one she makes happy—this is her equivocation (DE, p. 70)]. Circe seduces men and turns those who succumb to her into animals. Both menace and charm, goddess and witch, she is the image of nature untamed, of a sexuality not yet integrated into the patriarchal system. Yet Circe is powerless against Odysseus. In Homer’s allusive idiom the patriarchal hero comes divinely endowed himself, armed with a magic, uprooted plant, black at the roots with a flower white

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as milk,10 to attack her with his sword and make her swear a solemn oath not to mutilate him. Circe submits, begging the representative of the new order to sleep with her and “make friends.” His social power, which the epic presents as phallic power, turns her competi­ tive lust into submissive love. Once a tamer of men, she now be­ comes tame herself. Adorno comments on the defeat of Circe’s “witchcraft” as follows: Es ist, als wiederhole die zaubemde Hetarc in dem Ritual, dem sie die Manner unterwirft, nochmats jenes, dem die patriarchate Gesellschaft sie selber immer au& neue unterwirft. . . Als Reprasentantin der Natur ist die Frau in der bOrgerlichen Gesellschaft zum Ratselbild von Unwiderstehlichkeit und Ohnmacht geworden (DA, p. 66). [It is as if the courtesan-enchantress recalled in the course of the ritual to which she subjects the men, that ritual to which patriarchal society repeat­ edly subjects her . . . As a representative of nature, woman in bourgeois society has become the enigmatic image of irresistibility and powerlessness. (DE, p. 71-72)].

Circe’s magic extends to non-subjects only, to men who can be transformed by sex. Ironically, she herself favors the one who is “stronger,” who resists and is able to refuse her. She is woman created in the image of the new subject, a subject who rewards her discrimination by assigning her the roles of helpmate and caretaker. The tamed mistress first bathes and anoints the hero, then feeds and entertains him. Most importantly, she reunites him with his men—whom her magic not only restores but rejuvenates for the work ahead. Her master has taught her to behave. Her “power” no longer consists in pleasure for both but in a wisdom that is of benefit only to him: “Die Prophezeihungen der depotenzierten Zauberin iiber Sirenen, Szylla und Charybdis kommen am Ende doch wieder nur der mannlichen Selbsterhaltung zugute” (DA, p. 67) [The prophecies of the disempowered enchantress about the Sirens, and Scylla and Charybdis, are ultimately of advantage only to male survival (DE, p. 73)]. The regression of the men to an animal state critically reflects on the “civilized” myth that sexual pleasure is tied to conquest. In

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Adorno’s interpretation, the negative image of the men’s transforma­ tion into unclean domestic swine, though condemning the blind submission to instinct, suggests a reconciliation with instinct: “Der gewalttatige Zauber . . ., der an die idealisierte Urgeschichte sie gemahnt, bewirkt mit der Tlerheit, wie die Idylle der Lotophagen, den wie sehr auch selber befangenen Schein der Versohnung (DA, p. 65). [The forceful magic, . . . which recalls them to an idealized prehistory, not only makes them animals, but—like the idyllic inter­ lude with the Lotus-eaters—brings about, however delusive it may be, the illusion of redemption (DE, p. 70)]. Odysseus renounces his instinct to insure his status as subject. Circe, who rewards him for his “waiting power,” is the Homeric projection of man’s new woman, a companion who shares his traits vicariously. She resembles Penelope, who patiently awaits the hero at home. In the absence of lover and husband, both are accom­ plished managers of his domain, the private and the public, the house in the deep forest and the home on rocky Ithaca. Forced to let go of one pleasure, they must latch on to a new one—the lust that derives from ownership: Dime und Ehefrau sind die Komplemente der weiblichen Selbstentfremdung in der patriarchalen Welt: die Ehefrau verrat Lust an die feste Ordnung von Leben und Besitz, wahrend die Dime, was die Besitzrechte der Gattin unbesetzt lassen, als deren geheime Bundesgenossin nochmals dem Besitzverhaitnis unterstellt und Lust verkauft (DA, p. 68). [Prostitute and wife are the complements of female self-alienation in the patriarchal world: the wife betrays pleasure to the fixed order of life and property, whereas the prostitute takes what the wife’s right of possession leaves free, and—as the wife’s secret collaborator—subjects it again to the order of possession: she sells pleasure (DE, p. 73-74)].

When Odysseus returns home, his wife eyes the stranger suspi­ ciously. Having waited twenty years, she too has forgotten sponta­ neity and instinct. As mistress of the house beleaguered by suitors she wants to be sure this is the man with whom she shared the marriage bed. Significantly, this bed is fixed to the ground, based on an olive tree that symbolizes sex and property. The two are true

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partners in their consciousness of social position and ownership— despite the fact that Penelope, a possession herself is in actuality merely a caretaker, the steadfast steward of her husband’s estate. Implicit in Adorno’s reading is a critique of patriarchy12 that centers on the damage man has done to himself. The core of the essay is the renunciation of desire, Entsagung. The introversion of domination, it is the price paid to a social order based on contractu­ al agreement and its conceptual correlative, equivalence. Odysseus knows that surrender to instinctual desire would weaken his posi­ tion; his women learn that in order to share this position vicariously they must surrender to him—just as his men learn to follow in order to be “protected.” The master’s power depends on the loyalty and fear of his slaves. The relationship is defined by exclusiv­ ity as it concerns him, inclusion as it concerns others. While they must be loyal to one, he is true to all. The hierarchic order not only reveals the mechanism that governs ruler and ruled, hero and workers, but the relation of the male subject to his women. Odysseus’ short-term marriage to Circe does not undermine his long-term marriage to Penelope. His wife, already trained to do her part, remains faithful to him throughout Circe, on the other hand, recalling an earlier phase of sexuality, must be put in her place. Her ambivalence and promiscuity present a threat. As he did with the cyclops, Odysseus uses mimesis and reason, magic and language to ward off her power. But his mimesis has advanced. He no longer needs to “disappear” but counters like with like (or what appears to be like): his phallic power against her charms, his sword against her wand, lb insure his success, he pro­ ceeds to teach her his language by making her swear an oath in the name of his gods: “Der Eid soil den Mann vor der Verstummelung schiitzen, der Rache furs Verbot der Promiskuitat und fur mannliche Herrschaft, die ihrerseits als permanenter Triebverzicht die Selbstverstummelung des Mannes symbolisch noch vollzieht” (DA, p. 66). [The oath is intended to protect the man from mutilation, from revenge for the prohibition of promiscuity and for male domination, which—as a permanent deprivation of instinct—is nevertheless a symbolic self-mutilation on the part of the man (DE, p. 72)]. Odys­

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seus’ renunciation of a sexuality free of purpose and restraint thus signifies not just will-power but the will to power. As his mistress tells him, he becomes “hard in his h eart” He learns to postpone, to schedule desire. He does not sleep with Circe until she surren­ ders, and he does not return to Penelope until he is fully under control.

The Visit to Hades Odysseus’ travels allow him to gain control over his senses. In turn, such control permits him to conceive of his present Ideologic­ ally, as the link between past and future. The descent into Hades, into remembrance and prophecy, explores these dimensions. When he arrives in the land of the dead, he fills a trench with the blood of sacrificial sheep, then sheathes his sword and waits for the shades to speak. Soon his mother appears. But her image, re­ calling Odysseus’ earliest past, remains silent until a more authorita­ tive voice has spoken: Then there came the soul of my mother who bad died, Anticleia, daughter of great-hearted Autolycos, Whom I had left alive when I went to sacred Ilion. I wept when I saw her and pitied her in my spirit, But though I grieved heavily, I did not let her Get near the blood first till I could learn from Tiresias.12

The seer and former councillor of kings is the voice of power and the future. When Anticleia finally speaks, she does so from the subservient position of minor advisor, responding to Odysseus’ ques­ tions about his father and son, about the status of his estate, and whether his wife is guarding it securely. She also tells him that she died from her longing for him, and Odysseus, moved but forever separated, vainly tries to grasp her shadow: “Three times I tried and my spirit bade me to grasp her. / And three times like a shadow or a dream she flew / Out of my hands. Sharp grief grew ever greater in my heart.’’13

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Adorno does not address the hierarchy of the scene; instead he considers the Hades-episode a scene of insight and vision. Odysseus comes to understand that the images (myths) of the past are illu­ sions; they are dead and gone. But they are also the negative ex­ pression of man’s utopian longing, the longing for a time when nature no longer is perceived as myth but recognized as a force that shapes his and others' history: “Erst indem Subjektivitat in der Erkenntnis der Nichtigkeit der Bilder ihrer selbst machtig wird, gewinnt sie Anteil an der Hoffnung, welche die Bilder vergeblich bloB versprechen.” (DA, p. 69). [Only when subjectivity gains mas­ tery over itself by acknowledging the nullity of the shades can it partake of the hope of which the phantom images are only an ineffectual promise (DE, p. 76)]. With his descent into Hades Odysseus prefigures a true subject, one who has overcome nature-as-myth and is conscious of naturein-history,14 conscious of his desires and free to live side by side with other subjects. Such conciliation, prefigured by false images of longing for the past, is a true possibility—not for the future as we know it, but for a future we do not know. Heimatfhome is not nature-as-mother but the reality of nature in society. Drawing a trajectory to another literaiy-utopian vision, Adomo alludes to one of Holderlin’s poems, in which the images of the past are envisioned transformed by history into social reality. “Darum ist der Vorwurf, die homerischen Sagen seien jene, ‘die der Erde sich entfemen,’ eine Biirgschaft ihrer Wahrheit. ‘Sie kehren zu der Menschheit sich’ ” (DA, p. 71). [Therefore the reproach that the Homeric sagas are those which “are departing from the earth” is a guarantee of their truth: “They turn to mankind” (DE, p. 78)].15 Within the economy of the epic, however, Odysseus is not yet a true self but the rational subject who wants to dominate. His success is a victory hard-won. Although his devices to foil nature are effec­ tive, they are double-edged tricks that work both for and against him. He harnesses his instincts to steer them away from their incli­ nations, pretending they are what they are in order to bring them under control. Yet his play gives him away.

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In each instance he furthers this position in ways that recall and simultaneously deny his past He hardens himself by steeling his still frail identity into a weapon. Yet while he commands other men’s labor to protect himself from the Sirens, his trick of facing them in bondage shows the truth: bound by the labor of others he must twist his senses into submission. When he rescues his men from the idle dreams of the Lotophagi, he is in fact the one who knows better, knowing there is no “return” to nature, only the way ahead. But he leaves full of melan­ choly. And while his escape from the cyclops proves the superiority of his language, this language also gives away the secret of his name: no-body, the name of a subject cut off from his substance. Throughout his travels he trains his men as he trains himself, “protecting” them from the dangers of nature to lead them home—the place where he is in charge. And yet, throughout the voyage both he and his subjects respond to the places they encoun­ ter with longing, desiring the object they imitate. The drug-paradise of the Lotus-eaters is a utopia free of labor; the cyclopes live a life of material abundance, and in Circe’s realm rules the magic of sex­ ual abandon.

Form as Remembrance The last thought of the essay suggests that mimesis is the desire of the form to reach its content. Adorno singles out a Homeric gesture that implies, through emphatic silence, a remembrance that exceeds the narration of the tale.16 Ibward the end of the epic is a scene in which Homer cuts the report of cruelty and suffering short. Shifting from presentation to self-reflection, from eloquent continuum to silent break, the form draws attention to itself, to the limits of what can be told: “Es ist die Selbstbesinnung, welche Gewalt innehalten lasst im Augenblick der Erzahlung. Rede selber, die Sprache in ihrem Gegensatz zum mythischen Gesang, die Moglichkeit, das geschehene Unheil erinnemd festzuhalten, ist das Gesetz des homerischen Entrinnens” (DA, p. 72). [It is the self-consciousness which causes force to desist

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in the narrative moment Eloquent discourse itself, in contradistinc­ tion to mythic song, the possibility of retaining in memory the disaster that has occurred, is the law of Homeric escape (DE, p. 78)]. The episode in question occurs in Book XXII, after Odysseus has re-established himself as the ruler of Ithaca. When he is in­ formed of the treachery of twelve of his housemaids, he acts swiftly and efficiently. The maids, negative foils to Penelope, have strayed during his absence and gone to bed with the suitors. Odysseus makes the faithless women clean up the bloodbath caused by his revenge, then asks his son to take care of their execution. Telemachus goes further than required. He decides the maids deserve worse than “a clean death,” ironically devising an execution that is especially clean: he kills them by hanging, methodically and in assembly-line fashion. The scene, told in gruesome detail, ends abruptly: So be said, and a cable from a dark blue-prowed ship He threw round a pillar of the great round-room and tied it on, Tightening it high up, so none could reach the ground with her feet. As when either thrushes with their long wings or doves Rush into a net that has been set in a thicket, As they come to roost, and a dreadful bed takes them in; So they held their heads in a row, and about the necks Of all there were nooses, that they might die most piteously. They struggled a little with their feet, but not very long.17

The techno-logical precision of the report, reflective of the subject’s “escape” from the power of nature to the power of social position, from brute force to the brutality of law and order, precipi­ tates the scientific description of suffering that will become the norm, Adorno writes. Yet the sudden break in the narration, the attempt to stem the cruelty of the incident by assuring the audience that the agony was brief, is a conscious gesture of negation. In a moment of silence the painful contradiction between suffering and the telling of suffering is remembered. By creating a space not filled by language negation becomes emphatic speech. The caesura in the

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narrative transforms wordless torment into remembered agony, “kraft deren der Schein von Freiheit aufblitzt, den Zivilisation seitdem nicht mehr ganz ausgeloscht hat (DA, p. 72); [by means of which the semblance of freedom glimmers that since then civiliza­ tion has not wholly succeeded in putting out (DE, p. 79)]. Memory turns into hope as the mimesis of form enacts its content

The Tortures o f the Libertine The second excursus, written by Horkheimer, considers Sade’s story of Juliette “the Homeric epic with its last mythological cover­ ing removed.” The hero who imitated nature to measure his newly developed skills appears transformed in the figure of the libertine, who uses his reason as an instrument of torture: “Das Denken wird vollig zum Organ, es ist in Natur zuriickversetzt” (DA, p. 79). [Thinking becomes an organic medium pure and simple, and reverts to nature (DE, p. 87)]. His faithful disciple is woman, an unwitting allusion to the fact that in the history of domination the dominated, given a chance, dominate themselves. The brutal formalism of Sadian passion, perverse correlative to the formalism of Kantian morality, precipitates the meaningless administration of 20th-century social life: “Die eigene architektonische Struktur des kantischen Systems kiindigt wie die Tumerpyramiden der Sadeschen Orgien . . . die vom inhaltlichen Ziel verlassene Organisation des gesamten Lebens an” (DA, p. 80). [The architec­ tonic structure of the Kantian system, like the gymnastic pyramids of Sade’s orgies . . . reveals an organization of life as a whole which is deprived of any substantial goal (DE, p. 88)]. By focusing on the most radically rational novelist of the time, the essay argues that rational subjectivity—defined by Kant as nei­ ther empirically nor metaphysically derived but based on its own innate laws of perception—morally regresses to natural might. It shows the intimate connection between reason and power, discipline and virtue. The morality extolled by Sade, with its emphasis on control and detachment, is seen as the practical correlative to rational idealism.

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The key to the correlation is Kant's formal deduction of morali­ ty. In contrast to previous philosophers who equate man’s progres­ sive knowledge with his moral perfectability, Kant distinguishes between the limitations of knowledge and an unconditional freedom to do good. On the basis of his Critique o f Pure Reason he postu­ lates free will and stipulates a moral order that is universal: “Ich nenne die Welt, so fern sie alien sittlichen Gesetzen gemass ware (wie sie es denn nach der Freiheit der vemiinftigen Wesen sein kann und nach den notwendigen Gesetzen der Sittlichkeit soil), eine moralische Welt."18 [Insofar as the world would accord with all ethical laws—as it can according to the freedom of beings guided by reason, and as it should according to the necessary laws that guide ethics—, I call the world a moral world (trans. mine)]. Morality, in order to be absolute, must be divorced from affect and based solely on man’s dignity—which is his reason arrived at through the form of his rationality. Horkheimer considers this attempt to universalize morality idealist and a-historical. “Es ist der ubliche Versuch des burgerlichen Denkens, die Riicksicht, ohne welche Zivilization nicht existieren kann, anders zu begninden als durch materielles Interesse und Gewalt, sublim und paradox wie keiner vorher, und ephemer wie sie alle” (DA, p. 78). [It is the conventional attempt of bourgeois thought to ground respect, without which civilization cannot exist, upon something other than material interest and force; it is more sublime and paradoxical than, yet as ephemeral as, any previous attempt (DE, p. 85)]. And yet, the Kantian revolution of reason, the new relation between subject and object, between the one who knows and the thing to be known, is of tremendous consequence. By delineating the limitations of knowledge and placing the other as thing-in-itself outside these limitations, Kant puts an end to mythology, the imagi­ native perception of animate nature. Magic, myth, and religion all channel desire through images of the other, whether in the shape of demon, divinity, or God. This kind of image-oriented identification ceases with the de-mythologization of nature. The emotional dimen­ sion of the relation between subject and object is excised:

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Wahrend aber alle firOheren Verdnderungen, vom Praanimismus zur Magie, von der matriarchalen zur patriarchalen Kultur, vom Polytheismus der Sklavenhalter zur katholischen Hierarchic, neue, wenn auch aufgekiarte Mythologien an die Stelle der aiteren setzten, den Gott der Heerscharen an die Stelle der groBen Mutter, die Verehrung des Lammes an Stelle des Tbtems, zerging vor dem Licht der aufgekiarten Vemunft jede Hingabe als mythologisch, die sich fQr objektiv, in der Sache begrOndet hielt (DA, p. 84). [But whereas all earlier changes, from pre-animism to magic, from the matriarchal to a patriarchal culture, from the polytheism of the slave owners to the Catholic hierarchy, replaced the older mythologies with new—though enlightened—ones, and substituted the god of legions for the Great Mother, the adoration of the Lamb for that of the totem, the brilliance of enlightened reason banished as mythological any form of devotion which claimed to be objective, and grounded in actuality (DE, p. 92)].

The devotion to an other, rational and regressive in one as the various types of man’s imitatio dei enumerated by the passage illustrate, fulfills an important function. The mythical “power” of an other keeps the actual power of the subject in suspense. Although the idols and gods are projections of the socially dominant subject as embodied by the ruler or ruling class, they refer to something outside this subject, forcing him to justify himself in its name. The image qua image allows for reflection, hence criticism; the sufferer of power can scrutinize the image of power and find it wanting. With the revolution of reason nothing remains outside, because the subject’s power is derived from within. The sufferer of power has nothing to reflect on but his own interiority. Kant says that reason is universal, and that therefore the same moral law applies to everyone and to all situations, but this postulate, though liberating in theory, neglects the fact that actual situations continue to be governed by a subject-in-power. Although everyone is supposed to be autonomous, in practice only those ways of apprehending and acting are considered rational that legitimize the ruler. The sufferer, both social and internal other in Adomo and Horkheimer’s scheme,

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is newly enslaved: he (or she) is compelled to identify with the aggressor.19 Accordingly, the Sadian liaison dangereuse between reason and morality takes place within the enclosure of subjectivity. Horkheimer’s essay moves through a veritable catalogue of libertinarian virtues, most of which correspond to the Kantian ideal: emotional control, moral apathy, scientific logic, and, above all, purposiveness. In Sade’s economy crime is the ideal training ground to perfect these virtues. It requires self-discipline (the display of emotions would betray doubt and uncertainty), a calculating mind (the out­ come of the deed must be predictable), and cold-bloodedness (only detachment will insure success). In short, crime requires the courage to defy social conventions. Conventions are there to be adhered to by the weak. The rewards are money, pleasure, and power. In contrast to other writers less daring in thought, Sade’s inversions reveal the logic that inheres in a formal conception of morality. Like Machiavelli, Hobbes and Mandeville he draws his conclusions rationally as well as empirically: “Die dunklen Schriftsteller des Biirgertums haben nicht wie seine Apologeten die Konsequenzen der Aufklarung durch harmonistische Doktrinen abzubiegen getrachtet. Sie haben nicht vorgegeben, dafl die formalistische Vemunft in einem engeren Zusammenhang mit der Moral als mit der Unmoral stiinde” (DA, p. 106). [Unlike its apologists, the dark writers of the bourgeoisie have not tried to ward off the conse­ quences of the Enlightenment by harmonizing theories. They have not postulated that formalist reason is more closely allied to morali­ ty than to immorality (DE, p. 117-118)].

Juliette and Justine Although Horkheimer makes no mention of it, it is not by accident that Sade’s protagonist is a woman—a pseudo-subject historically without power. As such she is ideal material for educa­ tion. Ihuned in the image of the real (male) subject, whose identity has hardened and little left to learn, she functions as the brilliant reflection of his success. While his mimesis has become limited by

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his subjectivity, hers is still free to repeat the process of his “prog­ ress," albeit with an important distinction: where he once learned by identifying with the “power” of nature, she now learns by identifying with the power of his reason. Juliette, in contrast to her recalcitrant sister Justine (the pale shadow of her past as it were), is the perfect disciple. She embodies “weder unsublimierte noch regredierte libido, sondem intellektuelle Freude an der Regression, amor intellectualis diaboli, die Lust, Zivilisation mit ihren eigenen Waffen zu schlagen” (DA, p. 86); [neither unsublimated nor regressive libido, but intellectual pleasure in regression—amor intellectualis diaboli, the pleasure of attacking civilization with its own weapons (DE, p. 94)]. For the libertine, women and children (as well as men of inferi­ or social status) are the images of nature: his nature. As such the features of their suffering make visible his repression. But sadism, the enjoyment of another’s suffering by visualizing one’s own,20 is only one aspect of his character, the other being a passion to educate. Thus two related images illuminate the subject’s state from within: his repressed nature appears in the miserable figure of submissive Justine, while his trained nature shines forth in the brilliance of his partner-in-crime, Juliette. The two sisters make perfect company for enlightened subjectivi­ ty. Justine, the virtuous one, lives all the precepts of an ideology devised for the weak. She is sweet and docile, capable of almost unending suffering. Poor and tortured all ^ x jife, she finally dies a horrible death. Her body, pierced from orifice to orifice by a thun­ derbolt, is defiled even then, a spectacle that her sister, amoral Juliette, observes with pleasure. In contrast to Justine she has shed her past and adopted the philosophy of her masters, rising from rags to riches in the process. Her monied mentors have taught her that might makes right, and that the most vicious of crimes makes for the most delicious of pleasures. When she dies, she dies surrounded by friends in Paris. As her creator concludes pensively, she disap­ pears from the scene “just as it is customary that all brilliant things on earth finally fade away.”21

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In the Sadian universe, each of the two sisters deserves her fate. Justine represents dullness of the senses and lack of spirit She does not understand that society erects a value system of benefit only to the powerful. Juliette, of keener disposition, does. In the words of Simone de Beauvoir, she is able to “transform into pleasure the same tortures that prostrate Justine.”22 The libertine, whose rituals are meant to display his mastery of nature, tortures the image of his subjection, Justine, for being foolish and unenlightened, while Juliette, his conscious image of himself, is cultivated with care. With her success he affirms his own. While the “old” woman, Justine, plays victim to mirror his nature, the “new” woman, Juliette, is mirror to his reason, good at playing torturer herself. Not coincidentally the sisters seem to recall the Homeric pair of Circe and Penelope, of subjugated mistress and well-trained wife. As if Kant were her mentor, Juliette learns to equate virtue with apathy, an equation concerning which the philosopher writes: “Die Tugend also, sofem sie auf innere Freiheit begrundet ist, enthalt fiir Menschen auch ein bejahendes Gebot, namlich alle seine Vermogen und Neigungen unter seine Gewalt zu bringen, mithin der Herrschaft iiber sich selbst, welche iiber das Verbot, namlich von seinen Gefuhlen und Neigungen sich nicht beherrschen zu lassen, hinzukommt.”23 [In virtue, therefore, in so far as its founda­ tion is inner freedom, inheres the positive commandment to man to bring all his capabilities and inclinations under his power and thus to rule over himself, which complements the prohibition to not let himself be ruled by his emotions and inclinations (trans. mine)]. She also learns that moral apathy is the prerogative of the stronger, a connection concerning which Nietzsche writes: “Von der Starke verlangen, daB sie sich nicht als Starke aufiere, daB sie nicht ein Uberwaltigen-Wollen, ein Niederwerfen-Wollen, ein Herrwerden-Wollen, ein Durst nach Feind und Widerstand und Triumphen sei, ist gerade so widersinnig, als von der Schwache verlangen, dafi sie sich als Starke auBere.”24 [To ask of strength that it not express itself as strength, that it not be a will to dominate, a will to subju­ gate, a will to become master, a thirst for adversary and resistance

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and triumph, is just as absurd as to ask of weakness that it express itself as strength (trans. mine)]. Situated between Nietzsche and Kant, Sadian education demonstrates the link between a rational and a transvaluative morality. None other than the Pope, Juliette’s most powerful and crimi­ nal-minded mentor, instructs her about man’s liberation from nature in an argument strikingly similar to the Kantian sapere aude: Man thus has no relationship to Nature, nor Nature to man; Nature cannot bind man by any law, man is in no way dependent upon Nature, neither is answerable to the other, they cannot either harm or help each other, one has produced involuntarily—hence has no real relation-ship to her product; the other is involuntarily produced—hence has no real rela­ tion-ship to his producer. Once cast, man has nothing further to do with Nature; once Nature has cast him, her control over man ends; he is under the control of his own laws, laws that are inherent in him.25

Juliette, like Odysseus the narrator of her adventures, responds enthusiastically to the lesson: “ Adorable philosopher!’ I cried, flinging my arms around Braschi’s neck, ‘never has anyone dealt with this important matter in the way you have done; never has it been so precisely, so thoroughly, so plausibly explained . . . Ah, all my doubts are dissipated now, I surrender to right reason.’ ’,26 Over the course of thirty pages, the Pope has explained to her the logical necessity and inherent pleasure of murder, the advantages it has and the inspiration it provides. A most diligent apprentice, Juliette eventually is initiated into the brotherhood of libertinage. As a woman, however, she remains marked by her “natural” (social) inferiority and thus enters the patriarchal order only on condition that she remember her place. During her initiation she gives a spirited reading of a set of instruc­ tions that begins with the preamble: “The estate or condition into which was born she who is to sign this matters not in the least, she is a woman, and as such created for the pleasures of man.”27 The pseudo-subject, in spite of her success and the democratic proclama­ tions of the “Sodality of the Friends of Crime,” ultimately remains an object Sade’s Bildungsroman fails.

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Or does it? Being an image of her creator’s desire, Juliette exhibits a weakness that they deny. She passionately dedicates herself to sacrilege. Although sacrilege of the established religion is one of the favorite pastimes of libertinage, she goes beyond treating it as a mere hobby, thereby violating the principle of apathy. Her perverted attachment to myth, to an image beyond subjectivity, goes against an important taboo, the sin of idolatry. As Horkheimer points out in regard to the “cold laws” of Moses and Kant, civiliza­ tion’s chief exponents of the prohibition against image and desire (Bilderverbot und Neigungsverbot), “Vor der Ratio erscheint die Hingabe ans angebetete Geschopf als Gotzendienst” (DA, p. 103). [In the face of the ratio, devotion to the object of adoration ap­ pears as idolatry (DE, p. 114)]. Passion in any form is subversive. Libertinage, in the pleasure it seeks and the compassion it denies, shows traces of resignation, of not having overcome myth. The “liberated” subject, fervently embracing myth in the form of grandiose subjectivity, desperately plumbs the human capacity for pleasure/pain. At the end of the era at the beginning of which Sade delights in his torments, it is once again Nietzsche who articulates this dialectic: “Nietzsche weiB, dafi jeder GenuB noch mythisch ist In der Hingabe an Natur entsagt der Genufi dem, was moglich ware, wie das Mitleid der Veranderung des Ganzen. Beide enthalten ein Moment der Resignation” (DA, p. 96). [Nietzsche recognizes the still mythic quality of all pleasure. By paying tribute to nature, enjoyment relinquishes the possible, just as compassion renounces the transformation of the whole. Both feature an aspect of resigna­ tion (DE, p. 106)]. Pleasure in all its forms, whether as yielding passion or aggres­ sive infliction, dionysian abandon or blasphemous adoration, is an expression of homesickness, Heimweh, of wanting to escape an imposed social function and identity and (re)turn to the other: Jeder GenuB aber verrat eine VergOtzung: er ist Selbstpreisgabe an ein Anderes . . . Alle Lust ist gesellschaftlich in den unsubtimierten Affekten nicht weniger als in den sublimierten. Sie stammt aus der Entffemdung . . . Erst wenn aus dem Zwang der Arbeit, aus der Bindung des Einzelnen an eine bestimmte gesellschaftliche Funktion und schlieBlich an ein Selbst, der

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Thaum in die herrschaftslose, zuchtkxe Vorzeit zurdckfQhrt, empfinden die Menschen den Zauber des Genusses (DA, p. 95). [But every indulgence betrays an idol: pleasure is self-surrender to an other . . . All pleasure is social—in unsublimated no less than in sublimated emotions. It originates in alienation . . . Men sense the magic of enjoyment only in that dream which releases them from the pressure of work and the bond which joins the individual to a specific social function and, ultimately, to the self—that dream which leads back to a primeval era without masters and without discipline (DE, p. 104-105)].

Perverse Love for the Other Pierre Klossowski, in his essay “Nature as Destructive Principle,” points out that the libertine’s obsession with torture betrays his desire for death, “a murky need for expiation—an expiation which, if his need could be elucidated, would have no other direction than that of self-liquidation, a freeing of the self by the self.”28 Concern­ ing the libertine’s quasi-filial ambivalence toward nature, he cites the following outburst. The chemist Almani feels compelled to imitate nature, because he believes that the solution to the problem of evil, posed and nurtured by an evil “mother,” is to be evil oneself: Yes, I abhor Nature; and I detest her because I know her well. Aware of her frightful secrets, I have fallen back on myself and I have felt . . . I have experienced a kind of pleasure in copying her foul deeds. . . Eh quoi! I had hardly been born . . . I had hardly quit my cradle when she drew me toward the very horrors which are her delight! This goes beyond corrup­ tion . . . it is an inclination, a penchant. Her barbarous hand can only nourish evil; evil is her entertainment. Should I love such a mother? No; but I will imitate her, all the while detesting her.29

Klossowski ends his essay on the “dialectical drama” of Sade’s conscience, set between the wish to destroy and the desire to be destroyed, with the question of whether this conscience is doomed to repeat nature forever, a question that equally pertains to the central notion of Dialectic o f Enlightenment, the return of the repressed. Horkheimer’s essay suggests an answer. It alludes to a way that leads out of the dialectic, that severs the nexus between

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repression and domination. The way leads through mimesis, through the images in which the Sadian conscience expresses itself: Die Einbikjung von Grausamkeit wie die von GrOsse verfShrt in Spiel und Phantasie so hart mit den Menschen wie dann der deutsche Faschismus in der Realist. Wahrend jedocb der bewuBtlose Kolofi des Wirkiichen, der subjektlose Kapitalismus, die Vemichtung blind durchflihrt, laBt sich der >tahn des rebellischen Subjekts von ihr seine ErfQUung verdanken und strahlt so mit der schneidenden Kaite gegen die als Dinge missbrauchten Menschen zugleich die verkehrte Liebe a us, die in der Welt von Dingen den Platz der unmittelbaren halt. Krankheit wird zum Symptom des Genesens . . . Ab Grauen sucht Imagination dem Grauen standzuhalten (DA, p. 102). [Cruelty and megalomania, when imagined in play or fancy, deals as harshly with men as German Fascism does in reality. Whereas, however, the unconscious colossus of actuality, anti-individualistic capitalism, proceeds blindly on its course of annihilation, the rebellious though deluded individu-' al is fulfilled by the same fatal love. And so that same icy and per-verted love which in the world of things takes the place of straightforward love, is directed against men—who are misused as things. Sickness becomes a symptom of recovery . . . In the shape of dread, imagination seeks to resist dread (DE, p. 113)].

The complex passage telescopes bourgeois history into its two extremes, the grandiose subjectivity of the “deluded individual” that portends its official beginnings in the late 1800’s, and the massive socio-economic forces unleashed by this histoiy, culminating in “the unconscious colossus” of 20th century capitalism that crushes indi­ viduality of any kind. Within these confines Sade occupies an impor­ tant role. He is both prophet and illusionist, sorcerer and surgeon. His evil imagination conjures up true images, true to the horrors of the future. Like Klossowski, who defines the Sadian conscience by its attempt to meet evil with evil, Horkheimer sees in Sade’s imagi­ nation an attempt to meet horror with horror. Unlike Klossowski, however, he understands such attempt not as repetition but as an act of resistance, because it occurs in the form of fancy, as Eiribildung. It is true mimesis, imaged reality. It recalls the magic practice

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of enacting the demon to frighten the demon, as well as the medical practice of using poison to cure poison. Sade, like Nietzsche after him, plays at being powerful. His violent imagination is a defense mechanism that responds seismographically to the violence of a history that has produced subjects in subjection. Yet his images are not simulation but semblance, Schein. As such they are impotent, implicitly critical of the power they portray. It is on this basis that Horkheimer differentiates the imagi­ nary power practiced by Sade, its “cruelty and megalomania,” from that of the actual power exercised by German fascism. Though the two are alike in brutality, they are unlike in kind. He further differentiates between the subject-less, massive system of capitalism that controls both material and cultural produc­ tion, and the representative of late 18th-century subjectivity, the aristocrat and would-be revolutionary Donatien Alphonse Francois, Comte de Sade—a subject who as yet insists on the right to his own, however warped identity and imagination. A true sadist, he gladly suffers his self-image, a pain that his bland descendent, the integrated consumer, no longer feels. As he spews forth in his “Last Will and Testament,” his fat and aging body bulging with pride: “Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a disso­ lute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.”30 Whereas history has come to the point of eliminating the subject altogether, its deluded 18th-century ancestor is still able to visualize his pain in his victims. His detachment and alienation—substitutes for a love that seeks proximity and affection—still allow him to relate to others, albeit as things. This perverted love, conditioned by a world in which the subject rules over his objects, is the negative residue of true affection. Though he reduces his objects to things, he still knows them as something31 by imagining and thus being conscious of their terror. “Er identifiziert sich mit Natur, indem er den Schrei, den er selbst nicht ausstoBen darf, in seinen Opfem tausendfach erzeugt” (DA, p. 101). [He identifies with nature by producing the outcry he

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himself dare not emit a thousand times over in his victims (trans. mine)]. Sade’s imagination, despondent over his single-minded emancipation and loss of connection, thus enacts the demon of domination. Imaginary horror is played against actual horror, mime­ sis against reality. The libertine’s sickness is symptomatic and diagnostic in one; symptomatic of a certain subjectivity arising from a certain social order and its history, diagnostic of where this history will lead. As an image it is the negative sign of hope, “the symptom of recovery.” The image, in its negativity, becomes articulate. By showing how reality is (its “positive” aspect as it were), it also shows how reality should not be (its negative aspect).

The Sadian Tableau Horkheimer’s polemic against Kant, by way of placing the de­ spondently rational aristocrat Sade and the passionately irrational bourgeois Nietzsche into a configuration that illuminates the extrem­ ities of formally conceived morality, arrives at understanding the Kantian concept of reason as critical-utopian: DaB sie [Sade und Nietzsche]. . . auf der Ratio beharren, hat den geheimen Sinn, die Utopie aus ihrer HOUe zu befreien, die wie im kantischen Vemunftbegriff in jeder groBen Philosophic enthalten ist: die einer Menschheit, die, selbst nicht mehr entstellt, der Entstellung nicht langer bedarf (DA, p. 107). [The fact that Sade and Nietzsche insist on the ratio . . . implicitly liberates from its biding place the utopia contained in the Kantian notion of reason as in every great philosophy: the utopia of a humanity which, itself no longer distorted, has no further need to distort (DE, p. 118-119)].

With this thought the second excursus of Dialectic o f Enlighten­ ment ends. We will use it for yet another, albeit brief excursion that follows the concluding lines of Adorno’s essay. Enlightenment’s discourse is endless, as Sade’s voluminous and monotonous novels show. Like Homer’s talkative narration this discourse wants to forget by adapting to what it describes: the form and order of

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reason. With Homer this reason expresses itself in mytho-logic, with Sade in formal logic. The ancient epic traverses a territory inhabited by figures of a vast and animate nature; the modern novel rotates within intimate chambers where nature is killed over and over again. But just as Homer’s language knows a gesture of negation that silently remembers, VHistoire de Juliette, “the Homeric epic with its last mythological covering removed,” contains a similar gesture. Sade’s most expressive device is the tableau. It is a scene in which movement is artfully arranged and arrested. As image it commands the gaze of the observer—hence scrutiny. The following description of an orgy, told by Juliette after being initiated into the order of libertinage, surveys a scene of frantic pleasure: But everywhere my eye roved, it was to be amazed at the same extraordi­ nary state of affairs: save for the utterances incidental to the action, sometimes shrill exclamations of pleasure, and much blasphemy, sometimes loud, there was no other sound, one could have heard a pin drop. Over all that was astir the most entire order reigned; were some altercations to arise, and it happened very rarely, a gesture from the President or the Censor restored peace and quiet in a trice: the most decent activities could not have transpired amidst greater calm.3

The Sadian tableau, like the Homeric pause, draws attention to the movement of the form. As with Homer, this form wants to reach its content, wants to enact it Compared to the epic, however, where language is still at the stage of narration and story-telling, the novel, in its avant-garde Sadian version, has entered the stage of description.33 Suspending the tale, it keeps it under arrest. Where­ as Homer cuts the tale of suffering short and his language, in the incident with the maids, breaks to make room for remembrance, Sade’s discourse eloquently freezes frenzy into a still-life. Yet it, too, remembers. It reminds us how human commotion and emotion have come to be disciplined. Language, in a gesture of negation, falls silent in ceaseless monotone.

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N o tes 1 DE, p. 24. [Dialektik oflenbart jedes Bild als Schrift. Sie lehrt aus seinen Ziigen das Eingestandnis seiner Falschheit lesen, das ihm seine Macht entreiBt und sie der Wahrheit zueignet (DA, p. 25)]. 2 See note 3 of chapter one. Robert Hullot-Kentor, in his article “Back to Adorno” (forthcoming in Telos) gives a detailed account on the textual history of Dialectic o f Enlightenment in the section called “Tfext and Authorship.” 3 See for example John H. Finley, Jr., Homer’s Odyssey (Cam­ bridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 93. 4 Howard W. Clarke, in The Art o f The Odyssey (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice Hall, 1967), pp. 45-66, interprets the travel sequence similarly, though from a guardedly rational perspective: too much or exclusive attention to the adventures and temptations of the hero leaves the reader “with the impression that this great epic poem is an absorbing adventure stoiy, fascinating in the way fairy tales are fascinating, but hardly worth the attention of serious readers” (p. 45). 5 See especially Friedemann Grenz, Adornos Philosophic in Grundbegriffen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974), pp. 44 and 23; Martin Zenck, Kunst als begriffslose Erkenntnis (Miinchen: Fink, 1977), p. 93; Paul Connerton, The TYagedy o f Enlightenment (New York: Cambridge, 1980), pp. 66-67; David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p. 404. 6 Kafka, in “Das Schweigen der Sirenen,” gives an ironic twist to this dialectic by having the Sirens remain silent while Odysseus pretends to hear them sing.

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7 Adomo does not provide a blueprint for this process, and has been accused by orthodox Marxists of obfuscating the laws of the class struggle with a disembodied notion of power. See Friedemann Grenz's refutation of this argument in Gmndgbegfiffe, pp. 57-58. 8 In one of his early essays, “Die Idee der Naturgeschichte,” Adomo defines history as “jene Verhaltensweise der Menschen . . . die charakterisiert wird vor allem dadurch, daB in ihr qualitativ Neues erscheint, daB sie eine Bewegung ist, die sich nicht abspielt in purer Identitat, purer Reproduktion von solchem, was immer da war, sondem in der Neues vorkommt und die ihren wahren Charakter durch das in ihr als Neues Erscheinende gewinnt.” Theodor W. Adomo, Philosophische Friihschriften Gesammelte Schriften I (Frank­ furt: Suhrkamp, 1973), p. 346. 9 This sadness strikingly reminds of melancholia, which comes about through internalizing a lost object, then railing against oneself. Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” in: A General Selection from the Works o f Sigmund Freud, ed. John Rickman (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1957). p. 124. 10 Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Albert Cook (New York: Norton, 1967), p. 137. 11 Throughout Dialectic o f Enlightenment, the principle of the domination of nature correlates with the actual domination of women. See especially the end draft, “Man and Animal”, pp. 245255. 12 Homer, The Odyssey, tr. Cook, p. 147. 13 The Odyssey, p. 150. 14 One of the most concise definitions of Adorno’s understand­ ing of Naturgeschichte (i.e. nature-as-myth) is given by Gillian Rose: “The phrase ‘history of nature’ is used by Adomo to draw attention

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to the concepts of nature held by an historically-specific society. These concepts of nature, whether of human nature, or of the physical world, or of the ‘naturalness’ of social institutions are cultural forms which appear immutable and a-historical, but are historically determined.” Gillian Rose, The Melancholy Science (New York: Columbia Press, 1978), p. 152. Here, the envisioned change from nature-as-myth to nature-in-history means a society in which social institutions and relations no longer perpetuate power to exploit others. 15 The lines are from the first stanza of Holderlin’s poem, “Der Herbst,” in Friedrich Beissner, ed., Holderlin. Samtliche Werke II/l (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1951), p. 284: Die Sagen, die der Erde sich entfemen, Vom Geiste, der gewesen ist und wiederkehret, Sie kehren zu der Menschheit sich, und vieles lemen Wir aus der Zeit, die eilends sich verzehret [The legends that depart from land and sea, Of spirit that once was here and will return, These turn to men, and there is much we learn From time that, self-devoured, moves speedily.] Translation by Michael Hamburger, Friedrich Holderlin. Poems and Fragments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 594. 16 In a note Adorno refers to Murray’s The Rise o f the Greek Epic (Oxford, 1911): “Auf die trostende Intention des Verses macht Gilbert Murray aufmerksam. Seiner Theorie zufolge sind in Homer durch zivilisatorische Zensur Folterszenen getilgt. Stehen geblieben seien der Ibd des Melanthios und der Magde. (A. a. O. S. 146)” (DA, p. 72). [Gilbert Murray draws attention to the consolatory intention behind these verses. According to his theory, torture scenes have been expurgated from Homer’s civilized censorship. Of

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these only the deaths of Melanthius and the suitors' mistresses have been retained (op. cit, p. 146) (DE, p. 79)]. 17 The Odyssey, p. 309. 18 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vemunft, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Insetverlag, 1920), p. 609. 19 “Identification with the aggressor” is a psychological defense mechanism analyzed and described by Anna Freud. The subject, facing an external danger, identifies with its aggressor by considering itself responsible for the aggression. It can also take the form of the subject's physical or moral imitation of the aggressor, or its appro­ priation of certain power symbols that characterize the aggressor. 20 Pierre Klossowski, “Nature as Destructive Principle,” trans. Joseph H. McMahon, in: Sade, The 120 Days o f Sodom, trans. A. Wainhouse and R. Seaver (New York: Grove Press, 1968), pp. 6970. %

21 Sade, Juliette, p. 1193. 22 Simone de Beauvoir, “Must We Burn Sade?” trans. Annette Michelson, in: Sade, the 120 Days o f Sodom, pp. 54-55. 23 Kant, “Metaphysiche Anfangsgriinde der Tugendlehre,” Werke VI (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1910), p. 408. 24 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Zur Genealogie der Moral,” Werke VII (Leipzig: Kroner, 1910), p. 321, 326. 25 The Marquis de Sade, Juliette, trans. Austryn Wainhouse (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 767. 26 Juliette, p. 798.

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96 27 Sade, Juliette, p. 431.

28 Klossowski, “Nature as Destructive Principle,” p. 70. 29 Quoted in Klossowski, pp. 72-73. 30 Quoted in Beauvoir, p. 3. 31 Etymologically, the word “some” is related to “same,” which in turn is derived from Latin “simulis” = like, “simul” = together, at the same time. 32 Sade, Juliette, p. 438. 33 This excursion into narrative theory confirms the basic dis­ agreement between LukScs and Adorno concerning the “truth” of literaiy presentation. Adorno, the defender of avant-garde modern­ ism, criticizes Luk£cs for his regressive defense of “realist” narra­ tion, while Luk&cs, immune to the subtleties of negative dialectics, argues against the “decadence” of bourgeois description.

Ill HO ld er lin a n d B e c k e t t : F r o m S o n g t o S ilen c e There is nothing in art that does not derive from the world; and yet all that enters art is transformed. Aesthetic Theory1 But what is truth? A mobile army of metaphors. Nietzsche

From the perspective of Dialectic o f Enlightenment, self-survival is played out as power, dependence as domination, love as hatred. The two literary excurses differentiate this dialectic further: both cunning Odysseus and clever Juliette are figures whose adaptation to the social order speaks of an attachment that exceeds it—each desires what is other to their purpose. Odysseus, longing for a home, establishes himself as master; Juliette, longing for pleasure, practices utmost self-discipline. As fictions of their authors they display a divisiveness that both their and their writers’ orders work hard to suppress. The narrative form of these fictions, collaborative with the content, colludes with such divisiveness. It is doubly mimet­ ic: while the form of language imitates the structures of reality, it also mimes ex negativo what these structures have buried. This duplicity lies at the heart of aesthetic mimesis.

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Adorno’s literary essays, collected in Noten zur Literatur I-IV (1958-1974), are largely occasional pieces, including speeches, lec­ tures, and radio presentations. Throughout they show his commit­ ment to articulate a critical relation between literature and society, between artistic form and social content Two essays in particular reflect this connection, “Parataxis” (1964) and “Ttying to Under­ stand ‘Endgame’ ” (1961).2 Like the essays on Homer and Sade, Adorno’s reading implies a trajectory, a synoptic view that describes the course taken by avant-garde modernism. Tied to the bourgeois era yet profoundly antagonistic to it, literary language becomes increasingly abstract: “Der idealische Holderlin inauguriert jenen Prozess, der in die sinnleeren Protokollsatze Becketts miindet” (NL III, p. 194). [The ideal-minded Holderlin inaugurates a process that eventually leads to Beckett’s recording of meaninglessness (trans. mine)]. This trajectory from 1800 to the 1950’s, from dithyrambic verse to the theater of the absurd, reaches from utopian song to clownish refrain, from inspired to empty speech. Both Holderlin and Beckett exemplify a writing that inscribes the historical moment in its form: whether as exuberant chant to the hopes unleashed by the French [Revolution, or as ruthless parody of the reified chatter filling a contemporary world. Adorno considers the specific characteristic of Holderlin’s poetry its break with symbolic representation, which infuses the image with metaphysical meaning. Holderlin’s images do not lay claim to univer­ sal ideas but allow the historical truth to shine forth—with increas­ ing alienation and control the desire for freedom and community breaks loose. This rupture with classicist poetics ushers in a modern­ ist, immanently critical sensibility: Dafi er die symboiische Einheit des Kunstwerks zerschmetterte, mahnt an das Unwahre der VersOhnung von Allgemeinem und Besonderem inmitten des UnversOhnten . . . Er hat die Abstraktheit, die von deren Anschaulichkeit abertOncht ist, sichtbar werden lassen (NL III, p. 181, 179). [That Holderlin smashed the symbolic unity of the art work reminds us bow untrue reconciliation is between the universal and the particular in the

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midst of unreconciled existence . . . He has made visible abstractness, the vivid appearance of which is merely a cover-up (trans. mine)].

Holderlin’s literary radicalism provoked the ire of his contempoi raries, much to his personal despair. Yet his poetiy expresses the 1experience of separation and isolation not in the idiom of inwardIness but in a language that explores its distance to the real to the \fullest. For Adorno, the poet’s abstract vocabulary is the negative sign of his longing for a society without domination and repression, a society in which each belongs without being subjected. His self­ consciously estranged language, frequently called idealist, does not consist of ideas that level the particular and concrete but of words that allow, in their hollowness vis-&-vis reality, the dashed hopes of mankind to reverberate. Holderlin is a poet exemplary for his time. His language speaks of the painful experience of subjection by sublimating subjection: “Kraft seiner individuellen Erfahrung von der Hinfalligkeit des Individuellen und der Vormacht des Allgemeinen emanzipieren sich die Begriffe von jener Erfahrung, anstatt sie blofi zu subsumieren. So werden sie beredt” (NL III, p. 179). [By force of his own, personal experience of the frailty of the individual and the dominance of the universal his concepts free themselves of that experience instead of merely subsuming it. Thus they become articu­ late (trans. mine)].

Ontology’s Abuse o f HolderUn Both a polemic and an analysis, “Parataxis” is divided into two parts. The first, examining recent approaches to Holderlin,3 sharply takes issue with Heidegger’s reading of Holderlin and with the ontological approach in general. While Heidegger claims to accentu­ ate the poetic,4 Adorno charges that the philosopher’s labored metaphysical interpretation makes short shrift of precisely this aspect. “Er verherrlicht den Dichter, uberasthetisch, als Stifter, ohne das Agens der Form konkret zu reflektieren” (NL III, p. 162). [He idolizes the poet beyond aesthetics as a founder, without concretely reflecting on the agent of the form (trans. mine)].

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Adorno's criticism is well-taken, considering Heidegger's grandil/~oquent mystifications. He argues that Heidegger’s interpretation I makes a mockery of philosophical reading. By singling out and Vjiypostatizing certain words into a-historical, ontological concepts (such as “Being,” “Having-been-thrown,” “Decision,” “Saying,” “Foundation,” “Statement”), he overlooks the dialectic between a specific aesthetic form and its historical truth. He takes Hftlderlin's subtle and cerebral poetry literally, without reflecting on the veiy expression of the critical relation between poetry and social reality, ^>the mediation by the form: Dadurch wird die genuine Beziehung HOlderlins zur Realitat, die kritische und utopische, weggeschnitten . . . Die allzu firQh behauptete Wirklichkeit des Dicbterischen unterschiagt die Spannung von HOlderlins Dicbtung zur Wirklichkeit und neutralisiert sein Werk zum Einverstandnis mit dem SchicksaT (NL III, p. 164). [With that Holderlin’s genuine relation to reality, which is critical and utopian, is excised . . . The far too prematurely proclaimed reality of the poetic suppresses the tension between HOlderlin’s poetry and the real. It neutralizes his work by having it affirm fate (trans. mine)].

Adorno does not deny that there is a mythological layer to JHolderlin’s poetry, a layer derived from the same phil-hellenic tradition to which Heidegger belongs. But Holderlin’s allusions to myth are memory traces, not Heideggerian “origins.” For example, line from the poem “The Journey,” “Schwer verlasst / Was nahe dem Ursprung wohnet, den Ort” [R>r whatever dwells / Close to its origin is loathe to leave the place]5, is turned by Heidegger into a dogmatic “statement” on origin and immobility, whereas Holderlin refers to his archaic vocabulary as words whose meaning we do not know. The problem with Heidegger, Adomo submits, is not that he tries to say what the poet does not say, but that he is blind to what Holderlin’s poetry does say through its form. This form speaks through juxtaposing contradictory elements . without straining to harmonize them, without trying to resolve their I tension. Extremes are held in mutual suspense. The idea of immo! bility, for instance, is counterpointed by one of dynamic will: “Je-

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doch die ungeheure Zeile ‘Ich aber will dem Kaukasos zu!' . . . [fahrt] bei Holderlin im Geist von Dialektik—und dem der Beethovenschen Eroica—fortissimo dazwischen” (NL III, p. 166). [Yet Holderlin’s tremendous line ‘But I am bound for the Caucasus!’ forcefully interferes in the spirit of dialectics—and that of Beetho­ ven’s Eroica (trans. mine)]. Adorno’s own way of reading Hdlderlin seeks to illuminate certain formal configurations that reveal a dialectic in suspense. Instead of reading one poem or line in isolation, he compares several to show the tension that animates them and keeps contradic­ tory elements in delicate balance. In poems like “The Journey” and “At the Source of the Danube” movement and rest, desire for the distant and celebration of the present form a correspondence that defies mutual exclusion, as do the lines praising the “holy weapons of the word” and the recognition that “we do not know the mean­ ing,” or those about the poet's love of home “by Neckar’s willows and by the Rhine” and his fierce longing for the mountains of the Caucasus.6 Heidegger’s reading, by contrast, is based on an undialectical “cult of origin,” a chauvinist Ursprungskult heavily indebted to an ideology of all too recent memory. Exploited to lend a legitimizing voice to the jargon of Eigentlichkeit, Hdlderlin is made to express nothing but the love of self and property: “Holderlin wird uber Stock und uber Stein fiir eine Vorstellung von Liebe eingespannt, die in dem kreist, was man ohnehin ist, narzisstisch fbriert ans eigene Volk.” (NL III, pi 167). [By hook or by crook Hdlderlin is employed for a notion of love that revolves around what one is anyway—narcissistically fixated on one’s own people (trans. mine)]. —• Adorno is especially critical of Heidegger’s insensitivity to Holderlin’s love of the foreign, of what is other. His interpretation of “ Remembrance,”7 a poem in which Holderlin recalls “the brown women” of Bordeaux during his wanderings through France, first makes these women disappear in a mythical notion of women in general (“Die Frauen—Dieser Name hat hier noch den friihen Klang, der die Herrin und Hiiterin meint.”)8 [The women—This name here still has the early ring meaning the mistress of the

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hearth (trans. mine)], then equates this notion with the German women in “The German’s Song”—a poem which according to Heidegger says everything there is to know about Germany’s place in history. He finally claims that even though “Remembrance” makes reference to “brown women,” the unusual adverb “daselbst” (there-same) that follows was placed there by the poet to show how germane, that is German, these women are. “Um das Feme in seiner femen Anwesung in der Nahe zu halten, sagt der Dichter dieses daselbst.”9 [lb keep the distant in its distant dwelling nearby the poet says this 'there-same' (trans. mine)]. Adorno prefers to think that Holderlin’s line expresses his erotic longing for the wom­ en of Bordeaux precisely because they were foreign to him. With biting irony he suggests that a caveman’s mentality pervades Heideg­ ger’s reading: [Die deutscben FVauen] werden an den Haaren herbeigeschleift. Offenbar muBte der phikxophiscbe Kommentator, als er 1943 mit dem “Andenken” sich beschaftigte, bereits die Erscheinung franzOsiscber Frauen als subversiv fOrchten; er hat aber auch spater an dem putzigen Exkurs nichts geflndert (NL HI, p. 169). [(The German women) are dragged near by the hair. In 1943, when he busied himself with “Remembrance,” the philosophical commentator evidently had cause to fear the mere appearance of French women as subversive; but even later be did not change the wording of this curious excursus (trans. mine)].

He charges Heidegger with trafficking in poetic travesty (Afterpoesie), a charge that Heidegger’s text substantiates. His Explications poeticize Holderlin with a vengeance. The philosopher does not rest until he has pulled the very ground from under the French women’s feet and corrected what he considers poor grammar on the part of the poet. Where Holderlin writes simply and concretely “[sie] gehn I . . . I Auf seidnen Boden / Zur Marzenzeit,”10 [(they) walk / . . . / On silken ground / In the month of March (Hamburger, p. 489)], Heidegger feels compelled to elaborate:

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Auf seidnem Boden gehen die Flrauen. Der Boden ist dennoch nicht die gleichgdltige Unterlage ihres Ganges. Dem Boden entsteigt das frtlhlingsbaft Verbaltene in den Schritten der Schreitenden. Der Boden ist seiden. Er gianzt zart und still in der Kostbarkeit des verborgenen Reichtums der kaum berQhrten Erde. Oder denkt der Dichter die Erde selbst, aus der und Qber die hin und in die zurQck gehaucht ist jenes unbestimmte Zarte des ersten sprossenden Sichregens im Vorfrabling, wo alles zumal ist: verhQUendes Unbestimmtes und doch scbon innig Entschjedcnes?ln [On silken (correct dative ending!) ground the women walk. Still, the ground is not an indifferent floor to their gait. Emanating from the ground is the spring-like muted measure of the walk of the walking. The ground is silken. It sparkles softly and still in the preciousness of the hidden riches of the barely touched earth. Or is the poet thinking the earth itself, from which and across which and back toward which is breathing that indetermi- oate softness of the first budding movement in early spring, where all is at once: veiling indeterminacy which yet is already intimately determined? (trans. mine)].

It was not just Heidegger who waxed lyrical reading Holderiin, his followers waxed metaphysical reading Heidegger. In 1970, a collection of essays under the title Durchblicke (Shine-Through’s) was published to honor Heidegger on his eightieth birthday. One of these essays,44 ‘Bevestigter Gesang,’ ” (‘Firm Song’) does honor also to his Holderlin-explications, matching the bathos of the master in kind. It begins as follows: “Unter den Dankeszeichen fur Heideggers reiches Denken die wir ihm zum 80. Geburtstag darbringen, sollte auch eines nicht fehlen, das, wie unzulanglich auch immer, von dem zeugt, was uns in Heideggers Erlauterungen zu Holderlins Dichtung geschenkt worden ist Wie zwei ‘Gipfel der Zeit’ stehen die Werke der beiden “GroBen,” des Dichters und des Denkers, in unserem Blick.”12 [Among the tokens of gratitude for Heidegger’s rich thought, which we present to him on his eightieth birthday, must not be missing one that testifies, however insufficiently, to what has been given us by Heidegger’s explications to Hdlderlin. Like two towering “peaks of time” the works of the two “great ones,” of the poet and the thinker, stand in our view (trans. mine)]. It seems that Adomo, who did not live to see the Festschrift, had good cause to warn of a grandiloquence that appropriates,

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makes eigen, what is other. The Heideggerian approach, under the C pretext of “grounding” language, does not wish to get to know the \ other by its difference but seeks to make it conform with Selbstheii, Stoth its own notions of what it should be. As such it reminds us of mimesis to the second power, the phobic-projective device analyzed in Dialectic o f Enlightenment. The process shows the imperialist gesture of fascism. As Heidegger writes in his conclusion: “ Andenken’ ist das dichterische Bleiben im Wesen des schicklichen Dichtertums, das im festlichen Geschick der kunftigen Geschichte der Deutschen feiertaglich seinen Stiftungsgrund zeigt.”13 [‘Remem­ brance’ is the poetic trace of the essence of proper poet-hood, which festively shows in the festive fate of the future history of the Germans its founding ground (trans. mine)]. Adorno explains why Holderlin’s poetry is attractive to ontology. Many of his words resemble the language of Seinsphilosophie, whose nominalist style feeds on abstractions. But there is a decisive differ_.ence. Holderlin’s word choice is determined by negation. His words point toward the missing name, toward a po^Cf'tKat signifying *\Janguage does not have. They are the marks of a utopian search, hence neither grounding nor founding terms. Words such as “spirit” and “ether,” “earth” and “people” reveal the insufficiency of lan­ guage to name what the poet struggles to say. They are relics, dead fragments of the desire for an animated spirituality, a natural lan­ guage, “capita mortua dessen an der Idee, was nicht sich vergegenwartigen lasst” (NL III, p. 176). [Capita mortua of that part of the I idea that cannot be represented (trans. mine)]. Adorno cites Benjamin, who saw in such words Holderlin’s concentrated effort to bring about a concretion to the second power, a second reality. As such they neither belong to philosophi­ cal nor confessional poetry, are neither Gedankenlyrik nor Erlebnisjdichtung. They are, rather, the strange yet tangible results of a /longing for the name, for a language which does not (yet) exist “Ihre Fremdheit, die wiederum erst der Dichtung sie einverleibt, empfangen sie dadurch, daB sie von ihrem Widerpart, den Namen, gleichsam ausgehohlt wurden” (NL III, p. 176). [Their strange­ ness—which effectively incorporates them into poetry—derives from

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being hollowed out, as it were, by their counterpart, by names (trans. mine)]. Holderlin’s nouns are determined by negativity, absence. They point to a blind spot, a blank within language. As 'strange” words they draw attention to what is amiss, what cannot be named by an idiom shaped by a reality in which divisiveness and abstract, alienating relations predominate.

The Language o f Separation lo the degree that the first half of Adorno’s essay is a polemic against Heidegger’s wrong reading of Holderlin, the second half is a tribute to Walter Benjamin’s right way.14 It develops the Benjaminian notions of the row ( Reihung), of objective speech and mysti­ cal passivity, conceiving of them in terms of parataxis, non-meaning and a utopian gesture toward peace and reconciliation. Adorno’s reading of Holderlin begins where Heidegger’s stops, with an analysis of the relationship between content and form. He explains that the union of the two does not excuse an analysis from examining their relationship: Nur als gespannte zwischen ihren Momenten ist solche Einheit zu denken; sie siod zu unterscheiden, wenn sic im Gehalt zusammenstimmen sollen, schlechthin Getrenntes weder noch indifferent Indentisches . . . Anstatt auf Form vag sich zu berufen, ist zu firagen, was sie selber, als sedimentierter Inhalt, leistet (NL m , p. 182). [Such unity can be thought only as the tension between the moments that constitute it. They must be differentiated if they are to agree in meaning; they are neither crudely separate nor indifferently identical. . . Instead of vaguely referring to form one must ask what the form, understood as sedimented content, accomplishes (trans. mine)].

The primary characteristic of Holderlin’s language is that it is conscious of the^ distance that separates it from the real. It refers to objects as faraway^ whether presenting them as remembered or as presently existing. It frequently expresses astonishment and won­ der at “seeing” objects again and yet for the first time. Although everything seems familiar, Holderlin’s language makes it unfamiliar

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once more, indicating the semblance (Scheiri) which is produced by art and thus to the separation that exists between thing and word: Alies scheinet vertraut, der vorflbereilende Grufi auch Scheint von Freunden, es scheint jeglicbc Mieoe verwandt. Schweigen mOssen wir oft; es fehlen beilige Naroen, Herzen schlagen, und doch bleibet die Rede zurdck?15 [All seems familiar; even the word or the nod caught in passing Seems like a friend’s, every face looks like a relative’s face ♦ ♦ •

Silence often behooves us: deficient in names that are holy, Hearts may beat high, while the lips hesitate, wary of speech? (Hamburger, pp. 256, 257)]

These and other expressions of wonder, as well as the many references to recollection, vision and anticipation are Holderlin’s acknowledgement of the speaking subject's separation from the real. “Die Sprache bekundet Abgeschiedenheit, die Trennung von Subjekt lund Objekt fur den Staunenden” (NL III, p. 182). [Language ex­ presses seclusion, the separation between subject and object for the bewildered speaker (trans. mine)]. Other more emphatically formal elements of this language are the frequent caesuras and sudden breaks that do not permitshifting smoothly and gradually from one scene to another butindicate a dissociation that has been internalized. This dissociation is all the more enforced when the next line resumes with a conjunction, such as denn, aber, doch, drum [for, but, however, therefore]—“joining” words that have no other function than emphasizing the break. Frequently questions appear without contextual motivation, disrupt­ ing the presentation and reverberating by remaining unanswered. Adomo sees in this contrary use of language not only a distance but also a resistance to what exists. Holderlin’s language is sensitive to the predictable and exchangeable inscribed in linguistic usage, “allergisch gegen das je zu Erwartende, vorweg schon Eingefangene und Tauschbare des sprachlichen Convenus” (NL III, pp. 183-184);

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[allergic against the expected, against what linguistic convention has grasped and prepared for exchange (trans. mine)]. Adorno's key concept in understanding Hdlderlin is parataxis. Holderlin’s syntax, seemingly adhering to his classical education with hypotactic constructions compelled by the logic of subordination and synthesis, actually exhibits a different logic. Adorno likens this logic to that of the musical row and compares it to Benjamin’s description >f Holderlin’s metaphysics, in which gods and men, heaven and earth are pried loose from the old hierarchical order and set side by side to face each other as equals.16 He takes Benjamin’s characterin of the content to analyze the form. Citing a stanza from the second version of “The Only One,” he describes a formation that seeks to shake off the fetters of dominant logic, of divine spirit (Geist): Die Anklage gegen die Gewalttat des sich zum Unendlichen gewordenen und sich vcrgottendcn Geistes sucht nach einer Sprachform, welche dem Diktat von dessen eigenem synthesierenden Prinzip entronnen ware. Daher das abgesprengte “Diesmal;” die rondohaft assoziative Verbindung der Satze . . . Das verschafft der Form ihren Vorrang aber den Inhalt, auch den gedanklichen. Er wird ins Gedichtete transponiert, indem die Form ihin sich anbildet und das Gewicht des spezifischen Moments von Denken, der synthetischen Einheit, herabmindert (NL III, p. 186). [The accusation against the violence of spirit, which proclaims its own infinity and divinity, searches for a linguistic form that might escape spirit’s synthesizing principle. Thus the “this time” blasted from its context; the rondo-like, associative linkage of the sentences . . . It gives the form priority over the content and its logic. This content is transposed by being made into a poem, by form molding itself onto it and thereby diminishing the moment specific to logic, its synthetic unity (trans. mine)].

c— The concept of parataxis, which emphasizes form in terms of 'stanza division, sentence structure and word placement, equally pertains to its content, to the subject’s awareness of separation from the object and the longing for reconciliation. The disparity of which Adorno speaks concerns language and reality, the gulf between the words the poet has inherited and the state of existence he envisions.

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The paratactic form of his poetry is an attempt to bridge the two; it is mediator and mediated in one. Holderlin’s post-classicist, pre-romantic experiments explore the conditions for the possibility of a language that both expresses separation and holds it in suspense. “Visiert i s t . . . sprachkritische Selbstreflexion” (NL HI, p. 191). [The aim . . . is a self-reflective criticism of language (trans. mine)]. We will illustrate this process with a brief reading of the first—simpler—version of MThe Only One,” a poem traditionally considered Holderlin’s most personal expression of his love for Christ.17 This love (and longing) for the Redeemer is also the desire for a language capable of reconciling the past with the future, nature with spirit, myth with utopia.

“Der Einzige” The poem begins with pondering the poet’s ties to the past, his longing for “the blissful coasts” of ancient Greece, when Zeus procreated with humans and language entered the world as a gift from the gods: “I am where Apollo walked.”1* The second stanza traces the conversion of mythical into rational-historical language, of the lofty thoughts that issued from Logos to inhabit the souls of mortals to be redeemed by Christ. The poet traces this path with a language that sets Olympian myth and Chris­ tian passion side by side: . . stood / High on the top of Parnassus, / . . . / . . . and down / By Ephesus I have walked.” The next stanza praises the power of words, “Have looked upon much that is lovely / And sung the image of God.” But then the poet turns against the gods (and the language he has inherited), accusing them of hiding from him the last and youngest of their family. As the speaking subject becomes conscious of speaking, it begins to reflect on its limitations: “One other I look for . . . ” The fourth stanza addresses the missing god, reproaching him for remaining distant. Sad and suspicious, the poet suggests that the gods are divisive, that they make him suffer by leaving him with mutually exclusive choices: “That if I serve one I / Must lack the

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other.” His language faces the dilemma of expressing the unknown in terms of the known, of speaking the known for the missing god. In the fifth stanza the poet rails against himself for being at fault He loves Christ, the youngest of the gods and the future of man too much to use traditional language. Yet he dares calling him brother to Dionysos, the Asian god of intoxication and happy servi­ tude to the senses: “And boldly I confess, / You are the brother also of Evius.” His language strains to associate the dissociate, sensuous presence with painful absence. The sixth stanza tells of his hesitance to compare Christ with the known gods. Though he knows Logos to be the father of all, “The same who—,” he is searching for a new idiom. Through line breaks and grammatical blending and overlapping the poet suggests his ambivalent relation to Logos/language—and a long silence follows. With the caesura the omnipotence of Logos is denied. The speaker is as yet far from the future, can speak of it only in stepby-step approximation. The next stanza is an unabashed declaration of love for the one and only, for Christ Yet the poet recognizes the exclusiveness of his love and promises he will compensate by singing also of others, “Much though I wish to, never / I strike the right measure.” His language, in pursuit of the other, cannot break free entirely; it must mind its bounds set by the past and the present The last stanza likens the imprisoned soul of song to Christ's sadness on earth. Logos/language has revealed what it can by inti­ mating a promise: “While the Father did / his utmost, effectively bringing / The best to bear upon men.” The poem ends with the poet’s task of staying attached to the world, of imitating Christ in his passion. It is resolution, not a solution, that urges him on: “The poets, and those no less who / Are spiritual, must be worldly.” In his reach for an idiom that speaks the other he turns to the world. Holderlin’s stanzas are animated throughout by restlessness and a thetic-antithetic commotion. Each stanza recalls yet is separate from the preceding one, with the last lines of the poem recalling its opening. There are thirty-three conjunctions that seemingly conjoin but actually divide ninety-two short lines, mostly und, aber, denn

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[and, but, for]. Within each stanza two or more images are juxta­ posed, making for an overall “progression” that is serial rather than sequential. The process ends with a resolution that does not resolve but suspends the search. Paratactic in both content and form, the poem shows language as a configurative force: longing and mourn­ ing, remembrance and anticipation stand side by side.

Language as Song Pierre Bertaux, in his study on Holderlin, singles out Adorno’s “Parataxis” for its sensitivity to composition. Adorno’s comments show the ear of the musicologist, revealing a profound aspect of Holderlin’s technique. Like Adorno, who speaks of the transforma­ tion of sequential-hypotactic into serial-paratactic logic, Bertaux considers Holderlin more a composer than a writer.19 He also points out an aspect that concerns Holderlin’s study of ancient languages, the forms of which, he believes, must have made their communal, participatory significance painfully clear to the unhappy poet. He cites several musicological studies, which describe the asyndetic verse of Greek as a series of words solely held togeth­ er by a non-signifying yet meaningful rhythm, and the verse of Hebrew, equally asyndetic, as a string of words the missing vowels of which must be supplied by a “singing” reader. Bertaux suggests that Holderlin’s enthusiasm for antiquity may well have been inspired by a promise inherent in the linguistic forms he studied, a promise of community that he tried to translate into his own language and that his time failed to fulfill: Dafi ihm cine soicbe aktiv beteiligte, ein aktives Vcrstflndnis entgegenbringendc Gemeinde zeit seines Lebens fehlte, hat Holderlin bald zu spQren bekommen. Daher hat er auf spatere Generationen gehofft. Docb dafi er es aufgab, sich seinen Zeitgenossen verstandlich zu machen, und aufhOrte, sich mit ihnen zu unterhalten, ist nicht unbedingt ein Zeichen der Geisteserkrankung—ebensowenig wie es als Zeichen einer Geisteserkrankung gelten sollte, dafi er sich wie die alten Griechen ausdrQckte.20

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[H'jJderlin was soon forced to experience what would be a life-long lade of suf:h an actively participating, actively communicating community. That is wty he put bis hopes in future generations. The fact that be gave up being intelligible to his contemporaries and stopped conversing with them is not necessarily a sign of mental illness—just as one should not presume mental illness by the fact that he expressed himself like the ancient Greeks (trans. mine)].

Adorno arrives at a similar conclusion. Taking Holderlin’s biog­ raphy into account, the inner dialectic of which he considers symp­ tomatic for the state of artistic subjectivity in the early bourgeois era, he outlines a productive process of sublimation. The authority-minding protestant Hdlderlin, who becomes a fervent follower of Rousseau and the French Revolution, sublimates his Fiigsamkeit, a loving submissiveness enforced by education, into an art that freely abandons the constraints of traditional linguistic logic: subordination, synthesis, the authority of the speaking subject. Inscribed in his poetry is a process of non-violent, “passive” libera­ tion: “Die Sublimierung primarer Fiigsamkeit aber zur Autonomie ist jene oberste Passivitat, die ihr formales Korrelat in der Technik des Reihens fand. Die Instanz, der Hdlderlin nun sich fiigt, ist die Sprache” (NL m , p. 190). [The sublimation of primary submissive­ ness into autonomy is the highest from of a passivity that found its formal correlative in the technique of the series. The authority to whom Hdlderlin now submits is language (trans. mine)]. The lan­ guage referred to here is not understood as a closed system but a texture that must be worked (as does Hdlderlin) for its hidden possibilities. Exemplary for Holderlin’s submissiveness—Benjamin called it the Blodigkeit (timidity) of the poet21—is his inversion of the period. As such, inversion is a traditional rhetorical device that keeps the synthetic (schliejknd) logic of the sentence intact In Holderlin’s usage the period’s progress/compulsion toward synthesis or “mean­ ing” is not reversed but suspended by inverting the connection that links one clause to another. In other words, he makes sequential into serial periods, which do not aim at a conclusion but stop with an ending that holds what precedes it in suspense. Such “intention-

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less” speech, though it may synthesize particulars in a given sen­ tence, is ultimately inconclusive, hence subject-less. “In Holderiin [erschuttert] die dichterische Bewegung erstmals die Kategorfe des Sinnes” (NL III, p. 192). [In Holderiin the poetic movement piakes the category of meaning tremble for the first time (trans. mine)]. Closely related to parataxis is the technique of sudden corre­ spondence. Holderlin’s poetry tends to correlate contemporary with ancient locales, living with mythical figures, close with remote ob­ jects. While correspondence associates dissociate elements, it does not, in contrast to symbolic presentation, collapse them into one. What is different and disparate is drawn near to each other without losing its distinction. Like parataxis, correspondence expresses the content of the form, especially in Holderlin’s late poetry. This Adorno’s terminology, is the remembrance {anamnesis) illy repressed nature, the non-violent protest against The poet is the one who remembers. In Holderlin’s “Mnemosy­ ne” the line, “Vieles aber ist / Zu behalten” [But much / Must be retained] semantically articulates what the immediately following, anacoluthically phrased image of passivity and presence shows: “Vorwarts aber und riickwarts wollen wir / Nicht sehn. Uns wiegen lassen, wie / Auf schwankem Kahne der See.” [Forward, however, and back we will / Not look. Be lulled and rocked as / On a swaying p. skiff the lake.]22 The a-logical construction, adjoining kinetic and visual sensation, escapes the strictures of a grammar that keeps . swaying skiff and lake forever separate, while the association of thoughtful remembrance with sensate presence spanning several ' lines conveys a reconciliation of what usually is considered mutually exclusive. Holderlin’s sign for a peaceful future is Christ. Yet in his uni­ verse the Son who returns does not come to take the place of the old gods; rather, he peacefully takes his place among them. Holder­ lin’s poems side the One with the many instead of placing him above them—as a rationalist mythology would have it. Thus they express peace between self and other, between man’s reason/spirit and his nature: “Versohnt werden nicht Christentum und Antike .

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. . Vielmehr soli Versdhnung die reale von Innen und AuBen sein oder, ein letztes Mai in idealistischer Sprache ausgedruckt, die von ■Genius und Natur” (NL III, p. 205). [It is not Christianity and antiquity that are reconciled . . . Reconciliation, rather, aims at the Inner and the outer or, for the last time expressed in the language of idealism, at a reconciliation of genius and nature (trans. mine)]. In Adorno’s post-idealist translation, genius is the conciliatory moment of spirit, an attitude on the part of reason that does not exhaust itself in domination. Thie subjectivity, he adds using the subjunctive, would be the subject’s consciousness of the object as something that is different yet related, non-appropriable yet knowable through self-conscious empathy. In Holderlin’s work, genius is the spirit of song. It manifests itself as “Geist selber sich offnend als Natur, anstatt diese zu fesseln” (NL in , p. 206). [Spirit opening up as nature instead of laying nature in shackles (trans. mine)]. The phrase suggests an erotic move, an identificatory love of spirit for nature, for its own transient body, which has been negated until now by convention and tradi­ tion. It is this non-subjected, free yet connected subjectivity that is praised by song. Or, in Holderlin’s words from “The Poet’s Cour­ age”: Sind denn dir nicht verwandt alle Lebendigen? . . . so sind auch wir, Wir, die Dichter des Voiles, gerne, wo Lebendes Um uns athmet und wallt, freudig, und jedem hold Jedem trauend; wie sangen Sonst wir jedem den eignen Gott?23 [Is not all that's alive close and akin to you? . . . likewise we love to be Where around us there breathe, teem those alive, our kin, We, their poets; and glad, friendly to every man, 'Rusting all. And how else for Each of them could we sing his god? (Hamburger, p. 201)]

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The song of utopia knows that it is no-place, that it takes place only on condition of its transience, of being song-in-time. It cele­ brates presence and community self-consciously as a conditional, wished-for mode, knowing that it takes courage not to lay claim to power or permanence but to join and sing of the world—something that the nomadic, eventually insane Hdlderlin experienced in his own life: “Drum, so wandle nur wehrlos / Fort durchs Leben, und sorge nicht!”24 [Well, then, travel defenceless / On through life, and fear nothing there! (Hamburger, p. 201)].

The Grammar o f Utopia The manuscript of “Friedensfeier” (“Celebration of Peace”) was not found until 1954. It is prefaced with a word to the reader to be “kindly disposed” to the unconventional language of the poem. “But if,” Holderiin writes, “some should think such a language too unconventional, I must confess to them: I cannot help it. On a fine day—they should consider—almost every mode of song makes itself heard; and Nature, whence it originates, also receives it again” (Hamburger, p. 43S).25 Adomo considers the grand hymn in just this spirit. It is a celebration of logos and nature reconciled, expressed in a language $ ware of the subject’s transience and temporality. This language spells out its own, non-violent liberation from myth, from the mythi­ cal omnipotence of a subject-centered, fixed and eternal reason. By -echoing and recalling the myth, it suspends reason without destroy­ ing it: In ungeheurem Bogen wird das solare Zcitalter des Zeus . . . dem Mythos gleichgesetzt und sein Verhallen in der Tiefe prophezeit, ‘QbertOnt von Friedenslauten.’ Was anders ware, heiBt Friede, die VersOhnung, welche den Aon der Gewait nicht wiederum ausrottet, sondem als vergehenden, in der Anamnesis des Widerhalls, errettet (NL m , p. 208). [In an enormous trajectory the solar era of Zeus . . . is equated with myth and foretold to recede into the depths of time, ‘drowned out by sounds of peace/ What would be other is called peace, the reconciliation which does

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not retaliate by extinguishing the eon of violence but rescues it as it disappears through the echo of remembrance (trans. mine)].

V

The poem celebrates peace in anticipation of a festive evening gathering of Christ and the poet, of ancient divinities and old friends. Holderlin’s imagery, of vast and magnificent dimensions, coordinates nature and history, heaven and earth. The bounteous tables of nature are set, the old hall of histoiy decked. A measured music resounds: Der himmlischen, still wiederklingenden, Der ruhigwandelnden TOne voll, Und gelQftet ist der altgebaute, Seliggewohnte Saal; um grflne Tfcppicbe duftet Die Fteudenwolk. . . 26 [With heavenly, quietly echoing, With calmly modulating music filled, And aired is the anciently built, The sweetly familiar hall, upon green carpets wafts The fragrant cloud of joy . . .(Hamburger, p.433)]

The many references to echo and song keep the joyous anticipa­ tion of the new filled with remembrance of the past, keep alive the memory of old gods and human suffering. The dark side of histoiy is recuperated. Only as song can language reverberate, only as utterance aware of its transience can spirit celebrate its attachment to nature: Denn unermesslich braust, in der Tiefe verballend, Des Donnerers Echo, das tausendjahrige Wetter, Zu schlafen, ObertOnt von Friedenslauten, hinunter ♦ ♦ •

Viel hat von Morgen an, fSeit ein Gesprflch wir sind und hOren voneinander, | Erfahren der Mensch; bald sind wir aber Gesang. [For now immeasurably, fading away in the deeps, The Thunderer’s echo, the millennial storm Rolls down to sleep, intermingled with peaceful music.

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Mimesis on the Move Much, from the morning onwards, Since we have been a discourse and have heard from one another, Has human kind learnt; but soon we shall be song.] (Hamburger, pp. 435, 439)

Remembrance and anticipation are expressed as physical sensa­ tion, as bodily rather than intellectual knowledge. In Adorno’s interpretation, the condition for the possibility of a reconciliation between spirit and nature, mind and body is not one of sublation (as the Hegelian synthesis would have it) but parataxis, a synthesis in suspense as it were. By mingling and conjoining traditional oppo­ sitions Holderlin’s poetry attests to the affinity between logos and ^nature. The connection of the two is the work of the genius—a \ subjectivity aware of its transience and mortality, of its being in \tim e, its historical nature. As if responding to the twisted history of the self-same, deluded subject traced in Dialectic o f Enlightenment, Adorno describes a dialectic propelled by love instead of fear: “Der Genius, welcher den Kreislauf von Herrschaft und Natur abldst, ist dieser nicht ganz unahnlich, sondem hat zu ihr jene Affinitat, ohne welche, wie Platon wuBte, Erfahrung des Anderen nicht mdglich ist” (NL III, p. 208) [The genius which supersedes the vicious circle of domina­ tion and nature is not dissimilar from nature but of an affinity without which, as Plato knew, knowledge of the other is not possi­ ble (trans. mine)]. Holderlin’s rhapsodic speech makes room for both, the sufferings !*e£-the past and the joys of an anticipated future.27 lo understand I this open, broken-up form that is intent on healing yet mindful of / scars, Adorno offers an intriguing observation. Holderlin’s formal efforts follow a process of sacrifice; his language gives up “meaning” for the sake of describing the other. Structurally this vision means sacrificing the complete, grammatically correct and therefore “mean­ ingful” sentence, “das Opfer der Periode.”28 The technique, in Holderlin’s case, proceeds from breaking up the sentence via anaco-v yiuthon to a paratactic grammar of utopia, a grammar that outlines ^ the abolishment of the rational, “universal” subject in hopes of a

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peaceful assembly of individual subjects, who are bound to each other by love yet remain distinct in their differences. The grammar or “logij^Lot the traditional sentence delineates a progression from positing a thesis to arriving at a conclusion, which in turn reinforces the thesis. The movement is synthetic, schliefiend. The grammatical closure indicates the power of a subject that generates and at the same time confirms meaning. Adorno speaks of the coerciveness of the sentence toward what is expressed. We might put it this way: to approach the unknown, we cannot fall back on prescriptive grammar but must search for a structure that allows for the new without violating its strangeness. Holderlin’s sacrifice of traditional grammar for the sake of a language that might articulate the other represents the sacrifice of a subject that means to legis­ late yet is caught within its own prescriptive structures. The line from the poem “Mnemosyne” quoted above, “Uns wiegen lassen, wie / Auf schwankem Kahne der See” [Let us be lulled and rocked as / on a swaying skiff the lake], is an anacoluthon, a non-sentence. The construction ends without having a logical conclusion—veering off from itself as it were, remaining open. Holderiin uses this a-logical device frequently. In “Friedensfeier” it appears at key points, expressing the openness and futurity of the celebration as well as the speaking subject’s powerlessness in the face of the'other, the long longed-for god: “Doch wenn du . . . Freundesgestalt annimmst, du Allbekannter, doch / Beugt fast die Knie das Hohe” [But though you . . . Assuming the shape of a friend, you known to all men, yet / Almost it bends our knees], or “Nun, da wir kennen den Vater / Und Feiertage zu halten / Der hohe, der Geist / Der Welt sich zu den Menschen geneigt hat” [Now that we know the Father / And to keep holidays / The ex­ alted, the Spirit of / The World has inclined towards jpen (Ham­ burger, pp. 433, 439)]. Adorno’s point is that the (singular) subject’s expression is helpless in the face of a predicative language predicated on the historically ruling subject. But there are two aspects to language, the actual-repressive and a potentially liberating one. Insisting on the singular subjective experience (as opposed to the ruling subject’s

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“universal” one), the poet resists the levelling power of the “stan­ dard” idiom by giving himself up to language's associative flow. The critique of traditional language, of a logic that produces isolated subjectivity, thus takes place within and through language. In the formal elements of Holderlin’s poetry, in parataxis, anacoluthon, {"and caesura, the utopia of a true community takes shape, a comrau) nity whose subjects communicate by neither sacrificing their individ­ ual voices nor forgetting the common history that binds them to ^e§.ch other. His linguistic mimesis is an erotic move toward the unknown, cathected to the as yet dormant, negative potential of language and intent on molding the inherited forms in light (and in love) of an unpredicted, wished for future. Yet this first modem move to articulate a reconciliation between nature and Geist, between the body of history and its alienated spirit, is also the last one. Holderlin’s longing for peace, expressed in a language that defies subordination and “meaning” in the tradi­ tional sense, remains an aberration in and for its time. His mimesis of ^nature—“Nun, nun mussen dafiir Worte, wie Blumen, entstehn” [Now, now words for it, like flowers, must come forth]—is a para­ doxical imitatio sui generis that ends in despair. The Revolution has ^failed, and so does language. MSprachlos und kalt, im Winde / Klirren die Fahnen” [Speechless and cold, in the wind / Weathervanes clatter (Hamburger, pp. 249, 371)].29 With the bourgeois era that commences the language of song is forced once again to re­ main incomprehensible.

Endgame Arguably the most important essay in Adorno’s collection is “Hying to Understand Endgame.” Dedicated “Tb S. B. in memory of Paris, Fall, 1958,” it has been re-published separately and, unlike most of Adorno’s literary essays, translated into English.30 Even though it "continues to have a profound impact on all German critics who have written on Beckett,”31 it has had little effect on their Anglo-American counterparts, who tend to dismiss it as “most abstract and vast”—if they refer to it at all.32

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While the essay, as all of Adorno's writing, is complex, it dem­ onstrates a concrete and finely attuned understanding of the play’s critical relation to reality and the discourse it spawns. The cautious title, “Hying to Understand 'Endgame,’ ” alludes more to the nature of the essayistic than to the playwright’s well-known resis­ tance to interpretation, who writes in a letter to his American director about the reception of his play: I feel the only line is to refuse to be involved in exegesis of any kind. And to insist on the extreme simplicity of dramatic situation and issue . . . My work is a matter of fundamental sounds (no joke intended) made as fully as possible, and I accept responsibility for nothing else. If people want to have headaches among the overtones, let them. And provide their own aspirin.33

Making Sense o f Non-Sense Adorno’s attempt at interpretation does not intend to extract a message for popular understanding but situates the form of a play that provokes its audience through lack of "meaningful” plot and j dialogue. The point is to understand meaninglessness along the lines / of negative dialectics: “Es verstehen kann nichts anderes heiBen, als nreine Unverstandlichkeiten verstehen, konkret den Sinnzusammenhang dessen nachzukonstruieren, daB es keinen hat” (NL II, p. 190). [Understanding it can mean nothing other than understanding its incomprehensibility, or concretely reconstructing its meaning struc­ ture—that it has none (Jones, p. 120)]. He traces the play’s coherent non-sense in two moves. The first contrasts and compares Endgame to several existentialist thesisdramas, delineating it against what it is not. This move frees the analysis for what he calls Beckett’s play with traditional dramatic categories, such as setting, character, and dialogue. “Alle sind parodiert. Nicht aber verspottet. Emphatisch heiBt Parodie die Verwendung von Formen im Zeitalter ihrer Unmoglichkeit. Sie demonstriert diese Unmoglichkeit und verandert dadurch die Formen” (NL II, p. 214). [All are parodied. But not ridiculed. Emphatically, parody entails the use of forms in the epoch of their impossibility. It dem­

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onstrates this impossibility and thereby changes the forms (Jones, p. 136)]. The result of such parody is the theatrical gesture: the setting becomes a tableau, the characters clowns, the dialogue a monologue. It is a gesture that evokes silence. Adomo notes that the Beckett play following Endgame is the mime “Act Without Words,” a piece he considers its terminus ad quern. Propelled by its own logic, Beckett’s play transforms itself into a kind of second-degree concre­ tion, a play with/of reality that no longer depicts it but reveals the historical truth: Das aller Spiegelbildlichkeit ledige Spiel mit Elementen der Realitflt . . . enthdllt mehr, als wenn ein Enthdller Partei nimmt Schweigend nur ist der Name des Unheils auszusprechen . . . Der Mensch, dessen allgemeiner Gattungsname schlecht in Beckett’s Sprachlandschaft passt, ist ihm einzig das, was er wurde. . . geschichtliche Kategorie, Resultat des kapitalistischen Entfremdungsprozesses (NL II, pp. 198-199). [Playing with elements of reality—devoid of any mirror-like reflection—, . . . reveals more than would be possible if a “revealer” were partisan. The name of disaster can only be spoken silently . . . Humankind, whose general species-name fits badly into Beckett’s linguistic landscape, is only j that which humanity has become. . . The individual as a historical category, (.__ .as the result of the capitalist process of alienation (Jones, p. 126)].

Beckett’s work recalls certain categories of French existentialism, such as “absurdity,” “situation,” “decision.” But in contrast to rtre’s thesis-plays and their conventional, message-oriented form, idgame eclipses the notion of message by its own meaning-less pearance—thereby changing the message-as-idea (such as “absur­ dity”) into a concrete situation. It has nothing to teach or to preach; it merely demonstrates that which is palpably absurd. Existentialism, Adomo writes, unwittingly tries to extricate men from their historical determinations through the abstract category of Being, while Beckett’s play, conscious of taking place after World War U and the Holocaust, demonstrates how history has hollowed lout the meaning of such a general category. “Being” is corpsed:

S

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(He gets up on ladder, turns the telescope on the without.) Let’s see. (He looks, moving the telescope.) Zero . . . (he looks). . . zero . . . (he looks). . . and zero.

Hamm: Nothing stirs. All is— Clov:

Zer—

Hamm: (violently) Wait till you’re spoken to! (Normal voice.) All is . . . all is . . . all is what? (Violently.) All is what? Clov:

What all is? In a word? Is that what you want to know? Just a moment. (He runs the telescope on the without, looks, lowers the telescope, turns towards Hamm.) Corpsed.34

The existentialist condition humaine is made into a concrete theatrical dis-play of the last master/slave disposing of his predeces­ sors, the left-overs of what is called humanity. In Adorno’s reading, Beckett opposes the so-called verities of ontology by subtracting ^whgt the historical trend is in the process of annulling anyway—a f subject. “Er verlangert die Fluchtbahn der Liquidation des Subjekts C^bis zu dem Punkt, wo es in ein Diesda sich zusammenzieht . . . Geschichte wird ausgespart, weil sie die Kraft des BewuBtseins ausgetrocknet hat, Geschichte zu denken, die Kraft zur Erinnerung” (NL II, pp. 195, 197). [He lengthens the escape route of the sub^-ject’s liquidation to the point where it constricts into a “this-here”. . . History is excluded, because it itself has dehydrated the power of ^consciousness to think histoiy, the power of remembrance (Jones, pp. 124, 125]. The catastrophes inspiring Endgame—capitalist alienation, two world wars, the threat of nuclear destruction—explode the notion of the individual, so desperately cultivated by bourgeois ideology, from within. The frailty of the subject is made apparent without excuse. And yet, not even Beckett’s ruthless art ultimately can break the spell of man’s isolated subjectivity. All it can do is make it concrete­ ly appear on stage. With Beckett, the abstract inwardness of Hei-

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degger’s “states of being,” of Jasper’s “situations,” gains material shape. While subjectivist ontology tries to harmonize the notion of the individual’s substantiality with its temporality by assigning it selfidentity, Beckett, who has learned from Proust and Joyce, recuper­ ates the meaning of the concept “situation.” His figures demon­ strate “die Dissoziation der BewuBtseinseinheit in Disparates, die Nichtidentitat” (NL II, p. 203); [dissociation of the unity of con­ sciousness into disparate elements—non-identity (Jones, p. 129)]. Beckett’s dramatic situations negate meaning and continuity; they are modelled after an empirical existence that finds itself discon­ nected from both a pragmatic and a psychological context.

The Communication Game Adorno’s analysis of Endgame as subjectivity laid bare is most persuasive in its focus on the play’s discourse, its stark parody of communication and communicative language. The bare-bone dia­ logue, Adorno writes, exhibits the comically displaced fear of the characters that perhaps they might mean something: Hamm: Clov!

Gov.

Yes.

Hamm: What’s happening? Gov:

something is taking its course. (Pause.)

Hamm: Clov! Gov:

(impatiently) What is it?

Hamm: We’re not beginning to . . . to . . . mean something? Clov.

Mean something! You and I, mean something! (Brief laugh.) Ah that’s a good one!35

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The characters inhabit a space that has no room for them, a blank reality that is the gist of a socio-economic system that makes everyone interchangeable, hence each superfluous. With the possi­ bility of meaning something gone, the possibility of meaningful language also disappears. This insight is made audible by the play. / Endgame faces the aporia encountered by Expressionist drama, l“dafl Sprache, selbst wo sie tendenziell zum Laut sich verkiirzt, ihr -semantisches Element nicht abschutteln, nicht rein mimetisch oder gestisch werden kann” (NL II, p. 217); [that language, even where it tends to be shortened to mere sound, yet cannot shake off its semantic element. It cannot become purely mimetic or gestural (Jones, p. 138)]. Beckett resolves the dilemma by negating language through language, that is, he retains the allegedly signifying and communicative element to show it up for what it has become—em­ pty and silent. His art is artful repetition, a critical miming of the throw-away language of a commodified world: Der objektive Sprachzerfall, das zugleich stereotype und fehlerhafte GewSsch der Selbstentfremdung, zu dem den Menscben Wort und Satz im eigenen Munde verquollen sind, dringt ein ins flsthetische Arcanum; die zweite Sprache der Verstummenden, ein Agglomerat aus schnodderigen Phrasen, scheinlogischen Verbindungen, galvanisierten Wflrtem aus Warenzeichen, das waste Echo der Reklamewelt, ist umfunktionert zur Sprache der Dichtung, die Sprache negiert (NL n, pp. 217-218). [The objective disintegration of language—that simultaneously stereotyped and faulty chatter of self-alienation, where word and sentence melt together in human mouths—penetrates the aesthetic arcanum. The second language of those falling silent, a conglomeration of insolent phrases, pseudo-logical connections, and galvanized words appearing as commodity signs—as the desolate echo of the advertising world—is “refunctioned” into the language of a poetic work that negates language (Jones, p. 138)].

Adorno sketches a development of modern drama that leads to the parody of meaning in 1Endgame.36 In the late 19th century, Ibsen, in The Wild Duck, uses the psychological motivation of a character to forget a promise as symbol for the course and meaning of the play. Such psychological realism anticipates the Freudian

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theory of “parapraxis,” which explains slip-ups by relating them to an individual’s experiences and wishes, hence his identity and psy­ chological unity. In Ibsen’s later plays, symbolic meaning is less rooted in the psychology of a particular character than it is in objects and seemingly inevitable events. Psychological realism be­ comes reified symbolism. The contradiction between Ibsen’s pressing symbolism and conservative realism, which makes for the inadequacy of his last plays, provides the ferment for Strindberg’s expressionist drama. Symbolism tears loose from character (from individual human beings) entirely and attaches to anything and everything, hence nothing. From then on playwrights need only reflect on such ludi­ crous pansymbolism and put it to dramatic use. “Das nichts Bedeuten wird zur einzigen Bedeutung” (NL II, p. 216). [Not meaning anything becomes the only meaning (Jones, p. 137)]. Beckett’s theater of the absurd thus results from an immanent logic of mod­ ern dramatic forms. Specifically, the loss of meaning is inscribed in the syntactic form of question and answer. A truly dialogic syntax requires an openness between the two, not, as is the case, the prescription of one by the other: “Der Frage ist die vorgezeichnete Antwort anzuhdren, und das verdammt das Spiel von Frage und Antwort zum nichtig Wahnhaften des untauglichen Versuchs, durch den Sprachgestus der Freiheit die Unfreiheit der informativen Sprache zu verschleiern” (NL II, p. 220). [In the question one hears already the anticipated answer, and that condemns the game of question and answer to empty deception, to the unworkable effort to conceal the unfree­ dom of informative language in the linguistic gesture of freedom (Jones, p. 140)]. Beckett shows up this lock-step, solicitous syntax for what it is. In Endgame, the game of dialogue—which at bottom is monologue—is played over and over again. The following ex­ change illustrates the point: Clov;

So you all want me to leave you.

Hamm: Naturally. Clov:

Then I’ll leave you.

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Hamm: You can't leave us. Ctov;

Then I won’t leave you. (Pause.)

Hamm: Why don’t you finish us? (Pause.) I’ll tell you the combina­ tion of the cupboard if you promise to finish me. Ctov.

I couldn’t finish you.

Hamm: Then you won't finish me. (Pause.)37

Later in the play, the same kind of exchange reflects on itself with cutting irony, just as the stage directions, which repeat “Pause.” ad nauseam, eventually introduce a variation: “Long Pause.” Ctov:

I’ll leave you.

Hamm: No! Ctov:

What is there to keep me here?

Hamm: The dialogue. (Pause.)38

The form of Beckett’s language reflects on a culture that is part of an economy in which production is propelled by planned obsoles­ cence. Under such conditions the language of the play polarizes into rudimentary Basic English (or French), spoken by two oppo­ nents steeped in familiarity, and a grammar devoid of any connec­ tion to content, emptied of its synthetic function. Formal logic comes into its own. Referring to the mutually abrogating, authori­ tarian gesture in Hamm’s and Clov’s dialogue, Adorno cites the following exchange as key to the entire drama: Hamm: Open the window. Ctov.

What for?

Hamm: I want to hear the sea.

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126 Q or.

You wouldn’t bear it

Hamm: Even if you opened tbe window? Clov:

No.

Hamm: Then it’s not worth while opening it? Clov:

No.

Hamm: (violently): Then open it!39

The entire history of Western rationality, propelled by a logic based on domination, appears telescoped in Hamm’s conclusion. Adorno’s analysis recalls the critique of such reason in Dialectic o f Enlightenment: Die logische Figur des Atsurden, die den kontradiktorischen Gegensatz des Stringenten als stringent vortrflgt, vemcint jeglicben Sinnzusammenhang, wie ihn die Logik zu gewahren scheint, um diese der eigenen Absurditat zu QberfQhren: daB sie mit Subjekt, Pradikat und Kopula das Nichtidentiscbe so zurichtet, als ob es identisch ware, in den Fbrinen aufginge. Nicht als Weltanschauung kfet das Absurde die rationale ab; jene kommt in diesem zu sich selbst (NL II, p. 22). (The logical figure of the absurd, which makes the claim of stringency for stringency's contradictory opposite, denies every context of meaning appar­ ently guaranteed by logic, in order to prove logic’s own absurdity: that logic, rtjy means of subject, predicate, and copula, treats non-identity as if it were / identical, as if it were consumed in its forms. The absurd does not take the / place of the rational as one world view of another, in the absurd, the \ rational world view comes into its own (Jones, p. 141)].

The relation between the formal aspects and the residual con­ tent of the play is governed by a harmony of despair. The four characters—Hamm and Gov with red faces (“as if their vitality were a skin disease”), Nagg and Nell with white ones (“like sprouting potatoes in a cellar”)—have rudimentary, four-letter words for names and bodies that are in various states of progressive ro t Beckett’s latter-day Hamlet is a paralyzed ham actor, whose self­

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consciously stagy voice alternates between what is called a “ratio­ nal” and a “narrative'* tone: “Erinnerung ans Unwiederbringliche wird zum Schwindel” (NL II, p.225). [The memory of what is irre­ trievably past becomes a swindle (Jones, p. 143)]. Clov is the clown manqu£ with last letter missing, also the cloven-footed devil/slave of his master threatening to leave, though neither of the two can live or die without the other. “Wiederholungszwang ist der regressiven Vehaltensweise des Eingesperrten abgesehen, der es immer wieder versucht” (NL II, p. 227). [This compulsory repetition is taken from the regressive behavior of someone locked up, who tries it again and again (Jones, p. 144)]. The trashcan existence of the older generation, Hamm’s procreators, Nell and Nagg, exhausts itself in futile quibbling, nagging, and reminiscing. “Das Endspiel ist die wahre Gerontologie” (NL II, p. 224). [Endgame is the true gerontol­ ogy (Jones, p. 142)]. The stage setting is equally reduced, showing “bare interior.” The interiority of the subject materializes as a skull with two win­ dows that look out on desolation. Clov, armed with the telescope, asks the blind Hamm: “Any particular sector you fancy? Or merely '"therwhole thing?”40 In the last analysis, the purpose of their activity I is order and control, a formalism undisturbed by content. As if / recalling the Sadian tableau, Hamm envisions stopping his talking, l^Clov his moving about. Clov (straightening up): I love order. It’s my dream. A world where all would be silent and still and each thing in its last place, under the last dust. (He starts picking up again.)41

Adorno ends his essay by reflecting on the point of indifference toward which Endgame is oriented, a point, one might say, where man’s hells and his heavens, his regression and redemption intersect: Aber das bilderlose Bild des Ibdes ist eines von Indifferenz. In ihm verschwindet der Unterschied zwischen der absoluten Herrschaft, der HOIIe, in der Zeit ganzlich in den Raum gebannt ist, in der schlechterdings nichts mehr sich flndert,—und dem messianischen Zustand, in dem alles an seiner

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rechten Stelle ware. Das letzte Absurde ist, daB die Rube des Nichts und die von VersOhnung nicht auseinander sich kennen lassen (NL n , p. 236). [But the imageless image of death is one of indifference. In it, the distinc­ tion disappears: the distinction between absolute domination, the hell in which time is banished into space, in which nothing will change any more—and the messianic condition where everything would be in its proper place. The ultimate absurdity is that the repose of nothingness and that of reconciliation cannot be distinguished from each other (Jones, p. 150)].

Language at a Standstill Adorno’s trajectory from Holderlin to Beckett traces a percep­ tion of nature that has radically changed. While Holderlin still could conceive of a joyous reconciliation with nature, making language express both past separation and future peace, Beckett, a century I and a half later, uses language at stand-still. His art takes account of the fact that nature has withered and died, that language has be­ come the reified expression of a meaningless referent: Hamm: Nature has forgotten us. Clov:

There’s no more nature.

Hamm: No more nature! You exaggerate. Clov:

In the vicinity.42

Form and content, language and abstract existence have become one because there is no more history in nature, nothing that can generate the new, the unknown. Adorno calls it the state of a bombed-out consciousness, a state from within which Beckett and other contemporary artists must face the question about the purpose of forming and formulating, “was ist die raison d’etre der Formen, sobald ihre Spannung zu einem ihnen Inhomogenen getilgt ist, ohne daB doch darum der Fortschritt asthetischer Materialbeherrschung zu bremsen ware?” (NL II, p 214). [What is the raison d’etre of forms when the tension between them and what is not homoge­ neous to them disappears, and when one nevertheless cannot halt

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the progress of mastery over aesthetic material? (Jones, p. 136)]. The answer Beckett gives is not an answer but a material presenta­ tion of the question. In the play’s setting there is nothing which has not become reified—rigid, fixed, a predictable thing. What is shown is a situation after the fact, like and indistinguishable from a man-made catastro­ phe that has destroyed all life. A play that would dramatize the catastrophe itself, such as a nuclear holocaust, would be a self­ mockery, Adorno believes, because its “developing” plot and “deci­ sion-making” characters would falsify the horror of the anonymous existence that history has brought about In Endgame there is no decision-maker, no catastrophic event brought about by either individual or mass action. “Die Gewalt des Unsaglichen wird nachgeahmt von der Scheu, es zu erwahnen” (NL II, p. 194). [The violence of the unspeakable is mimicked by the timidity to mention it (Jones, p. 123)]. Dramatic language petrifies into the chatter of pseudo-dialogue enacted by lonely clowns. The play is conceived in light of two insights: that it has become impossible to formulate a story or plot in the fashion of 19thcentury “objective” drama, and that it has become equally impossible to put a subject on stage, a main character whose psychology “tea­ ches” us something. Beckett’s solution avoids both objectivist and subjectivist approach, the “socially committed” and the “universally human” dramatic conception. He makes his play take place in a zone of indifference between the two. His strategy of reduction plays up neither to the politics of so-called humanism nor that of socialist realism: “So karg sind die Stoffe, daB der asthetische Formalismus gegen seine Widersacher druben und hiiben, die Stoffhuber des Diamat und die Dezementen der echten Aussage, ironisch gerettet wird” (NL II, p. 201). [These materials are so meager that aesthetic formalism is ironically rescued—against its adversaries hither and thither, the stuff-pushers of dialectical materialism and the adminstrators of authentic messages (Jones, p. 128)]. Endgame's plot is sparse to the point of disappearing as story entirely—in fact, it has ended before the curtain rises, while its form, mockingly adhering to the traditional unities of time and place and action,

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makes unity into a thrifty parody. Beckett's art makes the course taken by reason, the desolate point of its destination, appear by staging the end: Die eiserne Ration an Realitflt und Persooen, mit denen das Drama rechnet und hausbait, ist eins mit dem, was von Subjekt, Geist und Seele im Angesicht der permanenten Katastrophe Meibt: vom Geist, der in Mimesis entsprang, die Iflcherliche Imitation; von der sicb inszenierenden Seele die inhumane Sentimentalist; vom Subjekt seine abstrakteste Bestimmung: da zu sein und allein dadurch schon zu frcveln (NL II, p.202). [The iron ration 'of reality and people, with whom the drama reckons and keeps bouse, is one with that which remains of subject, mind, and soul in the face of permanent catastrophe: of the mind, which originated in mimesis, only ridiculous imitation; of the soul—staging itself—inhumane sentimentality; of the subject its most abstract determination, actually existing and thereby already blaspheming (Jooes, p. 128)].

Hamm and Clov, Nagg and Nell are all painfully present biologi­ cally, teasing and torturing each other with tricks known to them in advance. The non-identity of the “ruling” character, Hamm, moti­ vates the non-course taken by the drama. He wants the play to end, yet plays the end over and over again, equally concerned with his centrality as a character and his medication. But neither a remedy nor a spot on center-stage exists—as Clov, hating to stay and unable to leave, informs him in the end. Hamm has the last words: Clov! (Long pause.) No? Good. (He takes out the handkerchief.) Since that’s the way we’re playing i t . . . (be unfolds handkerchief). . . let’s play it that way . . . (he unfolds) . . . and speak no more about it . . . (he finishes unfolding) . . . speak no more.43

In the era of reified social processes, art mimicks the language of reification. But the purpose is not to affirm. The fact that Beckett’s characters talk in complete and all too recognizable sen­ tences may jolt the audience to attention, may change passive consumers into active listeners. Adorno likens this shock of recogni­ tion to the body’s startled reaction to a curative poison. “Beckett’s Sprache [bewirkt] eine heilsame Erkrankung des Erkrankten: wer

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sich selbst zuhdrt, bangt, ob er nicht ebenso redet” (NL n , p. 218). [Beckett’s language bring[s] about a healing illness of those already ill: whoever listens to himself worries that he also talks like that (Jones, p. 139)]. Just as the prehistoric sorcerer impersonated the demon to fight the demon, or Sade’s monotone of horror meant to stem horror, so Beckett’s language unto death means to jolt the listeners/speakers from their catatonic speech. Beckett, like Sade before him, has been taken to task for the apolitical stance of his plays, as has Adorno for allegedly overlooking Beckett's "legitimizing features” for the sake of an “elitist” philo­ sophical and political position: [T]he nonsensical play tends to confirm a belief in the absurdity of the world and to make it appear that any attempt to come to grips with social problems would be fruitless. There is a strong apologetic element in Beckett’s Endgame, which can only serve to legitimize the deceptive means by which domination is maintained in a social order, whether it be capitalist of socialist.44

Beckett would respond to the charge with silence, continuing his work, as he has, with still more nonsensical plays and theatrical experiments. Where he does comment on his position, he makes it clear that it is form that matters to him, not the political statement—which is miles apart from the political act. Beckett the individual took active part in the French Resistance during the second World War, but Beckett the artist writes: “I take no sides. I am interested in the shape of ideas. There is a wonderful sentence in Augustine: 'Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned.’ That sentence has a wonderful shape. It is the shape that matters.”45 Adorno defends Beckett’s hermeticism. Effective art adheres to "the logic of its material; it does not follow the dictates of “mean­ ing.” It would be wrong, he notes, to cite Beckett as a political star-witness (a move he himself is accused of46), just as it is wrong to place him (as Lukdcs does47) on the index of “degenerate” art:

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Mimesis on the Move Zum Kampf gegea den Atomtod ermuntert scbwerlicb ein Werk, das dcssen Potential acbon dem flltesten Kampf anmerkt Der Simplificateur des Schreckens weigert sich . . . der Simplifikation . . . [S]eine Differenziertbeit [wird] zur Empfindlichkeit gegen subjektive Differenzen, die zur conspicuous consumption derer verkamen, welche Individuation sich leisten ktanen (NL II, pp.197-198). [For urging the struggle against atomic death, a work that notes that death’s potential even in ancient struggles is hardly appropriate. The simplifier of terror refuses . . . any simplification . . . [H]is differentiation becomes sensitivity to subjective differences, which have regressed to the "conspicuous consumption” of those who can afford individuation (Jones, p. 125)].

The remark cuttingly alludes to what Adorno elsewhere terms the privileged business of culture (Kulturbetrieb), which consists of an institutionalized discourse unwilling to question its own founda­ tion yet ready to enlist art in self-styled ideological warfare. Art, Adorno believes, resists being appropriated, because it stands apart from other cultural production by the truth of determinate negation: socially determined by the material of which it is made, it negates reality by the fact that it is made experimentally, in the mode of “as if.” As such it is necessary for insight but not sufficient to effect social change. For better or for worse, it must not be confused with what it portrays. A passage from Negative Dialectics defines the relation: Der griechische Streit, ob Ahnliches Oder Unahnliches das Ahnliche erkenne, ware allein dialektisch zu schlichten. Gelangt in der These, nur Ahnliches sei dazu fiahig, das untilgbare Moment von Mimesis in aller Erkenntnis und alter menschlichen Praxis zum BewuBtsein, so wird solches BewuBtsein zur Unwahrheit, wenn die Affinitat, in ihrer Untilgbarkeit zugleich unendlich weit weg, positiv sich selbst setzt.4* [Dialectics alone might settle the Greek argument whether like is known by like or by unlike. If the thesis that likeness alone has that capacity makes us aware of the indelible mimetic element in all cognition and all human practice, this awareness grows untrue when the affinity—indelible, yet infinitely far removed at the same time—is posited as positive].49

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The Polemics o f Silence In Adorno’s trajectory of bourgeois literary history, Beckett’s rk represents the end of a development that shows its first ?ulse in Hdlderlin, the immanently critical stance of literaiy visis “ordinary” language. Quietly polemical, this idiom—which for omo is the language of modernism—goes against the uncritical move by general culture to make the ruling subject the subject of meaning. Its progressive meaninglessness undermines the claim of ordinary language to speak for one and all. Both writers, from different vantage points, thematize non-meaning, one in light of a new, a different time, the other by taking stock of the situation. In the wake of the French Revolution and the hopes that attached to it, Holderiin could still seize the promise of the mo^ m e n t Envisioning a multitude of non-subjected, non-subjecting subjects at peace with themselves and each other, he made language resound with the echoes of the Greco-Judaic tradition while herald­ ing a Christ whose return would inaugurate peace between then and C now, between mytho-logic and reason, reason and nature, nature I and man. The paratactic structure of his language, closed neither to Vihat which came before nor to that which might come, is the first formal negation of the subject that defines itself through closure and domination. The peculiar grammar of his poetry defies hierar­ chical division and logical sequence. As the voice of his poems / breaks, violating syntax and narrative cohesion, language breaks into I song, piling image on image in rhajsodic exuberance^ v Holderlin’s key achievement is to free language from its myth— from being the Word of the Solar^father, eternal, unchanging, meaningfuI~Tor all. “Indem die Sprache die Faden zum Subjekt durchschneidet, redet sie fur das Subjekt, das von sich aus— Hdlderlin war wohl der erste, dessen Kunst das ahnte—nicht meh reden kann” (NL m , p. 193). [By cutting its ties to the subjecl language speaks for the subject, who can no longer speak on hi own account—as Holderlin’s art may have been first to intuit (trans mine)]. The speaker of such language no longer insists on being the subject of his discourse but freely acknowledges his determinations,

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his being spoken by a medium that itself is the result of history. The gesture is polemical While it aims at a state where a multiplici­ ty of subjects, each free to speak for him/herself, is yet able to speak with each other, it criticizes the false universalism of the traditional linguistic code. In Negative Dialectics Adorno speaks of the secret utopia harbored by this position: MUtopie ware iiber Identitat und uber dem Widerspruch, ein Miteinander des Verschiedenen.”50 [Utopia would be above identity and above contradiction; it would be a togetherness of diversity.]51 Beckett, situated after two world wars and a holocaust that has liquidated the notion of being a subject along with its victims, has no idiom left that heralds the new or resounds with the old. Yet his language is historically as true as Holderlin’s. The reification demonstrated by the dialogues/characters of Endgame (who have become non-subjects within their suffocating subjectivity) shortcircuits between dramatic and social non-meaning. The pauses and repetitions, the silly non-sequiturs, the stagy-narrative, stagy-rational voices, all testify to nothing more than mere presence—an existence emptied of the past and devoid of a future. 1 Unlike Holderlin’s, this language no longer identifies with life but imitates death. It dramatizes silence in a last effort to show what has come about, what is left of history. Yet this enactment of /''-silence as remainder and leftover is also a reminder. Adorno calls it the mourning over a history that language, as integral part of this > development, cannot transcend: “Der Grenzwert des Beckettschen > Dramas ist jenes Schweigen, das schon im Shakespeareschen Beginn I des neueren Itauerspiels als Rest definiert war” (NL II, p. 215). -PThe boundary value of Beckett’s drama is that silence already defined as “the rest” in Shakespeare’s inauguration of modem tragedy (Jones, p. 137)]. Only the dramatic gesture, more anciently mimetic than speech or song, remains. As such it offers a hope. Infinitesimal as it might be, negative as it is, it is carried by the desire for what is different In the last analysis Adorno’s pessimism is not intransigent: “Der immanente Widerspruch des Absurden, der Unsinn, in dem Vemunft terminiert, offnet emphatisch die Moglichkeit eines Wahren, das nicht einmal

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mehr gedacht werden kann. Er untergrabt den absoluten Anspruch dessen, was nun einmal so ist” (NL II, p.233). [The immanent contradiction of the absurd, reason terminating in senselessness, emphatically reveals the possibility of a truth which can no longer even be thought; it undermines the absolute claim exercised by what merely is (Jones, p.148)]. Endgame's mimesis, helplessly critical to the point of no return, enacts what should not be.

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N o tes 1 “Nichts in der Kunst, auch nicht in der sublimiertesten, was nicht aus der Welt stammte; nichts daraus unverwandelt.” Theodor W. Adorno, Asthetische Theorie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977), p. 209. Translation C. Lenhardt, Aesthetic Theory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 201. “Was ist also Wahrheit? Ein bewegliches Heer von Metaphem.” Friedrich Nietzsche, “Uber Wahrheit und Luge im aufiermoralischen Sinn,” in Erkenntnistheoretische Schriften. Nachwort von Jurgen Habermas (Frankfurt: Suhrkanp, 1968), p. 102. 2 Theodor W. Adorno, “Parataxis,” in Noten zur Literatur III (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1965), pp. 156-209, and “Versuch, das Endspiel zu verstehen,” in Noten zur Literatur II (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1961), pp. 188-236. 3 Adorno mentions the merits of the philological method in the recent reception of Holderlin (Walter Muschg, Friedrich Beissner, Kurt May, Emil Staiger). Though this method, in his opinion, limits itself to a dubious reconstruction of subjective intention, he much prefers to the “commodified profundity” of metaphysical, i.e. Heideggerian interpretations. The essay is dedicated to Peter Szondi, whose studies on Hdlderlin appeared between 1962-65, collected and published as Peter Szondi, Holderlin-Studien. Mit einem Draktat uber philologische Erkenntnis (Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1967). 4 Martin Heidegger, Erlauterungen zu Holderlins Dichtung (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1951), p. 137. 5 “Die Wanderung,” in Friedrich Beissner, ed., Holderlin. Samtliche Werke IIH (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1951), p. 138. Translation Hamburger, p. 499. This and all subsequent translations of Hdlderlin are from Michael Hamburger, trans., Friedrich Hdlderlin. Poems and

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fragments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) and will be so indicated in the text 6 Holderlin II/l , pp. 128, 138. 7 “Andenken,” in Holderlin 11/1, pp. 188-189. Heidegger devotes the last chapter of his explications (Erlduterungen, written in the early 1940s) to this poem. His interpretation culminates in an affir­ mation of German groundedness, i.e. their mission to stand their ground. 8 Heidegger, Erlduterungen, p. 101. 9 Heidegger, Erlduterungen, p. 102. 10 Holderlin II/l, p. 188. 11 Heidegger, Erlduterungen, p. 103. 12 Vittorio Klostermann, ed., Durchblicke. Martin Heidegger zum 80. Geburtstag (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1970), p. 63. 13 Heidegger, Erlduterungen, p. 142. 14 Adorno refers to Benjamin’s essay “Zwei Gedichte von Fried­ rich Holderlin. ‘Dichtermut’—‘Blodigkeit,’ ” republished in Rolf Tiedemann, Hermann Schweppenhauser, ed., Walter Benjamin. Gesammelte Schriften II-l (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977), pp. 105126. 15 “Heimkunft,” in Holderlin II/l , pp. 97, 99. 16 Benjamin Gesammelte Schriften //-/, pp. 112-113. 17 An example is H.A. Korff, Geist der Goethezeit III (Leipzig: Kohler & Amelang, 1966), pp. 451-452. Wolfgang Binder interprets

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this love as Holderlin’s need to hold on to a concrete figure, in order to (indirectly) grasp an elusive god. Elisabeth Binder, Klaus Weimar, eds., Friedrich Hdlderlin. Studien von Wolfgang Binder (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1987), p. 73. 18 “Der Einzige. Erste Fassung,” Hdlderlin II/l , pp. 153-156. All quotations from the Hamburger translation, Friedrich Holderiin. Poems and Firagjments, pp. 447-453. 19 Pierre Bertaux, Friedrich Hdlderlin (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1978), p. 369. Bertaux counts Adorno’s essay among the best that have been written on Hdlderlin, “zum Besten . . ., was zu Holderlins Dichtung geschrieben wurde.” Binder, on the other hand, does not even mention Adorno in his review of recent Hdlderlin recep­ tions, just as he dismisses Walter Benjamin’s essay (written 1914/15) and Georg LukScs’ for going in the wrong political direction (Fried­ rich Holderiin. Studien von Wolgang Binder, p. 15). Heidegger, whom he quotes extensively, apparently did not! 20 Bertaux, Holderiin, p. 367. 21 Benjamin. Gesammelte Schriften II-l, p. 125. 22 “Mnemosyne. Dritte Fassung,” in Hdlderlin II/l, p. 197. The translation of the last two words are mine. Michael Hamburger, in his version of these lines, translates “der See” with a genitive form, “of the sea,” instead of nominative, “the lake” (Hamburger, p. 499). The translation thus loses the a-logical construction of the anacoluthon. 23 “Dichtermuth. Erste Fassung,” Holderiin II/1, p.62. 24 Hdlderlin II/1, p. 62. 25 Friedrich Hdlderlin, Werke. Briefe. Dokumente (Munchen: Winkler-Verlag, 1969), p. 164.

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26 Hdlderlin, Werke. Briefe. Dokumente, p. 165. 27 See also Bernhard Lypp, Asthetischer Absolutismus und politische Vemunft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972), p. 248. 28 The classical definition of the period is found in Aristotle’s Rhetoric'. “By a period I mean a portion of speech that has in itself a beginning and an end, being at the same time not too big to be taken in at a glance . . . The period must . . . not be completed until the sense is complete.’’ Richard A. Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), p. 75. 29 The lines are from “Brod und Wein” and “Halfte des Lebens,” in Holderlin II/l , pp. 93 and 117. 30 The translation is by Michael T Jones, “Trying to Understand Endgame,” New German Critique 26 (Spring/Summer 1982), pp. 119130. Jones’ translation will be used and so indicated in the text 31 Jack Zipes, “Beckett in Germany/Germany in Beckett,” New German Critique 26 (Spring/Summer 1982), p. 156. 32 Bell Gale Chevigny (ed.), Twentieth Century Interpretations of Endgame (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1969), p. 12. 33 Quoted in Chevigny, Interpretations, p. 12. 34 Samuel Beckett, Endgame (New York: Grove Press, 1958), pp. 29-30. 35 Beckett, Endgame, pp. 32-33.

36 Peter Szondi, in Theorie des modemen Dramas (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1956), uses Adorno’s dialectical model for tracing in

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detail the development of European drama from the 19th to the 20th century. 37 Endgame, p. 37. 38 Endgame, p. 58. 39 Endgame, pp. 64-65. 40 Endgame, p. 73. 41 Endgame, p. 57. 42 Endgame, p. 11. 43 Endgame, p. 84. 44 Zipes, “Beckett,” p. 157. 45 This Beckett quotation introduces Alan Schneider’s essay, “Waiting for Beckett; A Personal Chronicle,” in Chevigny, Twentieth Century Interpretations, p. 14. 46 In an essay called “The Star Witness," W. Martin Liidke suggests that Adorno uses Beckett to excuse his own (and others’) late-bourgeois passivity: “Plausibilitat ist der Adomoschen BeckettInterpretation . . . keineswegs abzusprechen; zu bezweifeln sind die Pramissen, auf denen sie letzlich beruht [burgerliche Kategorien].” W. Martin Liidke, “Der Kronzeuge,” in: Heinz Ludwig Arnold ed., Text und Kritik, Sonderband Theodor W. Adorno (Miinchen: Text und Kritik, 1977), p. 147. [One certainly cannot deny the plausibility of Adorno’s Beckett interpretation, though the premises on which it ultimately rests (bourgeois categories) are questionable (trans. mine)].

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47 Georg Luk£cs, “Holderlin’s Hyperion,” in Georg Luk&cs, Werke VII (Neuwied/Berlin: Luchterhand, 1964), pp. 164-184. 48 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980), p. 153. 49 E. B. Ashton, trans., Negative Dialectics. By Theodor W. Adomo (New York: The Seabury Press, 1973), p. 150. 50 Adomo, Negative Dialektik, p. 153. 51 Negative Dialectics, p. 150.

IV E r o s O b je c t ifie d : A d o r n o ’s A esth etic T h eo r y Art is the promise of happiness, a promise that is constantly being broken. Aesthetic Theory1

Adorno’s literary essays are preludes to his magnum opus, the posthumously published Aesthetic Theory (1970). Four of these essays, collected in Noten zur Literatur (“Notations to Literature”), thematize what we call expository writing: the programmatic “The Essay as Form” (1954-58), the playful vignettes on “Punctuation” (1956) and “Titles” (1962), and the impassioned defense of the use of “Words from Afar” (1959). From different perspectives, each focuses on mimesis as impulse and technique, as the force that sets ^ writing in motion and the manner that moves it. Driven by curiosityr'" “the pleasure principle of thought,^subjectivity abandons itself to the body of the text, translating its own sub-jective language into this body’s objective speech. Like musical composition, writing is ^ both mental move and a move of material marks, both rational and libidinal, critical as well as utopian.

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The Pleasure o f the Text One must learn to feel everything—the length and retarding of sentences, interpunctuations, the choice of words, the pausing, the sequence of arguments—like gestures. Nietzsche

On one level, “The Essay as Form” polemicizes against the ✓^bad” mimesis of positivistic writing, which simply copies what exists in mindless repetition, “die administrative Wiederholung und Aufbereitung des je schon Seienden” (NL I, p. 43); [the administra­ tive repetition and manipulated presentation of what already exists].2 This indictment of officially sanctioned imitation, of the repetition of what is considered established fact, corresponds to Adorno’s verdict ✓6n mimesis-to-the-second-power in Dialectic o f Enlightenment. The re-presentation of reality for easy consumption merely reinforces the dominant ideology. Provocatively he evokes an entire tradition, which in Germany in particular has been cultivated in the name of obedience: “In Deutschland reizt der Essay zur Abwehr, weil er an die Freiheit des Geistes mahnt, die . . . bis heute . . . nicht recht sich entfaltete, sondem stets bereit war, die Unterordnung unter irgendwelche Instanzen als ihr eigentliches Anliegen zu verkiinden” (NL I, pp. 10-11). [In Germany the essay provokes resistance because it is reminiscent of the intellectual freedom that . . . has never really emerged [and] was always ready to proclaim, as its essential concern, subordination under whatever higher courts (Hullot-Kentor and Will, p. 152)]. On another level, “The Essay as Form” is a moving exposition of open-ended writing, of its dynamic, its technique, its emancipatory potential. Essayistic writing, as the word implies, is tentative, hence anti-totalitarian. It does not proceed from “necessary” or “first” beginnings, nor does it aim at hard and fast conclusions. It proceeds attentively and self-consciously in regard to its objects: “Die leise Nachgiebigkeit der Gedankenfiihrung des Essayisten zwingt ihn zu grosserer Intensitat als der des diskursiven Gedankens, weil der Essay nicht gleich diesem blind, automatisiert verfahrt, sondem in

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jedem Augenblick auf sich selber reflektieren mu8” (NL I, p. 47). [The quietly yielding quality of the essayist’s thought forces him to greater intensity, for the essay, unlike discursive thought, does not proceed blindly, automatically, but reflects at every moment on itself (trans. mine)]. The same differentiation is made in the chapter on anti-Semitism in the Dialectic, where Adomo distinguishes between automated and reflective mimesis, the “automatization of mental processes’1, and "conscious abandonment to the thing,” between erotically alive and catatonic mimesis. The essay does not totalize or exhaust knowledge; it does not insist on being right or original. Instead, it plays and reflects, mean­ ders and rests, similar to the child absorbed in playing with an attractive thing. The essay works without a system, without pre­ determining method; it unfolds, rather, an order elicited by the object. Seemingly harmless, it challenges convention by playing at being free: Anstatt wissenschaftlich etwas zu leisten oder kdnstlerisch etwas zu schaffen, spiegelt noch seine Anstrengung die MuBe des Kindlichen wider, der ohne Skrupel sich entflammt an dem, was andere schon getan haben. Er reflektiert das Geliebte und Gehasste, anstatt den Geist nach dem Model! unbegrenzter Arbeitsmoral als SchOpfung aus dem Nichts vorzustellen. GIGck und Spiel sind ihm wesentlich. (NL I, p. 11). [Instead of achieving something scientifically, or creating something artisti­ cally, the effort of the essay reflects a childlike freedom that catches fire, without scruple, on what others have already done. The essay mirrors what is loved and hated instead of presenting the intellect, on the model of a boundless work ethic, as creatio ex nihilo. Luck and play are essential to the essay (Hullot-Kentor and Will, p. 152)].

The driving force of the essay is curiosity, Neuger, “the pleasure principle of thought” (NL I, p. 45). Its dynamic is that of child’s play, of light-hearted identification with an other, implicitly chal­ lenging Western culture’s antagonism to pleasure, its Gliicksfeindschaft. This antagonism is detectable both in Freud’s theory about the need to adapt to conditions as they exist (the reality principle), and in Kant’s theory about the necessity to limit reason against

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“licentiousness.” At stake in each case is prohibition, the sobriety of a reason that is inscribed in Kant's telling metaphor about prevent­ ing the mind from “ ‘Ausschweifen in intelligible Welten’ ” (NL I, p. 44), ['roaming around in intelligible worlds’ (Hullot-Kentor and Will, p. 168)]. The secretly utopian, negatively formulated question of Dialectic o f Enlightenment (‘Svhy mankind, instead of entering into a truly human condition, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism”) reverber­ ates throughout this rebellious essay. “W&hrend Gluck der Zweck aller Naturbeherrschung sein soil, stellt es dieser zugleich immer als Regression in blofte Natur sich dar” (NL I, p. 44). [While happiness is supposedly the goal of all domination over nature, it always appears to the reality principle as regression to mere nature (Hul­ lot-Kentor and Will, p. 168)]. Why, Adorno seems to ask, do we insist on knowing the objects of our world according to categories that prohibit our getting-to-know them as something concrete and particular, hence new to the senses and the mind. Like the Sade essay of the Dialectic, this essay on/of form criticizes the form(ality) of reason for the sake of recuperating its utopian content. The pursuit of the object is a pursuit of happiness: Whs Kant inhaltlich als den Zweck der Vernunft einsieht, die Herstelluog ■ der Menschheit, die Utopie, wird von der Form, der Erkenntnistheorie her verwehrt, welcbe der Vernunft es nicht gestattet, Ober den Bereich der Erfahrunff hinauszugehen . . . Gegenstand des Essays jedoch ist das Neue als Neues, nicht ins Alte der bestehenden Formen ZurQckflbersetzbares. Indem er den Gegenstand gleichsam gewaltkx reflektiert, klagt er stumm darOber, daB die Vtehrbeit das GIQck verriet und mit ihm auch sich selbst (NL I, p. 45). [What in the content of his thought Kant projects as the goal of reason, utopia, the production of humanity, is disbarred by the form of his thought, the theory of knowledge; it forbids reason to go beyond the realm of experience . . . But the object of the essay is the new as something genu­ inely new, as something not translatable back into the staleness of already existing forms. By reflecting the object without doing violence to it, the essay silently laments the fact that truth has betrayed happiness and thus itself (Hullot-Kentor and Will, p. 169)].

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By calling the essay a plaintiff against a histoiy of domination that has left its mark also and especially in the structures of thought, Adorno alludes to this histoiy’s intellectual inception, to Greek philosophy and its teachings on truth. Aristotle, teacher of the conqueror of the ancient world, Alexander the Great, taught that by developing one’s rational faculties to the utmost, a state of vital well-being would be achieved, that is, he taught the coincidence of the pursuit of truth with that of happiness, eudaimonia. It is this instinctually grounded rationalism that reappears, negatively refrac­ ted by the history that commenced with Greek imperialism, in Adorno’s sentence about truth having betrayed happiness and thus also itself. Reason and joy would coincide in a society free of domi* — «-----«----------J ----- re do coincide in a writing that It is not by accident that the word “Gluck” (happiness, bliss) always occurs in conjunction with what Adorno considers true knowledge: a knowledge received from, not imposed on the object The form of the essay is the expression of an erotic relationship. The essay takes no superior, fixed standpoint or position but moves toward its object, taking its clues from the object and in the process deconstructing officially held opinions about it: “Er riickt dem hie et nunc des Gegenstandes so nah, bis er in die Momente sich dissoziiert, in denen er sein Leben hat, anstatt blofi Gegenstand zu sein” (NL I, p. 31). [The essay comes so close to the here and now of the object, up to the point where that object, instead of being simply an object, dissociates itself into those elements in which it has its life (Hullot-Kentor and Will, p. 162)]. The subjectivity of reason vanishes into and through the objective moments of that to which it is driven. The essay describes mimesis’ imaginative/identifying reach for the object, the subject’s attraction to and affection for it. The move is both subversive and fantastic, subversive of disciplinary method and fantastic in regard to the object’s multi-dimensionality. It shows “eben jene Spontaneity subjektiver Phantasie, die im Namen objektiver Disziplin geahndet wird” (NL I, p. 12); [precisely that sponta­

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neity of subjective fantasy that is chastised in the name of objective discipline (Hullot-Kentor and WiU, pp. 152-153)]. Adorno’s dialectics of this subject-object relationship is complex: the “untruth” of playful fantasy (a property of the single and power­ less subject) mobilizes, hence unsettles the “truth” of instrumental reason (the property of a powerful class-subject). Instrumental reason, as Dialectic o f Enlightenment has argued, arises from real property relations, from having a stake in an estate and social power. That is why it is solid, opaque, resistant to what might move it. Not so essayistic reason: “Bewegt sich die Wahrheit des Essays durch seine Unwahrheit, so ist sie nicht im bloBen Gegensatz zu seinem Unehrlichen und Verfemten aufzusuchen sondem in diesem selber, seiner Mobilitat, seinem Mangel an jenem Soliden, dessen Forderung die Wissenschaft von Eigentumsverhaltnissen auf den Geist transferierte” (NL I, p. 43). [If the truth of the essay gains its momentum by way of its untruth, its truth is not to be sought in mere opposition to what is ignoble and proscribed in it, but in these veiy things: in its mobility, its lack of that solidity which science demands, transferring it, as it were, from property-relationships to the intellect (Hullot-Kentor and Will, p. 168)]. To salvage the emotive moment of reason, its capability of being affected, mobilized and moved, Adorno traces truth through the untruth of power-free, play-full thought—the mimetic side of reason comes into its own. This side is libidinal energy concentrating on an object. During the process of writing, conceived as productive, sublimating acti­ vity,3 subjectivity slips and slides toward the loved (or hated) object to attach itself to it and nestle into it, to gain ground, to make visible (“sich in die Tfexte festmachen,” “Boden unter die Fiifie bekommen,” “sichtbar machen”). Or, in quasi-orgasmic terms, thought becomes pursuant and eager, comes so close to the object as to disappear into the form of its content (“die subjektiven Regungen erloschen in dem objektiven Gehalt”).

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In Pursuit o f the Fragment Essayistic writing is fragmentary in form, fragmentary in thought, and fragmentary in objective: it wants to know the particular thing, which in turn is the fragment of a socio-economic reality that is brittle and divisive to the core—despite its claim to universality (“The system is good for everyone!”), and despite its claim to “natural” legitimacy (“The system is based on human nature!”). The form of the essay responds subliminally, negating these claims not by argument but by technique: “UnbewuBt und theoriefem meldet im Essay als Form das Bediirfnis sich an, die theoretisch uberholten Anspruche der Vollstandigkeit und Kontinuitat auch in der konkreten Verfahrensweise des Geistes zu annullieren” (NL I, p. 35). [Unconsciously and far from theory, the need arises in the essay as form to annul the theoretically outmoded claims of totality and continuity, and to do so in the concrete procedure of the intellect (Hullot-Kentor and Will, p. 164)]. The fragmentary form provides the condition for a mimetic “encounter” within a “magic” circle. The meeting that takes place \occurs between two texts, between the essay as it is being written, land another text as it is being read. It is animated by the tension that results from the authority of the text-being-read and the nonauthority of the text-being-written. We are reminded of the mimesis of both the pre-historic sorcerer who “trapped” demons to make them appear, and mythical Odysseus who “tricked” powers by becoming like them. Adorno uses a trope that shows the connec­ tion between magic and essayistic reason, between Odysseus’ cun­ ning and the essay’s mimetic “trick”: “Listig macht der Essay sich fest in die Texte, als waren sie schlechterdings da und hatten Autoritat” (NL I, p. 42). [Cunningly, the essay settles itself into texts, as though they were simply there and had authority (Hullot-Kentor and Will, p. 167)]. This make-believe is of critical momentum. The essay confronts the text’s claim to truth by reflecting this truth. It thus makes a I cultural product that seems to refer to truth appear as a thing that I is true. In other words, it shows that the text it addresses is not a I

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derivative, secondary thing that refers to a “first” and “natural” truth, but something that exhibits cultural truth by its veiy forma­ tion. “Auch die Paradiese des Gedankens sind einzig noch die kunstlichen, und in ihnen ergeht sich der Essay” (NL I, p. 42). [Even the paradises of thought are only artificial, and in them the essay indulges (Hullot-Kentor and Will, p. 167)]. There is no other truth than the truth made by history and in society. By driving phenomenology into the ground,4 Adorno gains room for the notion that [truth is made visible by its image,! history and culture by its texts. Specifically, the truth of a particular product does not appear other than through its partial/particular interpretation by a fragmen­ tary subject, the essayistic writer. The passage quoted above about the artful ruse of the essay to cunningly nestle itself into the text continues as follows: So bekommt er, ohne den Thig des Ersten, einen wie immer auch dubiosen Boden unter die FtlBe, vergleichbar der einstigen theoiogiscben Exegese von Schriften. Die Ibndenz jedoch ist die entgegengesetzte, die kritische: durch {Confrontation der Tfcxte mit ihrem eigenen emphatischen Begriff, mit der Wahrheit, die ein jeder meint, auch wenn er sie nicht meinen will, den Anspruch von Kultur zu erschattem und sie zum Eingedenken ihrer Unwahrbeit zu bewegen, eben jenes ideologischen Scheins, in dem Kultur als naturverfallen sich offenbart (NL I, pp. 42-43). i

| [Without the illusion of the primal, it gets under its feet a ground, however I dubious, comparable to earlier theological exegesis of holy writings. The ! essay’s impulse, however, is the exact opposite of the theological; it is l critical: through confrontation of texts with their own emphatic concept, j with the truth that each text intends even in spite of itself, to shatter the / claim of culture and moye it toremfimfcer its untruth—the untruth of that ' ideological facade which reveals culture’s bondage to nature (Hullot-Kentor jand Will, pp. 167-168)].

Written in Fifties, “The Essay as Form” polemicizes against its time in both content and style. It positions itself between positivism and existentialism, between (and against) a blindly factual sociology and an abstract, ontologizing philosophy. The essay, with its orienta­ tion toward the particular and love for content, stands isolated. It has become an endangered species: “Die Aktualitat des Essays ist

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die des Anachronistischen. Die Stunde ist ihm ungiinstiger als je.” (NL I, p. 48). [The relevance of the essay is that of anachronism. The hour is more unfavorable to it than ever (Hullot-Kentor and Will, p. 170)]. Yet in its isolation, through its old-fashioned form, the essay reminds of the liberating purpose of language, which is to bring out the idea concealed in the image without subsuming or repressing its specificity. Accordingly, the language of Adorno’s essay, dense and luminous in one, carefully mediates between meta­ phor and concept: In Wahrbeit sind alle Begriffe impiizit schon konkretisiert durch die Sprache, in der sie steben. Mit solcben Bedeutungen hebt der Essay an V |I und treibt sie, selbst wesentlich Sprache, writer, er mOchte dieser in ihrem Verhaitnis zu den Begriffen helfen, sie reflektierend so nehmen, wie sie p^ewuQtlos in der Sprache scboo genannt sind (NL I, p. 27). [Actually, all concepts are already implicitly concretized through the language in which they stand. The essay begins with such meanings and, I itself being essentially language, it forces these meanings on farther, it 1wants to help language, in its relation to concepts, to grasp these concepts reflectively in the way they are already unconsciously named in language vHulkx-Kentor and Will, p. 160)].

The essay in theory (and to a good degree in Adorno’s practice) uses the devices of equivocation and allusion, coordination and polarization. Its mission is to show how categorical distinction and unmediated referentiality, how forced hierarchy and false harmony ^ are all signs of the historical situation. It uses equivocation deliber­ ately and critically to show that when a word has multiple meanings these meanings are not entirely distinct from each other but secretly related. It uses allusion to remind us that concepts have a history and specific, accumulative and/or changing ideological value. The essay, discovering new connections and relationships between the elements of thought, uses juxtaposition and coordination. It does not suppress by subordination but allows various and contradictory elements to rub elbows. It dialecticizes what is diffuse in order to mobilize, to set into play the internal tensions of the text.

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Finally and most importantly, the essay makes visible and con­ crete what a writing devoid of responsive form and formulation yfiides through abstraction. By presenting an image, it becomes image itself.5 Its structure is shaped by its object Adorno carefully differ­ entiates between a superimposed form that is unrelated to what it presents (the counterpart to “message” writing) and a form that takes shape through the tension between subject and object, be­ tween the technique of presentation and the presented thing. The result of this text-internal mimesis is a coordination of subjective/ob­ jective elements. The textual “arrest” of this relationship constructs, as it were, a critical “picture” of the process. Adorno writes: “Ist der Essay, . . . vermoge der Spannung zwischen Darstellung und Dargestelltem, dynamischer als das traditionelle Denken, so ist er zugleich, als konstruiertes Nebeneinander, statischer. Darin allein beruht seine Affinitat zum Bild” (NL I, p. 47). [If, thanks to the tension between presentation and what is presented, the essay . . . is more dynamic than traditional thought, it is at the same time, as a constructed juxtaposition of elements, more static. In that alone rests the essay’s affinity to the visual image (Hullot-Kentor and Will, p. 170)]. y ' The essay does not copy but recuperates the object, both in an historical and a utopian sense, as remembrance and as hope. By self-consciously tracing the lines of the object’s body, the essay interprets, reads the text for its differences from and congruences with it, bringing out the “blind” spots, the hidden hopes and desires of the text—and, of course, smuggling in its own. Such readingoriented writing, or writing-oriented reading, is as much prone to truth as it is to error. It gives no guarantees other than those of its practice. Adorno likens it to the inferential learning process that a new language requires of the foreigner in a new country: Wie freilich solches Lemen dem Irrtum exponiert bleibt, so auch der Essay als Form; fQr seine Affinitat zur offenen geistigen Erfahrung bat er mit dem Mangel an jener Sicherheit zu zahlen, welchen die Norm des etablierten Denkens wie den Tbd ftirchtet. Nicht sowohl vemachiassigt der Essay die zweifelsfreie Gewissheit, als daB er ihr Ideal kdndigt. Wahr wird er in

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seinem Fortgang, der ihn ober sich hinaustreibt. . . und darin drOckt seine Methode selber die utopische Intention aus (NL I, p. 29-30). [Just as such learning remains exposed to error, so does the essay as form; it must pay for its affinity with open intellectual experience by the lack of security, a lack which the norm of established thought fears like death. It is not so much that the essay ignores indisputable certainty, as that it abrogates the ideal. The essay becomes true in its progress, which drives it beyond itself. . . In this the very method of the essay expresses the utopian intention (Hullot-Kentor and Will, p. 161)].

Punctuation The short vignette on punctuation begins with a fancy descrip­ tion of the marks and ends with a melancholic assessment of their function. Punctuation marks have their mimetic quality written across their faces, Adorno suggests, because the physiognomy of each bears the traces of written history and the history of writing. Each-makes writing resemble speech. All are sign posts for a silent delivery (Vortrag), directing the flow of a language that has become conscious of itself as writing: Afle sind Verkehrsignale; am Ende wurden diese ihnen nachgebildet. Ausrufungszeicben sind rot, Doppelpunkte grtln, Gedankenstriche befehlen stop. Aber . . . sie dienen nicht beflissen dem Verkehr der Sprache mit dem Leser, sondem hieroglyphisch einem, der im Sprachinnem sich abspielt, auf ihrcn eigenen Bahncn (NL I, pp. 163-164). /"[All are traffic signs—which perhaps were even patterned after punctuation. I Exclamation marks are red, colons green, hyphens say ‘stop.’ . . . They do / not, however, serve the traffic with the reader but are hieroglyphs for one I that runs its course within language, along its own pathways (trans. mine)].

In several brief sketches Adorno situates the marks historically—some continue to be useful, some are worn out. Excepting the semi-colon, to which he attributes a special function, he stresses their datedness, the fact “daB an ihnen genau das veraltet, was einmal modem war” (NL I, p. 166); [that what dates them is pre­ cisely what once made them fashionable (trans. mine)].

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Exclamation marks illustrate this especially well. They have become the gesture of authority, indicating the writer’s emphasis for something that his analysis of the object, his subject(ed) matter, lacks. Usurpers of force, they have degenerated into Man assurance of importance,” a process that started at the beginning of the century when exclamations marked the graphics of expressionism. “Ihre Haufung lehnte sich gegen die Konvention auf und war Symptom der Ohnmacht zugleich, das Sprachgefuge von innen her zu verandem, an dem man stattdessen von auBen nittelte” (NL I, p. 166). [Their cumulative use rebelled against convention and at the same time was symptom of the helplessness to change the linguistic structure from within, which instead was being rattled from without (trans. mine)]. Exclamation marks survive as signs for the discrepancy between the rallying cry for human essence (the expres­ sionist “O Mensch!”) and a social reality bent on eradicating the human—with both cry and reality being equally abstract From an historical perspective, Adomo muses, these marks are not unlike the inflated numbers printed on German banknotes during the Twenties. The dash helps express the fact that thought processes have become fragmentaiy, something that the linear structure of sen­ tences chained together by logical conjunctions denies. The dash, indicating caesuras, marks a writing aware of social divisiveness and equally divisive individualism. “Nicht zufallig wird gerade dies Zeichen dort, wo es seinen Zweck erfiillt: wo es trennt, was Verbundenheit vortauscht, im Zeitalter des fortschreitenden Sprachzerfalls vemachlassigt” (NL I p. 167). [It is no coincident that in the era of progressive linguistic ruin just this sign is being neglected where it would fulfill its function: to divide what gives the illusion of con­ nectedness (trans. mine)]. Quotation marks, Adomo believes, should be used for quota­ tions, rarely to show the writer’s distance from certain words. Their graphic gesture is an all too easy substitute for irony, which must work immanently and throughout the text. They do not relieve the writer from shaping his text accordingly. Marking a word beforehand means using it in pre-judicious, pre-determined manner, a technique

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that makes for poor irony. The examples make clear that Adorno the Marxist is first of all Adorno the stylist, who criticizes content through the form. The writings of the 19th-century Marx and Engels are full of quotation marks, casting their shadow—contrary to their authors’ intent—on an orthodox Marxist writing characteristic of the 20th-century: “Dort, wo es iiberhaupt etwas zu sagen gibt, weist allerorten Indifferenz gegeniiber der literarischen Form auf Dograatisierung des Inhalts” (NL I, p. 169). [Where there is something to be said at all, all too frequently an indifference to literary form indicates that content has become dogma (trans. mine)]. The use of parenthesis requires sensitivity. Adorno favors dashes over brackets, because they keep both a connection and a distance (instead of locking out, as do brackets). But he warns of simply putting one’s trust in such arbitrary distinctions—marks, after all, are only small parts of the writing process. It is up to the writer to work with and through the material: “Aber wie das blinde Vertrauen auf ihre Kraft . . . illusionar ware, indem es vom blofien Mittel erwartete, was einzig von Sprache und Sache selber geleistet werden kann, so lasst sich an der Alternative von Gedankenstrichen und Klammem entnehmen, wie hinfallig abstrakte Normen der Interpunktion sind” (NL I, p. 171). [But just as blind trust in their force . . . would be illusory by expecting from a mere mean what language and content alone can accomplish, so the dashes/brackets alternative signals how ephemeral abstract norms are for punctuation (trans. mine)]. He cites Proust as an early 20th-century master in the use of parenthesis. In Proust’s writing, parenthetical expressions function as entry devices for the author, for his self-assertion as writer. The overall conception of Remembrance o f Things Past is such that writing reflects on writing, that the illusion of the continuity of narrative is continually—and not at all involuntarily—broken. The comma, agile and pliant, is the least noticeable sign. It is the most rationally mimetic of punctuation marks because it adapts most closely to the flow of written language, directing its course almost imperceptively. Not so the semi-colon. Adorno calls this configuration of comma and period a truly dialectical image, which holds two contradictory

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marks in suspense: while one sign directs the voice to stay raised, the other asks it to lower itself and stop. The Greek version of the semi-colon, by contrast, is unequivocal; its raised period directs the voice to stay raised. For Adorno, the difference between the ancient and the modern sign reflects the difference between antiquity and the Christian era, between a finite world view and a world view that perceives the finite through the lens of the infinite. The thought, Adorno cautions, is tentative and unreliable, based perhaps on a philological error: the Greek sign might have been invented by 16th-century humanists. But it contains the secret idea of his essay. His frequent analogies between punctuation and musi­ cal notations draw attention to the speech sounds inscribed in writing. Musical notations mark a text that will be performed,6 while such assumption no longer holds for the literary text—even though writing (,Schrift) and delivery (Vortrag) have not always been sepa­ rate, as the epical text demonstrates. The epic’s voice is the voice of performance; it wants to be spoken and heard. The semi-colons that mark it are signs to remind the reader of speech. Predicated on human performance, this voice is finite and concrete: it speaks in and through history. The voice of the biblical text, on the other hand, is finite and infinite both, spoken by God through history and beyond. God’s voice alone can give the performance of the text, while humans read and interpret His word—a view characteristic of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the privileged position it assigns to exegesis. Thus the semi-colon as we know it, signaling ‘halt’ and 'continue’ simultaneously, directs the mortal voice to fall silent while the divine voice speaks. In light of such development, Adorno’s essay ends with a simple yet cryptic advice: Jedenfalls wird heute wohl der am besten fahren, der an die Regel: besser zuwenig als zuviel, sich halt. Denn die Satzzeichen, welche die Sprache artikulieren und damit die Schrift der Stimme anflhneln, haben durch ihre logisch-semantische Verselbstdndigung von dieser doch gleich aller Schrift sich geschieden und geraten in Konflikt mit ihrem eigenen mimetischen Wesen. Davon sucht der asketische Gebrauch der Satzzeichen etwas gutzumachen. Jedes behutsam vermiedene Zeichen ist eine Reverenz, welche die Schrift dem Laut darbringt, den sie erstickt (NL I, p. 174).

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[In any case the best rule for punctuation today is that it is better to use too little than too much. For the marks, which articulate language and thus make writing resemble speech, have divorced themselves from the voice, as has all writing, by having become logically and semantically independent. They have entered into conflict with their own mimetic nature. In a small way, their ascetic use tries to make up for that. Each carefully avoided mark is a sign of reverence shown by writing toward the sound that it suffocates (trans. mine)].

The passage touches the core of Adorno’s philosophy of lan- / guage, a philosophy that mourns the absence that language stands/ for without turning nostalgic. Writing, once the representative of,/ then the substitute for speech—analogous to the specific and gener­ al representation traced in Dialectic o f Enlightenment—has become autonomous. Under the pretext of metaphysics, it has become self-/ conscious, that is, not referential to something but self-referentialj Punctuation marks thus accentuate the delivery within writing; “along courses of its own.” The unresolvable conflict between their regulative, silent function and speech-desirous nature suggests a dual function. While they mime speech by directing the voice of the text to rise and fall, to emphasize and pause, they draw attention to the fact that writing is not speech. As written signs, they signify desire for the other, for speech and sound; as signposts for writing, they cunningly adapt to the primacy of the text and become silent, non­ signifying marks. Adorno’s plea for their ascetic use shows his wish to keep selfconscious writing not only conscious of itself but make it conscious also of its relation to what is other. The sound of suffering, deeply buried in the historical text(s), is in danger of being suffocated by a writing that knows only itself, that “forgets” the condition that makes it possible in the first place: the division of labor and social power relations. Writing is a luxury the poor and persecuted cannot afford, but without writing their shouts and cries cannot be heard. Some of this dialectic, Adorno’s essay on punctuation seems to suggest, is engraved in the physiognomy of the marks.

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Of Names and Titles The essay “Titles” is sub-titled “Sections to Lessing,” with whose melancholic conclusion (from Hamburgische Dramaturge, 1768) Adorno’s reflections reach a conclusion as well: “ ‘Der Titel ist eine wahre Kleinigkeit’ ” (NL HI, p. 17). [‘The title is a true detail’ (trans mine)]. An exponent of critical bourgeois enlightenment, Lessing solved the problem of finding the right titles for his plays by using the proper name of the hero or heroine. He distrusted the convention of 17th-century Baroque drama to choose allegorical titles, titles that “meant” something. Adorno considers Lessing’s solution right for his era, because it implied the liberation from an aristocratic, absolutist tradition. But such titles have ceased to be right since. Almost two hundred years later, mid-20th-century society bears the oppressive marks of a bourgeois history that did not liberate. loday, neither proper names suggesting individuality nor—as was the classicist convention—abstractions implying universality will do. “Die Aufgabe eines jeden Titels ist paradox: sie entzieht sich ebenso der rationalen Allgemeinheit wie der in sich verschlossenen Besonderung. Das wird als Unmoglichkeit der Titel heute offenbar” (NL III, p. 8). [The task of each title is paradox: neither the rationally general nor the hermetically specific covers it. This is evident by the impossibility of titles today (trans. mine)]. In light of the dilemma, Adorno’s answer is cautious and tentative, less a solution than a reflection on the aporia of a writing that must pursue le mot juste , the right complex of image and idea, in a time characterized by its loss of (and for) words that can name the thing. Like Benjamin, pAdomo mourns the absence of sensuous-ideational coherence in language; unlike Benjamin, however, he does not try to recover an Adamitic language of symbolic names but reads the features of .significative language for their expression of the situation.7 The task of a title is to name without telling, to reveal yet conceal: “Titel miissen wie Namen es treffen, nicht es sagen” (NL III, p. 8). [The title must hit home like a name, not stray into description (trans. mine)]. This notion of finding the right and

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"magic” word belongs to the cabalist tradition: “Den wahren Titel aber weifl das Werk selbst so wenig wie der Zadik seinen mystischen Namen” (NL III, p. 9). [But the work knows no more its true title than Zadik his mystic name (trans. mine)]. Titles encapsulate the idea of the content through the expressive quality of their word(s). A good title, we might say, makes good on language’s true conceptual force—a force that became operational power instead of enlightened eloquence and as such repressed language’s expres­ siveness to the point of shadow and farce. Good titles happen; they occur involuntarily, triggered by the text They crystallize from the content during the act of writing or spontaneously come to mind in the process of reading. Good titles, Adorno submits, are found, not superimposed. Most likely it is the attentive reader, unprejudiced as to the writer’s intent, to whom the “name” will occur in response to the text, the configuration of which, in the form of a mental image, is “solved” by the title like a picture puzzle ( Vexierbild). Adorno recounts his experiences with his publisher, Peter Suhr­ kamp, whose gift for naming manuscripts he greatly admired. He was delighted by the title for his own collection, Noten zur Literatur [literally, “musical notations to literature”], which Suhrkamp had suggested. He considered it much improved over the one he had thought of, “Words without Songs”: “Was mich aber daran entztickte, war, daB Suhrkamp, indem er meine Idee kritisierte, sie festhielt Die Konstellation von Musik und Wort ist ebenso gerettet wie das leise Altmodische einer Form, deren Glanzperiode der Jugendstil war” (NL m , p. 11). [What delighted me was that Suhr­ kamp held fast to my idea by criticizing i t The new title retains the constellation of music and word, just as it does the gently old-fash­ ioned quality of a form whose main period was Art Nouveau (trans. mine)]. Suhrkamp’s talent leads Adomo to redefine the job of publishing in concrete, text-oriented terms, pointedly eliding the abstract monetary interests of the business: “Als Verlegertugend ware die Fahigkeit zu definieren, dem Tfext seinen Titel zu entlocken. Er entscheidet iiber die Publikation danach, ob aus dem Tfext einer hervorspringt” (NL III, p. 9). [One might define a pub­

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lisher’s professional calling by his capability to elicit the title from a text. Publication would depend on whether a title would leap forth (trans. mine)]. In the context, the thought seems not entirely free of a certain vanity—but it does underline the objectivity of the text by claiming its Anspruch or entitlement to a name. \ Titles are mimetic in the sense of involuntarily being triggered 1by the thing (Sache). They respond to the text, move up close to the object without becoming identical with it or subsuming it: “Die guten Titel sind so nahe an der Sache, dafi sie deren Verborgenheit achten” (NL III, p. 9). [Good titles are so close to the thing that they respect its hidden space and quality (trans. mine)]. A text’s substance is captured by the good and fitting title without being exposed or summarized. Conversely, the titles of bad works do expose the content, bring it immediately to light. They show it up for what it is, similar to what Karl Kraus required of the critic: to destroy a bad text in one succinct phrase. Two examples for a good and a bad title are Kafka’s “Der Verschollene” (Amerika, 1927), and Rudolf Binding’s “Opfergang” [“Path of Sacrifice,” (1911)]. One title names without saying while the other says all. Adorno believes that Kafka’s working title from his diary, “Der Verschollene,” [“One Who Disappeared Without Trace”] would have been better than the published one, even though the stark, non-descript Amerika is not altogether wrong, evoking a skewed, slightly out-of-focus land of the imagination. But “Der Verschollene” fits exactly. The title, capturing the fate of Kafka’s young emigrant, locks his silently reverberating disappear­ ance into the shell of a word. There is no infinitive form, no active verb to which the passive participle “verschollen” (long-lost, without trace, presumed dead) belongs. It is a blank and fragmentary word, “Leerstelle eines unauffindbaren Namens” (NL III, p. 13); [blank spot of an unrecoverable name (trans. mine)]. Binding’s “Opfergang,” by contrast, suggests a complete and insidious identification of the victim with fate. “Das Wort tritt ohne nahere Bestimmung auf wie ‘Sein’ am Anfang der Hegelschen Logik, jenseits alter Syntax, als ware es jenseits der Welt. Aber der Prozess seiner Bestimmung findet nicht statt wie bei Hegel, es bleibt

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absolut” (NL III, p. 14). [The word enters the scene without further definition, like 'Being* at the beginning of Hegel's Logic, beyond syntax as if it were outside this world. Unlike Hegel, though, the process of its definition does not take place; it remains absolute (trans. mine)]. Adorno points out that the two equally weighted parts of the compound, “sacrifice” and “path,” insinuate a noble choice on the part of the victim to become one with destiny, while the lack of the definite article lends an aura of universal necessity to the sacrifice, exposing the content as mythologized ritual. The reference to Hegel shows Adorno’s opposition to Hegel’s notion of evolving absolute spirit, despite the fact that he is much indebted to Hegel’s way of developing concepts immanently and dialectically.* There is no abstract spirit or subject that rules the fate of history, instead, history has turned out to be fatal for its subjects. The task of writers and readers alike is to question the subjectivist consciousness inscribed in language, a language whose concepts subsume and rule, whose living content has withered. As “true details,” titles try to account for the details forgotten by this pro^ cess. Mindful, they try to name the particular thing lost in the \ shadow of enlightenment, the shadow cast by the injunction against | the image and the body. But perhaps they are presumptuous, per­ haps they should not be written at all until and if what they name finds its place: “Oder zogert die Hand, den Titel zu schreiben, weil es iiberhaupt verboten ist; weil ihn erst die Geschichte schreiben konnte [.. .]?” (NL III, p. 18). [Or does the hand hesitate to write the title because it is simply forbidden, because only history would be able to write i t . . .? (trans. mine)].

For the Love o f Words Both “Titles” and “Words from Afar” (1959) reflect largely on Adorno’s own writing and reception. His essay on foreign words was occasioned by angry letters that were sent to him after a radio presentation he had given on Proust. The protest was directed at his vocabulary, which had angered the audience and, Adorno sur­ mises, had uncomfortably brought home the verbal discrepancy

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between literature and its philosophical interpretation, between metaphor and concept He believes, however, that his broadcast in actuality might have seemed strange less for its vocabulary than for its syntax—baiting his readers with yet another tour de force: Ftemd mochten eber die Sfltze klingen als das Vokabular. Versuche der Formulierung, die, um die gemeinte Sacbe genau zu treffen, gegen das abiiche Sprachgepiatscher schwimmen und gar sich bemflben, verzweigtere gedankliche ZusammenhSnge getreu im GefQge der Syntax aufeufangen, erregen durch die Anstrengung, die sie zumuten, Wit (NL n , p. 110). [Strange might have sounded the sentences rather than the vocabulary. Formulations that go against the currents of the usual babble in an attempt to reach their object precisely, that try, moreover, to faithfully catch the complexity of the thought process within their syntactic net, provoke by the effort they demand fury (trans. mine)].

The essay addresses the immanent distance between language and the real, and reflects on its correlative, the resistance to false familiarity required of critical writing. Foreign words are the writer’s objects of desire, as well as tools for enlightenment They are tiny cells of resistance against the regressive tendency of discourse to repeat in familiar terms what has been made familiar by convention, thus making it appear natural. In a way, Adorno introduces his own version of Brechtian Verfremdung, a concept of distance that makes strange what in actuality is strange. Unlike Brecht, however, he conceives of it as desire. It is eras, not logos, that animates lan­ guage, which is a product of reason itself. The initial, exploratory use of foreign words betrays an erotic attraction as yet unaware of itself: MDer friihe Drang zu den W6rtem aus der Fremde dhnelt dem zu auslandischen, womoglich exotischen Madchen; es lockt eine Art Exogamie der Sprache, die aus dem Umkreis des Immergleichen, dem Bann dessen, was man ohnehin ist und kennt, heraus mochte” (NL II, p. 112). [The early desire for words from afar resembles the desire for foreign, possibly exotic girls. A linguistic kind of exogamy lures the writer to leave the spell of what is always the same, of what one is and knows already (trans. mine)]. The mature use of foreign words, on the

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other hand, is based on the knowledge of separation, is desire become self-conscious: “In jedem Fremdwort steckt der Sprengstoff von Aufklarung, in seinem kontrollierten Gebrauch das Wissen, daB Unmittelbares nicht unmittelbar zu sagen, sondem nur durch alle Reflexion und Vermittlung hindurch noch auszudriicken sei” (NL II, p. 116). [Each foreign word contains the dynamite of enlightenment, each controlled use the knowledge that nothing can be expressed directly but only by way of fullest reflection and mediation (trans. mine)]. Adorno considers German a language in which the use of foreign words appears especially explosive. In contrast to French (somewhat less so to English), it was never mainlined for administra­ tive purposes by Latin, the “civilizing” language of imperialism. This perhaps fortuitous circumstance makes German into a curious, double-edged material, with possibilities that arise from its lack of linguistic confidence and communicative security, its long isolation from the seats of official power. Highly metaphorical, it remained vernacular longer than other European languages. This rough-hewn, relatively undisciplined quality is of advantage to critical writing. German is vulnerable to infiltration; its facial expression, as it were, changes dramatically when forced into a new direction. By carefully interrupting with alien words or strangesounding syntax what appear to be the natural imagery and flow of the language, the writer can demonstrate that the physiognomy even of this language is the product of social history, of culture, that the assumption of language being congruent with its referents is a myth. The use of “alien” words in German is an especially effective way to draw attention to the fact that language is artifice. Historical attempts to “purify” German, that is, to free it from foreign deriva­ tives, range from earth-bound nostalgia to the germanizing, “ger­ mane” neologisms of Heideggerian jargon,9 from naive romanticism to ontologizing mystifications. There is an edge to the use of foreign words that cuts through both: “Die Diskrepanz zwischen Fremdwort und Sprache kann in den Dienst des Ausdrucks der Wahrheit treten” (NL II, p. 117). [The discrepancy between foreign word and native language can serve the expression of truth (trans. mine)].

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Adorno is aware that the use of foreign words signifies a privi­ leged position through education, as does professional specialization in general. But it would be wrong to hide such privilege—and thereby a divisive society—through a falsely popular, misleadingly “ordinary” language, since “popularity” has became the business of the culture industry. The writer who believes that language can express truth simply and directly is blind to the history of division and inequality inscribed in a medium that is anything but transpar­ ent, that is socially mediated to the core. A truly enlightening language, that is, a language that demythologizes without mythologizing in turn, historically has been only within the grasp of highly privileged groups: the class that has been in control of the means of production and dissemination of written language. Instead of working against its institutionalization, the members of this class have kept it under control and forced lan­ guage into their exclusive service. The essay attends to an open wound—the privileged position of the educated writer. Only a selfcritical, mindful use of foreign words can keep the wound open and exposed; scarred over, to carry Adorno’s metaphor further, it would appear natural and no longer remind of the deep injuries levelled by privilege. In the course of a history of domination, language has reached a stage of telling contradiction: the expression of truth is forced to work against communicating this truth semantically. This contradic­ tion is based on an advanced state of linguistic reification within a generally reified social structure.10 Institutions—from the populari­ ty-conscious media to the specialized university—shape and control language to such a degree that anything expressed outside their idioms is considered idiosyncratic, hence incomprehensible. The writer who tries to communicate and express the truth simultaneous­ ly faces the dilemma of formulating from both within and without, as insider as well as outsider. “Dieser Widerspruch betrifft auch sein Verhaltnis zu den Fremdwortem” (NL II, p. 129). [This contradic­ tion also pertains to his relationship to foreign words (trans. mine)]. While Adorno would subscribe to Brecht’s dictum that the truth is concrete, he maintains that the concrete cannot be grasped by a

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“simple” language that itself has become thoroughly abstract, that has been made the easy coin of exchange on a cultural market manipulated by powerful institutions. Concrete, rather, is a truth whose “foreign” expression accounts for the alienating abstraction that permeates the social. A key word in Adorno’s vocabulary, easily misunderstood, is “authenticity,” the considered use of which he explains in the fol­ lowing passage. It sets forth the notion of a literate/literary art that is authentic because it is mediated, because it admits to being artifi­ cial. The passage contends that the foreign word is the right word when it prohibits a false identification with the thing, when it resists “natural” congruence with it. In connection with his remarks on Proust, Adorno differentiates the strange word Authentizitat from both the better known, though still foreign word Autoritat (authori­ ty) and the familiar German word Giiltigkeit (validity): Ich babe im Zusam m enhang mit Proust, und auch sonst zuweilen, von "Authentizitat” gesprochen. Nicht nur ist das Wort ungebrfluchlich; die Bedeutung, die es in dem Zusammenhang annimmt, in den ich es zog, ist keineswegs durchaus sichergestellt. Es soil der Charakter von Werken sein, der ihnen ein objektiv Verpflichtendes, fiber die ZufSlligkeit des bk>B subjektiven Ausdrucks Hinausreichendes, zugleich auch gesellschaftlich VerbOrgtes verleiht. Hatte ich einfach “Autoritat” gesagt, also ein wenigstens eingebtlrgertes Fremdwort, so ware dadurch zwar die Gewalt bezeichnet worden, die solche Werke ausUben, nicht aber das Moment von deren Bcrcchtigung kraft cincr Wahrheit, die schlieQlich auf den gesellschaftlichen Prozess zurflckverweist. Jener Unterschied des seinem Gehalt nach VerbQrgten von dem usurpatorisch Gewalttatigen ware verfehlt worden, auf den es mir ankam. Nun hatte sich gewiss ein heute in Deutschland sehr beliebtes Wort angeboten: “GOltigkeit.” Hier jedoch ist zu bedenken, daB WOrtem nicht nur ein Stellenwert im Zusammenhang, sondem auch ein geschichtlicher eignet. Das Wort gQltig ist durch Figuren wie “gUltige Aussage” heute dberaus kompromittiert. An ihm gibt sich eine gewisse Art des Kemigen, salbungsvoll-schlicht Bejahenden zu erkennen, die in der gegenwartigen Ideologie ihre bOse Rolle spielL (NL II, pp. 127*128). [In connection with Proust and on other occasions I have spoken of “authenticity.” Not only is the word unusual; the meaning it takes on in the context in which I placed it is not at all fixed and assured. It is meant to describe that quality of works which lends them something objectively

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Mimesis on the Move binding, something that reaches beyond the contingency of merely subjec­ tive expression, something that gives them social significance. Had I simply said “authority,” which is at least a familiar foreign word, I would have described, to be sure, the violence exercised by such works but not the moment of such violence’s justification, which is based on a truth that ultimately refers back to social processes. The distinction I wanted to make between what is binding by force of its content and what is violently usurped would not have been made. Now, there also would have been available a word that is very favored in Germany today: “validity.” One should consider, however, that words not only have a contextual meaning but an accumulative, historical significance as well. Ibday the word valid is quite compromised by tropes such as “valid statement.” The phrase reveals a certain kind of down-to-earthiness, an officiously naive affirmative gesture that plays its insidious role in contemporary ideology (trans. mine)].

The passage demonstrates an ideology criticism that pays atten­ tion to form and formulation, that is sensitive to the uses, misuses and abuses that have sedimented, have been inscribed in our vocab­ ulary. Certain all-too-familiar words have to be kept at arm’s length; other, strange ones must be drawn near. None are innocent; all are weighted with social practice. Adorno’s “Proust Commentaries,” which provoked the angry response of his listeners, allude to his paradoxical notion of formal adequacy. Toward the end of his remarks, he refers to a certain sentence as authentic because its structure and phrasing arises from the textual as well as the social context. The foreign word “authen­ tic” is to remind the reader that the sentence, like other rightly made art, intimates a truth that is indeed strange. It reads: “The thought that Bergotte might not be dead for all times is thus not 1entirely incredible.” The phrase, singular in Proust’s work for its rationally couched yet deeply desirous reach for the ineffable, exhibits what Adomo considers the secretly utopian gesture of all artistic composition—its reach toward a reality that never was but is promised through its own internal adequacy. This promise shines forth in the perfect(ed) relationship between a mimetically yielding, rational technique such as language and an object made visible by this language’s form. Thie art works, he writes in his Proust essay, allow us to hope, “daB ihr Gelingen und ihre Authentizitat selber

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auf die Realitat dessen verweisen, wofur sie einstehen” (NL II, p. 108); [that through their accomplishment and authenticity they point to the reality for which they stand (trans. mine)].

Asthetische Theorie Adorno’s dialectical reading of culture privileges avant-garde art because it makes what appears familiar strange. His aesthetic theory is deliberately hermetic, based on the thesis that the unresolved antagonisms of reality return in the art work as its own formal problems. Each art work, understood both as a process and the result of this process, illuminates society from within. This is why art and its theory are autonomous and yet vitally connected to their social context. It is this paradoxical connection that his theory conceptualizes. As one critic puts it, “His first and foremost goal was to establish a theory of ‘die Kunst der Modeme,’ not as a historian, but as a participant and critic reflecting upon a specific stage in the development of capitalist culture.”11 Shortly before his death in 1969, Adorno mentioned this goal somewhat defiantly in an interview: Der Spiegel: Sie sehen also die sinnvollste und notwendigste Form Ihrer Tatigkeit in der Bundesrepublik nach wie vor darin, die Analyse der Gesellschaftsverhaitnisse voranzutreiben? Adorno: Ja, und mich in ganz bestimmte Einzelphanomene zu versenkcn. Icb geniere mich gar nicht, in alter Offentlichkeit zu sagen, dafi ich an einem groBen flsthetischen Buch arbeite.12 [Der Spiegel: So you consider it your most pressing and meaningful business in the Federal Republic to continue analyzing the social condition? Adorno: Yes, and to immerse myself in certain single phenomena. I am not embarrassed to admit publically that I am working on a major aesthet­ ic book (trans. mine)].

His announcement challenged the currents of the time. Adorno was quite aware that his insistence on aesthetics rather than politics had met with severe criticism from the New Left. Although he had never sided with orthodox Marxism, he was now under attack for

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what the activists of the student movement called his intellectual escapism and, worse, his siding with what they considered a fascist establishment. As a professor of philosophy at the University of Frankfurt, a prolific writer and well-known critic of culture since his return from the United States in 1949, he had attracted a wide following of students, many of whom turned against him when he did not support the Aktionismus that his (and the Frankfurt School’s) teaching had helped inspire. Although the students’ accusations about “retreat” and “bour­ geois revisionism” extended to Critical Theory in general, they were directed especially at Adorno, who had become its most influential exponent. His claim that art and its interpretation is a special type of praxis and must not be confused with activism, provoked the ire of those who wanted a revolution. For Adomo, the situation did not call for violent confrontation but for continued analysis, stead­ fast opposition, and a theory that focused on non-violent practice: Ich mOBte mein ganzes Leben verleugnen—die Erfahrungen unter Hitler und was ich an Stalinismus beobacbtet habe—, wenn ich dem ewigen Zirkel der Anwendung von Gewalt gegen Gewalt mich nicht verweigem wdrde. Ich kann mir cine sinnvolle verandernde Praxis nur als gewaltlose Praxis vorstellen.13 [I would have to put the lie to my entire life—the experiences under Hitter and what I observed in Stalinism—if I did not resist the vicious circle of using violence against violence. I can imagine meaningful, changc-cffecting praxis only as non-violent praxis (trans. mine)].

The work on his book thus took place among vociferous rebel­ lion, which included the dismissal of art and art theory as an elitist pastime. Although he did not take to the streets, Adomo did speak out for the necessity to change public consciousness and credited the student movement with significantly contributing to that end.14 But he considered Aesthetic Theory his main task. Together with Negative Dialectics (1966) and a planned work on moral philosophy, he wanted it to be his life’s contribution to a critical theory of contemporary society. When it appeared in 1970, it was not well received—though the reception has considerably changed since.13

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The Left felt betrayed, even though Adorno’s engagement through­ out his teaching and writing had always been mediated by his partic­ ular understanding of form. An American review ten years later succinctly characterizes the reception then: “It was particularly Adorno’s insistence on the autonomy of the art work and his well known indictment of Tendenz and political art which angered the Left.”16

The Form o f the Content In its posthumously published form, Aesthetic Theory consists of three parts of unequal length, the theory, organized by the editors into twelve relatively independent sections, the paralipomena (“things left out”), and an early introduction. The theory revolves around five distinct yet related problematics: it begins with and eventually returns to a discussion of the social character of art, its reception and its provocation. Within these parameters it outlines a philosophy of modernism and examines the relationship between natural and aesthetic beauty, between aesthetic and conceptual logic.17 In a letter regarding the form of his project Adorno writes: Interessant ist, daB sich mir bei der Arbeit aus dem Inhalt der Gedanken gewisse Konsequenzen ftlr die Form aufdrangen, die ich langst erwartete, aber die mich nun doch Uberraschen. Es handelt sich ganz einfach darum, daB aus meinem Theorem, daB es philosophisch nichts “Erstes” gibt, nun auch folgt, daB man nicht einen argumentation Zusammenhang in der abiichen Stufenfolge aufbauen kann, sondern daB man das Ganze aus einer Reihe von Ifeilkomplexen montieren mufi, die gleichsam gleichgewichtig sind und konzentrisch angeordnet, auf gleicher Stufe; deren Konstellation, nicht die Folge, muB die Idee ergeben (AX p. 541). [Interestingly the content of thoughts has, for me, a bearing on their form. I knew and expected this all along. But now that it has happened I am dumbfounded all the same. My theorem that there is no philosophical “first thing” is coming back to haunt me. Much as I might be tempted, I cannot now proceed to construct a universe of reasoning in the usual orderly fashion. Instead I have put together a whole from a series of partial complexes which are concentrically arranged and have the same weight and

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The paratactic form of his presentation, like the concept of parataxis developed in his Holderlin essay, signifies openness to the presented thing. Adorno wants to do justice to art, not subordinate , it to a system or the function that society assigns to it. He considers 1it first of all on its own terms, thus making aesthetic theory not a : philosophy o f art but a theory which itself is aesthetic, is guided by ; what it theorizes. In this theory, aesthetic and general cultural production, albeit connected, are distinct. They are linked by using the same material, such as words and syntax in the case of language, tones and tonal combinations in the case of music. Art, by arranging this material into a new order or image (Bild), rescues the elements of reality from reification, from being fixed to the meanings and functions they have in the social order. It makes images (Bilder) of reality, not copies (Abbilder): Kunst negiert die der Empirie kategorial aufgeprSgten Bestimmungen und birgt doch empirisch Seiendes in der eigenen Substanz. Opponiert sie der Empirie durchs Moment der Form—und die Vermittlung von Form und Inhalt ist nicht zu fassen ohne deren Unterscheidung—, so ist die Vermitt­ lung einigermassen darin zu suchen, daB asthetische Form sedimentierter Inhalt sei (AT, p. 15). [Art negates the conceptualization foisted on the real world and yet harbours in its own substance elements of the empirically existent. Assum­ ing that one has to differentiate form and content before grasping their mediation, we can say that art's opposition to the real world is in the realm of form; but this occurs, generally speaking, in a mediated way such that aesthetic form is a sedimentation of content (AT, p. 7)].

The notion that form is affected by a material that itself has been affected by other, previous formations, is central to the much earlier Philosophy o f New Music (1949), originally conceived as an excursus to Dialectic o f Enlightenment. At the beginning of his essay on Schonberg, Adorno argues that the traditional understanding of

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musical material in physical or psychological terms, such as sounds or “naturally” pleasing tonal combinations, disregards the fact that musical material has evolved by having been made. The material that the composer must work with is as different from mere sound as language is from phonetics. It is always at a certain stage of technical development, making objective demands on the subject. The determinate freedom of the subject vis-^-vis his object, of form in regard to its material, is literally pre-scribed. It must follow previous, erstwhile subjective inscriptions into the material, which leave their objectified marks in the received “text” of the material. This unwitting relationship between the material and its produc­ tion, between content and form, permits Adomo to call art formally autonomous while yet historically conditioned like any other cultural product. The composer or writer is not a creator but someone who gets to know the inherent possibilities of the material, who mimetically realizes them during the process of composition. The artist is thus stripped of the grand, subjectivist freedom attributed to him by idealist aesthetics: “Er ist kein Schdpfer. Nicht auBerlich schranken Epoche und Gesellschaft ihn ein, sondern im strengen Anspruch der Richtigkeit, den sein Gebilde an ihn stellt.”18 [He is not a creator. His era and society do not limit him from without but from within, by the stringent demand for a right response that his work makes on him (trans. mine)]. In accordance with this demythologization, Adomo rarely refers to “the artist” but instead speaks of artistic technique, which is the form’s relation to content in the process of its making.

The Content o f the Form Neither idealist nor materialist theories, he argues, fully recog­ nizes the animated objectivity of art. His two references are Kant and Freud. Though opposed to each other, each takes a position flawed by a basically subjectivist orientation. While Kant constructs a transcendental subject to define the effect of art, Freud relies on the psychological subject to explain the motive for art. “Beide sind prinzipiell subjektiv orientiert zwischen dem negativen oder positiven

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Ansatz des Begehrungsvermogens. Fur beide ist das Kunstwerk eigentlich nur in Beziehung auf den, der es betrachtet oder der es hervorbringt” (AX p. 24). [What they have in common, however, is the underlying subjective orientation. For both, the work of art exists only in relation to the individual who contemplates or pro­ duces it (AX pp. 15-16)]. Neither the judgment of the transcendental nor the needs of the psychological subject account for the why and wherefore of art. Instead, the importance of both the rationalist and the materialist approach lies in Kant's insistence on a separate, specifically aesthetic sphere on the one hand, and Freud’s recognition of the ultimately instinctual, dynamic character of artistic production on the other. Kant defines art as beauty that pleases without interest This satisfaction ( Wohlgefallen) is free of desire because it concerns the sensory perception of an object that does not exist in empirical reality. But Kant idealizes the freedom of form. Its subtleties and mediations are of no concern to him, Adorno charges. He ignores the instinctual components that motivate even the most sublimated, cerebral work of art. Freud’s theory of sublimation provides the correction by accounting for the dynamic character of art, its instinc­ tual, libidinal roots. And yet, the notion of wish-fulfillment falls short of the critical edge that art turns toward society: “Indem sie die Kunstwerke rein in die psychische Immanenz versetzt, werden sie der Antithetik zum Nichtich entauBert. Es bleibt unangefochten von den Stacheln der Kunstwerke” (AX p. 25). [By placing works of art squarely into a realm of psychic immanence, Freud’s theory loses sight of their antithetical relation to the non-subjective, which thus remains unmolested, as it were, by the thorns pointed toward it by works of art (AT, p. 17)]. By retaining the rational distinction between art and reality yet mediating the two psychoanalytically (in social, not individual terms), Adorno is able to theorize a mimesis that is critical as well as libidinal. The work of art contains within itself the tension between subjective technique and objective material, between spirit’s desire for what is other and the objectification of this desire. Passionate­ ly partial in its objectivity, the aesthetic process is animated by

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longing. As Adorno writes elsewhere, “Noch im sublimiertesten Kunstwerk birgt sich ein Es soil anders sein.”19 [Even the most sublimated work of art contains an ‘It ought to be different’ (trans. mine)]. Though art cannot change society, it advances the state of the material by forming it into configurations other than those integral to the system. Aesthetic Theory is concerned with the art of the bourgeois era, with avant-garde art from Baudelaire to Beckett, situated within a time that extends from industrial to monopoly capitalism. Art is historical to the core, determined yet open-ended: “Die Definition dessen, was Kunst sei, ist allemal von dem vorgezeichnet, was sie einmal war, legitimiert sich aber nur an dem, wozu sie geworden ist, offen zu dem, was sie werden will und vielleicht werden kann” (AT, pp. 11-12). [The definition of art does indeed depend on what art once was, but it must also take into account what has become of art and what might possibly become of it in the future (AT, p. 3)]. It is mediated twice, or rather, doubly, once by general history and once by the history of its forms. But its critical-utopian function is not automatically assured. In the following passage, Adorno warns of the dangers of co-optation, reflecting on certain developments over the first half of the 20th century. Sketching the vicissitudes of an uneasy relationship, he maintains that art ceases to be art if it becomes socially integrated—it loses its critical edge once the line separating it from real power is blurred. Only a society without domination would allow art to be integrated, but then, of course, art as art would no longer be necessary: Wahrend des Ersten Kriegs und vor Stalin paarten sich kUnstlerisch und politisch avancierte Gesinnung; wer damals wach zu existieren begann, dem dttnkt Kunst a priori, was sie geschichtlich keineswegs wan a priori politisch links. Seitdem haben die Schdanows und Ulbrichts mit dem Diktat des sozialistischen Realismus die kUnstlerische Produktivkraft gefesselt nicht nur sondem gebrochen; die asthetische Regression, die sie verschuldeten, ist gesellschaftlich wiederum als kleinbtirgerliche Forierung durchsichtig. Mit der Spaltung in die beiden BlOcke haben dagegen in den Dezennien nach dem Zweiten Krieg die Herrschenden im Westen mit radikaler Kunst ihren widerruflichen Frieden gemacht; die abstrakte Malerei wird von der groBen

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Mimesis on the Move deutschen Industrie gefOrdert, in Frankreich heiBt der Kultunninister des Generals Andrd Malraux (AX pp. 376-377). [During the First World War and up to Stalin, artistic and political convic­ tion went hand in band. Tb someone who was coming of age at that time it had to seem as if art was by definition politically left (which is certainly not what art was throughout history). Since then Zhdanov, Ulbricht and their ilk have imposed socialist realism, fettering artistic forces of produc­ tion—indeed, squashing them. The aesthetic regression they visited upon their countries can be traced to certain petty bourgeois fixations in their personalities. After the Second World War, with nations split into two blocs, the ruling interests in the West have entered into an uneasy, revoca­ ble truce with radical art. Abstract painters are being subsidized by German industry, an artist like Andr6 Malraux can become minister of culture under de Gaulle (AT pp. 359-360)].

Memory TYaces According to Freud, the psyche contains memory traces, secret paths dug by early sensory impressions that are forgotten but can be reactivated through a later libidinal attachment that triggers their memory.20 Adorno’s concept of aesthetic memory works similarly. ’‘"'During the process of writing, painting or musical composition, the technique, rational in its aim to produce a form yet mimetic in its desire for content, innervates the traces of historical experience dug 1 into its material over time. It remembers by doing. Its memorytwerfc? reaching beyond the individual form, links single and new expression to the accumulated, collective expressiveness of the material—whether this is verbal, tonal, or graphic. Through such involuntary remembrance of its condition, each art work anticipates reconciliation: “Die Erinnerungsspur der Mimesis, die jedes Kunstwerk sucht, ist stets auch Antezipation eines Zustands jenseits der Spaltung zwischen dem einzelnen und den anderen” (AX P- 198). [The memory trace of mimesis unearthed by every art work . . . anticipates a condition of reconciliation between the individual and the collectivity (AX p. 190)]. Mimesis spells out what is more than the isolated subject. It connects even the most cerebral, non-referential artistic performance to its repressed historical body—the actual pains and joys of sensory perception:

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Bedeutende Kunstwerke trachten danach, jene kuostfeindiiche Schicht . denooch sich einzuverleiben. Wo sie, der Infiantilitat verdachtig, feblt; dem • spirituellen Kammermu&iker die letzte Spur des Stehgeigers, dem illusionslosen Drama die letzte des Kulissenzaubers, hat Kunst kapituliert (AT, p. 126). [Important art works seek to incorporate the empirical, anti-artistic dimen­ sion just the same. Where this dimension, suspect for its regressive charac­ ter, is missing, where the cerebral chamber musician has lost any trace of the vagrant fiddler, where anti-illusionist drama lacks any trace of theat­ rical magic, art has capitulated (trans. mine)]

As non-conceptual cognition, art is the memory of the social psyche, a laboratory where “forgotten” historical experience is actiriwrted and emphatically (re)constructed. The art work does not accept the official, rationalized version of reality but ^m em bers the / elements of reality from their homogenized totality to remember ( them within a new configuration of sensuous appearance. Through material it gathers, recollects history into a new, imaginary order. Its principle is construction, and as such similar to the rationality that has informed the making of histoiy throughout: “[Konstruktion] reiBt die Elemente des Wirklichen aus ihrem primaren Zusammen­ hang heraus und verandert sie so weit in sich, bis sie von sich aus abermals einer Einheit fahig werden, wie sie drauBen heteronom ihnen auferlegt ward und drinnen nicht weniger ihnen widerfahrt” (AX p. 91). [Construction tears elements of reality away from their original context, altering them individually until they become suscep­ tible to a new unity which is as heteronomous and superimposed as the original one (AT, p. 84)]. Artistic order, based on an art-imma­ nent search for identity by the form, is just as violent as the order that has shaped society. And yet it works in opposition. Its tech­ nique does not identify the elements of reality rationally by telling their “meaning” but shows them by enactment. Adorno conceives of this showing both as a process constitutive of the artistic image, and as an instant of bodily appearance, in which form becomes content, subjectivity becomes objective. As such the art work is no longer a work but its accomplishment, “appari-

J

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tion”—a foreign term denoting its strange magic. As if pretematurally, the subject (technique) vanishes in the product (the result of the technique). Exemplary for apparition are fireworks and the circus act. Both are pure spectacle in the sense that their “meaning” lies in nothing other than their performance. They are transient to the core, flashes of exploding substance, epiphanies of the moving body. Considered low-brow and fleeting—hence impossible to own and matket ideo­ logically—, they count for little in traditional aesthetics.^ Adorno cites good sociological reasons for this: “Die Idee der Dauer der Werke ist Besitzkategorien nachgebildet” (AX p. 265). [The idea of duration is patterned after the concept of property in bourgeois society (AX p. 254)]. Both fireworks and the circus act are models of artistry, bits and pieces of art as it were, Kunststiicke. They are prototype as well as secret goal of the Kunstwerk, which as a pro­ cess is laborious and extensive enough to contain (and as image exhibit) the tension between form and content, technique and material. Apparition is the other pole of mimesis-in-process. “Nicht durch apparition unmittelbar, einzig durch die Gegentendenz zu ihr wird Kunst zum Bild” (AT, p. 126). [Art becomes an image not directly qua apparition but through the counter-tendency to apparition (AX p. 120)]. The image displays a constructed, delicate balance between the subject’s impulse to assert itself and its impulse to vanish, between the form’s triumph and its desire to lose itself in the act of forming what is other than itself. It is a writing (Schrift) that can be deciphered and interpreted—unlike apparition, which is “Menetekel, aufblitzende und vergehende Schrift, die doch nicht ihrer Bedeutung nach sich lesen lafit” (AX P- 125); [a writing on the wall, rising and fading away in short order, and yet not a writing that has any meaning we can make sense of (AX p. 120)]. Inscribed in the features of the art work is the mimetic move from form to content, which is rational insofar as it describes a conscious construction, a deliberate order. “Ist apparition das Aufleuchtende, das Angeriihrtwerden, so ist das Bild der paradoxe Versuch, dies Allerfliichtigste zu bannen” (AT, p. 130). [While

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apparition is the instant of illumination and of being touched by something, the image is the paradoxical attempt to capture this exceedingly fleeting moment (AX p. 125-126)]. Art works, in this sense, are arrested epiphanies of a libidinally charged iform reaching for its content. The idea is indebted to the Benjaminian notion of dialectics at a standstill, the frozen moment of art in which tran­ sience appears at rest. This notion, in turn, is reminiscent of the “fruitful moment” analyzed by Lessing in Laookon (1766). In Adorno’s theory of the avant-garde, the modernist image has become explosive, with the divisive, atomized character of the social materially present in its form. Its formal tensions, driven to their utmost, threaten to blow the image to pieces. Art has become aporetic. As sensuous appearance it feeds on the body, yet this “body,” a nature tricked and dominated over and over again, has become haggard and catatonic, foiling art’s desire for content and thus causing a violent rupture between art and its condition. The image-quality of art disappears, just as the “meaning” of history threatens to culminate in nuclear destruction: Die Schocks, welcbe die jdngsten Kunstwerke austeilen, und die Explosion ihrer Erscheinung . . . Im Verbrennen der Erscheinung stoflen sie grell von der Empirie ab, Gegeninstanz dessen, was da lebt; Kunst heute ist anders denn als Reaktionsform kaum mehr zu denken, welche die Apokalypse antezipiert . . . Der Augenblick, in dem sie Bild werden, in dem ihr Inwendiges zum AuBeren wird, sprengt die HQIle des Auswendigen um das Inwendige; ihre apparition, die sie zum Bild macht, zerstOrt immer zugleich auch ihr Bildwesen (AT, pp. 131-132). [The shocks the most recent art inflicts mark the explosion of its appear­ ance . . . As they burn up appearance, they depart in a glare from empiri­ cal life, turning into the antithesis of the latter. Ibday art is hardly conceiv­ able except as an orientation anticipating the apocalypse . . . At the moment when they congeal into an image externalizing their inner sub­ stance, the outer shell that surrounds this internal substance gets blown away. Thus, while apparition is responsible for the fact that works of art become images, it also destroys that image quality (AT, pp. 125-126)].

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The Image as a Model Enlightenment’s sanction against images and the imagination, its Bilderverbot, is at bottom directed against the true, the shattering image. Its repeated attempts to make art a mode of harmless enter­ tainment or pleasing affirmation stem from the fear to face what is other. But art, the refuge of mimesis and as such heir to the magic circle of the sorcerer enacting the demon, is a mode of enlighten­ ment itself. Within its socially marginal, hermetically sealed off space domination is remembered and ever more frightful images are being produced: “Der gestiirzte und wiederkehrende Inhalt wird zur Imagination und zur Form sublimiert” (AX p. 77). [Over time the abolished and forever recurrent mythical content becomes subli­ mated into imagination and form (AX P- 70)]. Art fashions its technique in accordance with the rationality of society in general. Its reason, however, unlike instrumental reason, is mimetic by force of being affected by what is other. Art works do not repress but recuperate: “[Versohnung] ist ihre eigene Verhaltensweise, die des Nichtidentischen innewird. Der Geist identifiziert es nicht: er identifiziert sich damit (AX P- 202). [Reconciliation is their mode of conduct in so far as they become conscious of the non-identical in their midst. Spirit does not identify it but identifies with it (AX p. 194)]. The aesthetic development that leads to abstract art thus does not abandon reality but exposes the aporia that this reality causes within art. Self-conscious and critical, art reflects on the condition of its own possibility, on a material that has become increasingly ab­ stract. Just as language has become terminology, a language of data and statistics, catchwords and abbreviations, so literary language, from the perfectly constructed “pure” verse to the futurist manifes­ to, from Dada to hermetic poetry, has become an alien cipher amidst general alienation: “Offenbar konnen die Kunstwerke die Wunde, welche Abstraktion ihnen schlug, heilen allein durch gesteigerte Abstraktion” (AX p. 152). [It appears that art works cannot heal the wound inflicted on them by abstraction except by augment­ ing the role of abstraction even more (AX p. 145)].

Eros Objectified Art’s mimetic adaptation to an all-pervasive rationality reqin.^ a cold and clear imagination, not unlike the Sadian torment and its pleasures of recognition. “Das Schneidende wird, dynamisch gescharft, in sich und vom Einerlei des Affirmativen unterschieden, zum Reiz” (AX P- 66). [The discordant moment, dynamically honed to a point and clearly set off from the homogeneous mass of affir­ mative elements, becomes a stimulus of pleasure (AX p. 59)]. Adorno’s concept of art-immanent social critique is distinguishable from affirmation solely by its form. The aesthetic mode negates reality twice, by being imaginary and by being internally mimetic. Art’s progressively constrictive movement, its visible abstraction and insistent hermeticism, is a mimesis unto death, because death, in the form of reification and the deadly potential of technology, is the order of the day. Modernist art identifies with the aggressor—yet in so doing it shows opposition: Negativ sind die Kunstwerke a priori durchs Gesetz ihrer Objektivation: sie toten, was sie objektivieren, indem sie es der Unmittelbarkeit seines Lebens cntreiBen. Ihr eigenes Leben zehrt vom Tbd. Das definiert die qualitative Schwelle zur Modeme. Ihre Gebilde Qberlassen sich mimetisch der Verdinglichung, ihrem Ibdesprinzip . . . GenOtigt wird Kunst dazu durch die saziale Realitat. Wahrend sie der Gesellschaft opponiert, vermag sie doch keinen ihr jenseitigen Standpunkt zu beziehen; Opposition gelingt ihr einzig durch Identifikation mit dem, wogegen sie aufbegehrt (AX p. 201).

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[Art works arc negative per se because they are subject to the law of objectification; that is, they kill what they objectify, tearing it away from its context of immediacy and real life. They survive because they bring death. This is particularly true of modem art, where we notice a general abandon­ ment to reification, which is the principle of death . . . a trend which is caused by the pressure reality exerts on art. While art opposes reality, it is incapable of taking up a vantage point beyond it. Art’s opposition is thus in part identification with what art opposes (AX pp. 193-194)].

Artistic mimesis counters reality by violently transposing its elements into a similar yet different order, not by making it smooth­ ly “real” once more. It acts as a vaccine, not as an anesthetic. Ador­ no’s notion of its negative-utopian force is based on its duplicity, its technical similarity and qualitative difference vis-&-vis reality:

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“Indem Kunst den Bann der Realitat wiederholt, ihn zur imago sublimiert, befreit sie zugleich tendenziell sich von ihm . . . und verwandelt sie in die negative Erscheinung der Utopie” (AX P1%). [By re-enacting reality’s spell, art sublimates it into an image while at the same time freeing itself from i t . . . [it transforms it] to the status of a negative Utopia (AX p. 189)]. Like Dialectic o f Enlightenment, Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory is driven by the contradiction between suffering and the potential to abolish it.22 In contrast to technology, aesthetic production shows a mimetic rationality that remembers while it forms. If technology, the knowledge of nature, would remember nature rather than rule it, it Pcould put into practice what art merely promises: happiness. Mime­ sis is memory, anamnesis, not of Plato’s perfect forms of the mind but, ex negativo, of a reconciled existence. For some, the traces of _this memory may lead back to a happy childhood; for others, privi­ leged by education, it finds its objective prefiguration in works of a rt Within the magic circle of art, nature is no longer dominated nor does it dominate in turn. Anamnesis is the soul’s remembrance of its pre-earthly percep­ tion of the forms of true being. By taking the ancient term literally and materially, Adorno recuperates the expressiveness of a concept: MWorauf die Sehnsucht an den Kunstwerken geht—die Wirklichkeit dessen, was nicht ist—, das verwandelt sich ihr in Erinnerung” (AX p. 200). [In art longing, which posits the actuality of the non-exis­ tent, takes the form of remembrance (AX p. 192)]. In a way, we have come full circle from the Odysseus chapter in the Dialectic. It is the Homeric gesture after all, the narrator’s conjuration of the past as past, that returns in Aesthetic Theory. The aesthetic constel­ lation, an image (Bild) that refuses to be reality’s replica (Abbild), becomes Vorbild—a model for utopia: Umzukehren ware am Ende die Nachahmungslehre; in einem sublimierten Sinn soil die Realitat die Kunstwerke nachahmen. DaB aber die Kunst­ werke da sind, deutet darauf, daB das Nichtseiende sein kOnnte. Die Wirklichkeit der Kunstwerke zeugt fur die MOglichkeit des MOglichen (AX pp. 199-200).

Eros Objectified [In the end this suggests that we must reverse the copy theory of realist aesthetics: in a subtle sense reality ought to imitate art works, not the other way around. By their presence art works signal the possibility of the non­ existent; their reality testifies to the feasibility of the possible (AX p. 192)].

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182

N o tes 1 “Kunst ist das Versprechen des Glucks, das gebrochen w ird.” Theodor W. Adorno, Asthetische Theorie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973). p. 205. Itanslation by C. Lenhardt, Aesthetic Theory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 196. All further quotations are from these editions and are indicated by AT (German) / AT (En­ glish) and page numbers in the text. 2 Translation by Robert Hullot-Kentor and Frederic Will, Theo­ dor W. Adorno, “The Essay as Form,” New German Critique 32 (Spring-Summer 1984), 151-171. All further quotations arc indicated by the translators’ names and page numbers in the text. 3 In Freudian theory, sublimated activity, though energized by the sexual drive, is directed toward a non-sexual objective. 4 Phenomenology as conceived by Husserl is the exploration of forms of consciousness and immediate experience, of inner life (Erlebnisse) as constituted by the life-world. It describes the traits of phenomena as they reveal themselves to consciousness. Adorno historicizes this view by grounding it in social history. All conscious­ ness to which phenomena appear is socially determined. 5 See also Robert Hullot-Kentor, “Title-Essay,” New German Critique 32 (Spring-Summer 1984) p. 148. 6 Modernist atonal music shows a new development in this respect: “Kaum jedoch wird man es fur Zufall halten konnen, daB die Beriihrung der Musik mit sprachlichen Satzzeichen an das Schema der Tonalitat gebunden war, das unterdessen zerfiel, und daB man die Miihe der neuen Musik recht wohl als eine um Satz­ zeichen ohne Tonalitat darstellen konnte” (NL I, pp. 164-165). [It can hardly be considered coincidence that the convergence of music

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with punctuation was tied to the scheme of tonality, which has disintegrated. The effort of new music might well be seen as an effort for punctuation without tonality (trans. mine)]. 7 For a detailed comparison with Benjamin, see Hullot-Kentor, “Title Essay,” pp. 141-150. 8 Theodor W. Adomo, Drei Studien zu Hegel (Frankfurt: Suhr­ kamp, 1963). 9 Adomo criticizes this language and its ideology extensively in Jargon der Eigenttichkeit. Zur deutschen Ideologie (Frankfurt: Suhr­ kamp, 1964). 10 See especially his essays “Ohne Leitbild” and “Resum6 iiber Kulturindustrie,”in Ohne Leitbild. Parva Aesthetica (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1967). 11 Andreas Huyssen, “Adomo in Reverse: From Hollywood to Richard Wagner,” New German Critique 29 (Spring/Summer 1983), p. 23. 12 Der Spiegel 19 (1969), pp. 204 and 209. 13 Theodor W. Adomo, “Autobiographic aus Zitaten,” in Theo­ dor W. Adomo. Gesammelte Schriften. Dossier. Suhrkamp. (Frankfurt, 1978). 14 “Ich glaube, daB die allgemeine Aufmerksamkeit auf die Verdummungsprozesse, die in der gegenwartigen Gesellschaft vorwalten, ohne die Studentenbewegung sich niemals auskristallisiert hatte” (“Autobiographic aus Zitaten,” Dossier). [I believe that the general attention to the progressive stultification that predominates in contemporary society would never have crystallized without the student movement (trans. mine)].

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15 Adorno’s concept of mimesis received especially harsh words and was turned against Adorno personally: “Naturbeherrschung und Identifizierung [werden nicht] einfach uber Bord geworfen . . . nein, sie kommen in der Kunst iiberhaupt erst zu sich selbst, Herrschaft und Identitat werden gut.” And, more damningly, “Adorno’s Gegenzauber—‘Mimesis an die Herrschaft,’ ans Uberfallkommando—war nicht nur fur Kunst bestimmt, er iibte ihn fur sich selbst.” Karl Markus Michel, “Versuch, die ‘Asthetische Theorie zu verstehen,” in Burkhardt Lindner und W. Martin Liidke, ed., Materialien zur asthetischen Theorie Th W. Adornos. Konstruktion der Modeme (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980), pp. 64, 77. A different view is expressed by Lindner and Liidke, who write in “Kritische Theorie und asthetisches Interesse”: “Riickblickend drangt sich die Vermutung auf, daB Adornos Wamung vor dem blinden Aktionismus als antizipierte Einsicht in das Scheitem der Studentenbewegung gedeutet werden konnte. Zumal die antiautoritare Bewegung, nach ihrem Zerfall in diverse proletarische Aufbauorganisationen etc., selbst eine Kritik provozierte, die auf den Grundbestriad Kritischer Theorie zuriickgreifen konnte” (Materialien, p. 21). See also the section “Kolloquium Asthetische Theorie,” in Ludwig von Friedeburg, Jurgen Habermas, ed. Adomo-Konferenz 1983 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983) and, for a more general reception of Adorno’s work, Heinz Ludwig Arnold, ed. Theodor W. Adorno (Miinchen: Text + Kritik, 1977). 16 Peter Uwe Hohendahl, “Looking Back at Adorno’s Asthetische Theorie,” The German Quarterly 54/2 (March 1981), p. 133. 17 See Martin Zenck, Kunst als begriffslose Erkenntnis (Miinchen: Fink Verlag, 1977) p. 97. 18 Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophic der neuen Musik (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978), p. 36.

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19 Theodor W. Adorno, “Engagement,” Noten zur Literatur III , p. 134. 20 In Chapter VII of his Interpretation o f Dreams Freud writes: “What we describe as our ‘character’ is based on the memory-traces of our impressions; and, moreover, the impression'which have had the greatest effect on us—those of our earliest youth—are precisely the ones which scarcely ever become conscious. But if memories become conscious once more, they exhibit no sensory quality or a very slight one in comparison with perceptions.” James Strachey, trans., The Interpretation o f Dreams (New York: Avon Books, 1965), p. 578. See also Chapter IV of Beyond the Pleasure Principle. 21 Adorno notes that only Val6ry has pursued thoughts in this direction (AX p. 125). 22 Considering the stage reached by technology, Adorno calls his era a time in which human suffering could come to an end. Yet the situation is such that “die reale Moglichkeit von Utopie—daB die Erde, nach dem Stand der Produktivkrafte, jetzt, hier, unmittelbar das Paradies sein konnte—auf einer auBersten Spitze mit der Mog­ lichkeit der totalen Katastrophe sich vereint” (AX pp. 55-56); [Utopia—the belief that this earth here, now, immediately could, in virtue of the present potential of the forces of production, become a paradise—is as real a possibility as total catastrophic destruction (AX P- 48)]. This view recalls the question that prompted Dialectic o f Enlightenment, “why mankind, instead of entering into a truly human condition, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism.”

W o rk s C it e d

Adomo, Theodor W. Asthetische Theorie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977. ----- . “Autobiographic aus Zitaten.” In Theodor W. Adomo. Gesammelte Schriften. Dossier. Suhrkamp. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1978. ----- , and Max Horkheimer. Dialektik der Aufldarung. Philosophische Firagmente. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1980. ----- . “Die Idee der Naturgeschichte.” In Rolf Tiedemann, ed., Theodor W. Adomo. Philosophische Friihschriften. Gesammelte Schriften I. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973. ----- . Drei Studien zu Hegel. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1963. ----- . Gesellschaftstheorie und Kulturkritik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975. ----- . Jargon der Eigentlichkeit. Zur deutschen Ideologie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1964. ----- . Negative Dialektik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980. ----- . Noten zur Literatur I. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1958. ----- . Noten zur Literatur II. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1961. ----- . Noten zur Literatur III. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1965. ----- . Noten zur Literatur IV. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974. ----- . Ohne Leitbild. Parva Aesthetica. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1967.

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