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Northeastern Political Science Association

Interpretation & Domination: Adorno & the Habermas-Lyotard DebateAuthor(s): Shane PhelanReviewed work(s):Source: Polity, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Summer, 1993), pp. 597-616Published by: Palgrave Macmillan JournalsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3235124 .

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Interpretation& Domination:Adorno & the Habermas-LyotardDebate*Shane PhelanUniversity of New Mexico

This article explores Theodor Adorno's philosophical method andargues that it furthers resistance to domination. The author comparesAdorno's position with those of Jurgen Habermas and Jean-FranCoisLyotard and finds that it includes important elements that these laterthinkers have abandoned. Habermas moves away from Adorno's insis-tence on the limits of interpretation and the importance of theparticular toward total systems, while Lyotard's attempt to do justiceto "the event" leaves him without the purchase for critical theory thatAdorno pursued.Shane Phelan is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Univer-sity of New Mexico. She is author of Identity Politics: LesbianFeminism and the Limits of Community and of articles in a numberof scholarly journals.

Why return to Adorno? A glance at the recent flood of literature oncritical theory, modernity, and post-structuralismreveals two avenues bywhich Theodor Adorno is bypassed, relegated to the realm of intellectualhistory. First, Habermasian critical theory takes Adorno to task for his"abandonment of reason," his retention of subject-centered epistemol-ogy, and the political quietism that seems to result from aporetic negativedialectics.1 Second, theorists hail Adorno as a precursor, but share theHabermasian critique of the philosophy of consciousness while claiming

*Theauthor hanksDianaRobinand DennisFischmanor theirhelp n thepreparationof this article.1. SeeJiirgenHabermas,ThePhilosophicalDiscoursef ModernityCambridge,MA:MITPress, 1987);AlbrechtWellmer,"Reason,Utopia, and the Dialecticof Enlighten-ment," in Habermasand Modernity,ed. RichardJ. Bernstein Cambridge,MA: MITPress,1985),pp. 35-66.

Poilty VolumeXXV, Number 4 Summer993VolumeXXV,Number4 Summer 993olity


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to have absorbed the best of him into post-structuralism.2 In this view,Adorno's focus on non-identity, the primacy of the object over the sub-ject, and the "de-construction" of concepts of unity and identity arecrucial steps in a direction that is travelled further by Jacques Derridaand Jean-Francois Lyotard.What these interpretations share is a failure to address the centralparadox of Adorno's thought. Adorno manages to hold together the twoimpulses that later diverge into schools. His rejection of epistemologyand of universalism foreshadows postmodernism, but his strong empha-sis on the material bases of domination and identitarian thought alignhim with Marxism in a way that Lyotard, for example, rejects. Adornoprovides an opening into the increasingly important concept of speci-ficity, rather than simple difference or deferral.I will examine the place of specificity in his negative dialectics, with thehope that this examination will help us to articulate aims for political andsocial theory that have often been elusive within post-structuralist work.I will also argue that Adorno's constellative method can help us to thinkthrough the classic absolutist/relativist box that hovers over contem-porary political theory and prevents non-totalizing theoretical defense ofpolitical action. Adorno provides a model of method that is neither"relativist" nor "totalitarian," but is faithfully dialectical and opposedto domination.

I. System and InterpretationIf there is a central idea to Adorno's method, it is the belief that"philosophy is not expoundable," that it is not a matter of deductivelogic but of active interpretation of the world.3 Adorno states that the

2. See RainerNagele,"TheSceneof theOther:TheodorW.Adorno'sNegativeDialec-tics in the Contextof Poststructuralism,"n Postmodernism ndPolitics,ed. JonathanArac (Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1986),pp. 91-111; MichaelRyan,Marxism nd Deconstruction: CriticalArticulationBaltimore: ohnsHopkinsUniver-sityPress,1982).3. TheodorW. Adorno,"TheActualityof Philosophy,"Telos,31 (1977):74. Thereare severalextensive reatments f Adorno's houghtand life. Thereader s urged o con-sult SusanBuck-Morss,TheOriginof NegativeDialectics:TheodorW.Adorno, WalterBenjamin nd theFrankfurtnstitute NewYork:The FreePress,1977);GillianRose, TheMelancholy cience:An Introduction o the Thoughtof TheodorW.Adorno(NewYork:ColumbiaUniversity ress,1978);and severalbooksbyMartinJay:TheDialectical mag-ination:A Historyof theFrankfurtSchoolandtheInstituteor SocialResearchBoston:Little,Brown,1973);Adorno(Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress,1984);and Marxismand Totality:TheAdventures f a ConceptFromLukacs o HabermasBerkeley:Univer-


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"matters of true philosophical interest at this point in history" are thoseapproached not by systems or sovereign subjects, but by interpretation:"nonconceptuality, individuality, and particularity."4This does not andcan not mean the end of conceptual thought; interpretation works onlythrough concepts. Interpretation, however, always leads us to its ownedge, to a recognition of the inadequacy of any conceptual scheme.Johann P. Arnason describes Adorno's vision as one of a "less restrictiverelationship between conceptualization and experience," though not adivorce; the aim is "a permanent self-critique of conceptual thought"rather than its elimination.5 The task for Adorno is to rethink the rela-tion between concept and thing, subject and object, in such a way thatneither the concept nor the thing is taken to be supreme over the other or,indeed, to be independent of the other.Adorno's interpretation rejects the forcible positing in theory of unityand peace, "the use of concepts to neutralize the diversity of experienceand the tendency to suppress the tension between the conceptual and thenon-conceptual."6 He has two objections to such a maneuver. First, heargues that thought cannot be reconciled to or in the world; the nature ofthought is not assimilation, but negation of that which appears as given.He states firmly that "thought as such, before all particular contents, isan act of negation, of resistance to that which is forced upon it."7 In hisview, "that which is forced" before any content is immediacy. Immedi-acy blocks thought by eliminating the distance between subject andobject that thinking traverses. This negation, however, is subverted by"positive" thought, which blocks the avenues of resistance and critique."Positivity" is for Adorno the name of colonization, of passivity towardauthority, of acceptance of the given as the best of all possible worlds.His second objection has to do with the consequences of the attempt atharmony. Adorno does not criticize the desire for reconciliation, but hedoes object to the belief that such desire is, has been, or can be met by

sity of California Press, 1984). Most recent is Fredric Jameson's Adorno: Late Marxism, orThe Return of theDialectic (New York and London: Verso, 1990). Critical readingof thesetexts is required; they do not agree in their assessments of Adorno, though they share ageneral sense of his aims.4. Adorno, "Actuality of Philosophy," p. 8.5. Johann P. Arnason, "Cultural Critique and Cultural Presuppositions: The Her-meneutical Undercurrent in Critical Theory," Philosophy and Social Criticism, 15 (1989):132.6. Ibid.7. Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Con-tinuum, 1973), p. 19.


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reality.Such beliefsparticipaten the maintenance f capitalismhrough"theneutralization, yconfirminghe existentorder,of everyemancipa-tory step."8 Thus, not only is a premature heoreticalpositing of aunified,peacefulworlda turnawayfromcritical hought,it is complici-tous in the perpetuation f a fragmented,agonisticactuality.As MichelFoucaultwill laterput it, "to imagineanothersystemis to extendourparticipationn the presentsystem."9ForAdorno,suchreconciliatoryhoughttakesthe form of systematicphilosophy.In hisview, the Enlightenment'sonceptualpresentation ftheimperative f capitalismorthe elimination f barriers o the marketinsistedupon unification and ordering n thoughtas well as in politicsand economics.As RainerNagelehas described t, "universalhistorydoes not becomeproblematicor Adornobecause t contradicts mpir-icalhistory,but, to thecontrary,because t uncannilybecomesmoreandmorereifiedreality."'10orthisreason,system s one of theprime argetsof his critique. Producinga new system "would be merelypositinganotherdownright first'-not absolute dentity,this time, not the con-cept,not Being,butnonidentity, acticity,entity."'l Rather,hisprojectis to "pursue heinadequacy f thoughtandthing,"to resist hedrive oidentity and unity.12Thispursuitand this resistancedo not entailthe classic maneuverofpositingan individualityhattranscendshistoryand social structures. tinvolvesseeinghow oursubjectivity,ourexperience f ourselvesas indi-viduals, is socially constituted.His project, he says, is "to use thestrengthof the subjectto breakthrough he fallacyof constitutive ub-jectivity."'3The fallacyin question s the belief thatour conceptsade-quatelydescribeand, evenmore, construct he worldin which we live.Such a belief keepsus blindto the actual formsof dominationaroundand withinus. "No elevationof theconceptof Man hasany power n theface of his actualdegradationnto a bundleof functions"; n fact, thephilosophicalfocus on the free individual acts as ideology when theactualsocial conditionsarethose of unfreedom.14

8. Ibid., p. 21.9. MichelFoucault,Language,Counter-Memory,ractice:SelectedEssaysandInter-views,ed. DonaldF. BouchardIthaca:CornellUniversityPress,1977),p. 230.10. Nagele,"TheSceneof the Other,"p. 96.11. Adorno,NegativeDialectics,p. 136.12. Ibid.,p. 153.13. Ibid.,p. xx.14. TheodorW. Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, rans. Knut TarnowskiandFredericWill(Evanston:Northwestern niversityPress, 1973),p. 68.


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Challenging this transcendental constitutive subject does not requirethe denial or destruction of any subject whatever. That is precisely whatgives force to the notion of using the strength of the subject to breakthrough the fallacy of constitutive subjectivity. What Adorno seeks is areformulation of the terrain and nature of the subject. This involvesusing reason, intellect, and intuition to challenge given conceptions ofreason, intellect, and intuition. Simply denying these would be to remainon the terrain given by the dominant social and epistemological order;one either is or is not rational, supports or does not support the subject,etc.

It is accordingly very easy to look on the subject as nothing-as wasnot so very far from Hegel's mind-and on the object as absolute.Yet this is another transcendental illusion. A subject is reduced tonothing by its hypostasis, by making a thing out of what is not athing. It is discredited because it cannot meet the naively realistinnermost criterion of existence.... The subject is the more the lessit is, and it is the less the more it credits itself with objective being. 15Adorno seeks to shift the field on which these concepts have been con-structed. Using the strength of the subject, the currently experienced self,he hopes to challenge the hypostatized subject that is blind to itsdomination.Adorno challenges the idea of the self-constituting, sovereign subjectpossessing the ability to reflect transparently upon itself, but also themore harmonious hermeneutical projects that acknowledge social andlinguistic constitution while overlooking contradiction or fragmenta-tion.16 His blistering attacks on Heideggerian philosophy extend to her-meneuticists such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, who are comfortable withhorizons of meaning, with non-transcendental subjects, but who viewlife within these horizons as full and rich, not cause for anxiety and pain.

15. Theodor W. Adorno, "Subject and Object," in The Essential Frankfurt SchoolReader, ed. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: Urizen, 1978), p. 509.16. This contest of course has many recent instances: The Habermas-Gadamer debatesare one notable front, but so in different ways are the arguments inspired by Foucault; seeMichael Shapiro's review of Charles Taylor's Philosophical Papers, Vols. 1 and 2 inPolitical Theory, 14 (1986): 311-24; William Connolly, "Taylor, Foucault, and Other-ness," Political Theory, 13 (1985): 365-76. Brian Fay recapitulates this struggle in his dis-tinction between interpretive and critical social science, though his critical social science isless indebted to Adorno than to Habermas; see Brian Fay, Social Theory and PoliticalPractice (London: George Allen &Unwin, 1975). For another discussion of this distinction,see William E. Connolly, Politics andAmbiguity (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,1987).


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The position of the subject is crucial for the project of philosophy andresistance to proceed, but that position is never free of internal strife andambiguity. "The human mind is both true and a mirage"; it has access toand has indeed mastered the world, but it is not as clear, as orderly, or asfree as it thinks.17Adorno tells us that he seeks the restoration of theobject, but that restoration does not involve placing the object on "theorphaned royal throne" of the subject; rather, "the purpose of criticalthought is to abolish the hierarchy."18 Thinking is inevitably mediatedby, structured by, and filtered through objective social structures, butthis does not eliminate the reality of thinking. Thought is not free of theworld, but neither is it simply epiphenomenal.I. ConstellationsInterpretation is structured for Adorno by the metaphor of the constella-tion. The constellation enables us to see the totality of a society, never assomething essentially given or stable in its identity, but as the product ofmyriad social and historical forces. As the product of interpretation,constellations are not verifiable in the terms of positivist science, butAdorno argues that they have an empirical reality as images of the rela-tionship between the social structure as a whole and particular persons,things, or institutions.To illustrate this point, Adorno gives us the example of the riddle. Theriddle, he explains, has no "being which lies beyond it, a being mirroredin the riddle." Solving the riddle does not expose a hidden reality.Instead, riddles are compact clusters of elements; solving one "lights itup suddenly and momentarily."19 A simple example is the following:"what's black and white and re(a)d all over?" we ask one another in ele-mentary school. The delighted answer: "A newspaper!" The delightcomes from the shifting organization of conceptual elements that makessudden sense out of an apparent conundrum.Just as important as the delight in this conceptual Gestalt is the factthat this solution does not "reveal" some deep truth about the news-paper; the newspaper, indeed, stands as a newspaper, after as before theriddle's solution. For Adorno, the task of philosophy is similar.

The task of philosophy is not to search for concealed and manifestintentions of reality, but to interpret unintentional reality, in that,17. Adorno,NegativeDialectics,p. 186.18. Ibid., p. 181.19. Adorno,"Actualityof Philosophy,"p. 127.


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by thepowerof constructing igures,or images Bilder),outof theisolated elements of reality, it negates (aufhebt) questions, theexactarticulationof whichis the task of science.20

There s no "more" to be done once the riddle s solved;no "whyis thenewspaperblackand white and read?,"no "why do humansprogressand regress?"; hesejust are. Still, they are not meaningless.As con-stellations, deasarebrought ogether n a waythat illuminates eality,not by means of grand generalizations,but throughattentionto thesmall,ordinarydetailsof life.In describinghe task of philosophyas "negation,"Adornodoesnotmeansimply hatphilosophys "opposed"to science.Indeed,he arguesthat "philosophywill be able to understand he materialcontentandconcretionof problemsonly withinthe presentstandingof the separatesciences."21The differencebetween he two projects s thatphilosophydoes not restwith thefindingsof science,"at leasttheirfinalanddeepestfindings," as fixed, but ratheras "a sign that needsunriddling."Its"negation" s the continual nterpretationf, thechallenge o, theques-tions and answersof scientific research.This is the heart of criticaltheory's attempt o speakbetweenscienceandphilosophy.The constellation s a compactand powerfulway of expressing wopointsconcerningherelationof the knower o theobjectof study n theprocessof interpretation.First, "constellation"expressesactivity; ike"construction,"with which Adorno places it, constellation s a nounthat embodiesactionon the partof the subject.Constellationsare notsimply"there";they "are"explicitlyas the productof the knowerwhoarrangesthe elements. Thus, the idea of a constellationexpressesAdorno's belief that all knowledgeis active construction,and morespecifically hat the propermode of philosophy s interpretation.The secondpoint embedded n the idea of constellation s that theworld conceivedby the mindshould be taken not simplyas an orderedtotality,but ratheras a stable but shiftingcomplexof elements.That isto say, a philosophyorientedtowardtotalitydoes not understand hefragmented ndconcretenatureof thought.Ideasdo not "penetrate"othe essence of things, but illuminate them in their relation to otherthings;theyare thusdependentupon particular istorical orms of rela-tions, as wellas the internalconstitutionof suchideas.Philosophygoesastraywhen t tries to makeof these relations omething ternal,beyondthe materialworld.Returningo the subjectagain,a constellativemode

20. Ibid.21. Ibid., p. 126.


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will acknowledgehe existenceand relativestabilityanddensityof sub-jects whilelinkingthem to historicalcircumstances,which is to say, toaccidents.Both the constellationas somethingperceived"outsideof"the subjectandthe constellationas the productof the subject'sactivityare historicalconstructions.Theworld,including heinterpreter,s sucha construction.The constellation husprovidesorderwithoutsystem.Withoutorder,withoutpatterns,riddles could not be solved, for there would be nomeaningfuljuxtapositionsof elements.Systems,however, imply andexpressnotsimply uxtapositionbutlaws,causality,hierarchies f Being;in this,Adornoargues, hey imposeaninadequate chemaon theworld.Systemsare antithetical o the "irreducible,"he "concreteparticulars"that are lost in non-dialectical bstraction.The ideaof theconstellation,hemethod nvolvingt, andtheperspec-tive fromwhichAdorno values it originatewith WalterBenjamin.Ben-jamindeveloped he idea of theconstellation sa description f the rela-tion between deas andphenomena.Benjamin tatesthat "ideas aretoobjectsas constellationsare to stars," and explainsthat ideas have anexistencecompletelyindependentof objects, that they "do not con-tribute o the knowledgeof phenomena,andin no waycanthe latterbecriteriawithwhichto judgethe existenceof ideas."22This Platonism srejectedby Adorno,but the metaphorproves powerfulnonetheless.AsFredricJamesonnotes,in Adornotheconstellation eases o betimeless,and insteadbecomessynchronic.23heconstellationdoesnot graspeter-naltruths,as for Benjamin,but rather lluminatesa particular istoricalconfigurationof elements.Benjamin's oleinthe notion of theconstellation pensus to thelargerquestionof Judaism.MartinJayhasarguedconvincinglyhat an under-standingof Adornorequiresappreciation f the role of Judaism n histhought,andthispointis nowherebetter aken thanin consideration fthe constellation.24enjamin'sPlatonism s always ilteredorblockedbyresistances o Greeknotionsof representationndtruth,andthese resis-tancesreappearn Adorno's work.As one possiblesourceof theseresistances,we can look at the differ-encesbetweenGreekand Hebrew houghtandlanguage.Whiletracingthese differences, Thorlief Boman discusses the importancefor the

22. Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne(London: NLB, 1977), p. 34.23. Jameson, Late Marxism, p. 60.24. Jay, Dialectical Imagination, Adorno.


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Hebrewsof the "configuration."25heconfigurations hereopposedtotheformor the outlineof anobject;Boman inds no words n Hebrew oexpress he latterconcept.Similarly, e findsno conceptof "boundary,"such animportantdeaforGreco-Christianhought, nHebrew.Thetwoabsencesgo together, for they both rely on an abstractionfrom theactual worldthat is missingin Hebrew anguageandthought.What ispresent nstead s a consistentunificationof, or,morestrongly,aninabil-ity to separate ormor shapeon the one handandcontent on the other.The distinctionbetweenthese two is only possiblethroughabstractionfrom the concrete,from a disregard or actualperception n favor of"mental"perception n the Platonicmanner.This is not a distinctionbetweenprelinguisticvs. linguisticperception,but is one of differentkinds of languagesand, therefore,of differentsorts of perception.Consistentwith this refusal to separate orm and contentis anotherfeatureof Hebrewthoughtthat clasheswiththe Greek. Bomanarguesthat whileforthe Greeks,"theonewho seeksto know is not attemptingto altersomethingor other in his environment,but he is only tryingtoobservehowit really s," there s notin Hebrewevena wordthat wecansimply ranslateas "thing."26nstead, hereare words hatinvolveusageby humans-tools, instruments-anda word,dabhar, hatcan be trans-lated as "matter," but whose only relation to determineobjects isthrough anguage;dabhar s " 'the wordin spokenform,' hence 'effi-cacious fact.' "27 Dabhar means "matter," but also "thing" and"word."28We cannotseparatehethingbeingdiscussed rom thediscus-sionitself;reality s created n andthrough anguage.Notethat thisdoesnot meanthatreality s created hrough abels,thatthere is no materialreality; his wouldbea Greekconclusion.Rather, t means hatlanguageandmatterare inseparable.

Thesepoints surface n Adorno'smetaphor.The constellation s notsimply"there,"but is the productof humancognition.It has no eternalstability; t has no realitybeyondthe idea of the thinker.This does notmean,however,that it does not "reallyexist," or that socialstructuresvanish f wethink aboutthemdifferently.Thatwouldbea Greekconclu-sion. It means that they existonly in and throughhumanactivity,andthatreality s not fixedindependently f humanknowledge,butexists n

25. Thorlief Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek (New York: W.W.Norton, 1960), p. 156.26. Ibid., p. 185.27. Ibid., p. 184.28. Dennis Fischman, Political Discourse in Exile: Karl Marx and the Jewish Question(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991), p. 44.


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interaction with it. There is no implication that our activity is "free" inany radical sense; structures are human activity, but they in turn shapeactivity, restricting and fostering in particular ways. There is no "out-side" of the structure for us to be at, to choose whether to be affected byit or not.29 This again is why we must use the strength of the subject tobreak through the fallacy of the constitutive subject; we subjects have noother avenue.The "shape" of the constellation resounds with the Hebrew notion ofconfiguration, as well. The constellation is not formed by, cannot bedescribed by, its outline or shape, its boundaries, but by its contents, byits elements and their relations. This helps us to understand the distrustof analytic thinking that is common to Adorno and many poststructural-ists. Analytic thinking rests on the belief in things, with boundaries thatcan be marked in abstract thought. Without that premise, a whole logicbecomes impossible. Is A = A? It depends on what A is, what is happen-ing to it, what it is doing. This is why Adorno insists on the dialectic asthe model of thought; no thought that draws lines as though these were"real" beyond human praxis can be adequate to reality. Rather, heargues, "the clarification of particularconcepts, as their complete defini-tion, can be accomplished only through the totality of the fully devel-oped system and not through the analysis of the isolated particularconcept."30HI. Totality and DominationProviding Adorno's constellative practice with a context thus helps us tosee why "equivalence" is such a threat for him. When he charges thatbourgeois society "makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it toabstract qualities," he is repeating the charge of the Hebrew against theGreek.31There can be no equivalence that does justice to the uniquenessof things. This uniqueness is not outside of history, but is instead the

29. Onthefallacyof inside/outside, eeWilliamCorlett,CommunityWithoutUnity:APoliticsof DerridianExtravaganceDurhamand London:DukeUniversityPress,1989),PartIII.30. TheodorW. Adorno,Kierkegaard:Construction f the Aesthetic,trans. RobertHullot-KentorMinneapolis:University f MinnesotaPress,1989),p. 4.31. MaxHorkheimernd TheodorW. Adorno,Dialecticof Enlightenment,rans.JohnCumming NewYork:Continuum,1989),p. 7. Arnasonnotesthat Dialecticof Enlighten-mentradicallydecontextualizesoth Greekand Hebrew hought,but not symmetrically;this decontextualizationhortchanges nypossibleemancipatorylementsn Greek ocietyandthoughtwhile "the utopianpromisesof Judaismarevaluedmorehighly" (p. 138).Indeed,at somepointsAdorno'srejectionof system tselfborderson the paranoid.


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embodiment of it. This understanding is the basis for his charge thatSoren Kierkegaard abandons history even as he speaks of it:

Precisely what constitutes authentic history, the irreversible andirreducible uniqueness of the historical fact, is emphaticallyrejected by Kierkegaard. According to his doctrine, this is simplybecause this uniqueness itself excludes the fact-on account of itsuniqueness-from history.32He adds, furthermore, that "Kierkegaardattempts to rescue the contentof real historical uniqueness," but does so through categories that appearas non-historical.33Thus, Kierkegaard continues the tradition of Plato-nism that can understand and locate things and ideas by their participa-tion in the general or the abstract. This is in direct contradiction withAdorno's sense that the unique is the historical, or rather that the his-torical is the unique, the real, the concrete, the singular. History is notthe summary of great events, the "ahistorical, general determination ofthe race," but is only real in the particularsthat embody it.34The opposi-tions of the particular and the general, the unique and the historical, reston a misunderstanding about the nature of reality. The particular is notthe isolated, but is the unique, which exists always and only in a socialhistorical context. This contextuality, however, does not make the partic-ular simply an instantiation of a generality; "it could not be identified byplacing it within a general category, for its significance lay in its contin-gency rather than its universality."3sThus, while "universal history must be construed and denied," weneed not deny historical unities. There is a "unity that cements the dis-continuities, chaotically splintered moments and phases of history-theunity of the control of nature, progressing to rule over men, and finallyto that over men's inner nature."36 As this passage makes clear, how-ever, that unity is not "natural" or pre-ordained and is certainly not theunited history of the progress of reason; the particular form that unityhas taken in the modern West is that of domination. Adorno does not"collapse" the idea of totality, as Martin Jay has claimed, so much as hehas redescribed it.37For Adorno, the threat of modernity is precisely thatthe world is becoming more and more "total," i.e., the room for individ-

32. Adorno, Kierkegaard, p. 33.33. Ibid., p. 34.34. Ibid.35. Ibid.36. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 320.37. Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality, ch. 8.


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uality is shrinkingas the world is increasingly organized and rationalized.The dream of totality is seen by him as part of the problem, rather thanpart of a subversive solution.While many commentators have seen in his famous statement that "nouniversal history leads from savagery to humanitarianism but there isone leading from the slingshot to the atom bomb" the signs of a totaliz-ingly bleak picture of history, I would argue that what is manifest here isinstead a resistance to what Lyotard will call "metanarrativesof emanci-pation," the stories that make sense of history and legitimate currentsocieties by reference to the progress of humanity.38 As such, his messageis a crucial one, both for his age and for ours. Further, his statement isempirically strong: while the events of the twentieth century leave usquestioning the possibility or benign face of humanism, the consistent"progress" and use of weaponry is beyond dispute.Even as the world is increasingly totalized and dominated, however,Adorno insists that this process can never be total. Foreshadowingdeconstruction, Adorno turns to language itself to make this point."Totality," he argues, "is to be opposed by convicting it of nonidentitywith itself-of the nonidentity it denies, according to its own concept."39The condition of non-identity is embedded in our language, which isalways inadequate to express reality completely. It is in this non-identitythat Adorno places his hope for the future. The reading of Adorno as a"hopeless" thinker who leaves us no way out of his own theoreticaltotality of domination fails to see the importance of this fundamentalconcept. The capacity for thought, which is also that of resistance, findsfruition not in system, not in identity, but beyond them, in affinity. Wewill never reach a reconciliation involving the identity of subject andobject or of subjects with one another, nor should we hope for one:

The reconciled condition would not be the philosophical imperial-ism of annexing the alien. Instead, its happiness would lie in thefact that the alien, in the proximity it is granted, remains what isdistant and different, beyond the heterogeneous and beyond thatwhich is one's own.40His hope lies, not in a new system or general theory, but in the possibilityof "a togetherness of diversity."41The proximity of which he speaks is

38. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 320.39. Ibid., p. 147.40. Ibid., p. 191.41. Ibid., p. 150.


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that situation Derrida describes as "intimate distance," in which boththe intimacy (rather than immediacy) and the distance of heterogeneityare crucial. Such proximity amounts to living cheek-by-jowl with that orthose whom one can only begin to understand, and finding this living tobe enough. Seeking neither to incorporate the "alien" into one's schemeof things nor to eliminate it, Adorno's ideal approximates what GloriaAnzalduia and William Connolly have each referred to as a "tolerancefor ambiguity."42While this may be disappointing to those who expecttheory to provide blueprints of utopia, his criticisms of systematic theoryshould lead us to question our expectations rather than condemn hisfailure to produce.Adorno is relying heavily here on a conception of reason that allowsfor intuition. That reliance, however, does not translate into a rejectionof the dialogical, as Albrecht Wellmer charges in reference to Adorno'sview of art.43Intuition is the form of reason that is not yet fully articu-late, that may never be such. It requires proximity because it cannot beannexed; however, that does not make intuition simply "internal" to asubject rather than intersubjective or communicative. Philosophicaldescriptions of it as internal, and personal experience of it as such, betraynot a truth about intuition but the continuing subject-centered and logo-centric interpretation of mental processes in modernity.In his critique of Henri Bergson, Adorno argues that Bergson shareswith scientism the strict division between reason and intuition. Whileintuition is "sudden" and "ego-alien," Adorno argues that "whatever isat work in rational cognition also enters into inspirations-sedimentedand newly remembered . .. [d]iscontinuity in intuition does honour tocontinuity falsified by organization."44 Thus, "intuition is not a simpleantithesis to logic"; rather, it is that which reminds reason of its limitswhile participating in reason itself. Intuition is crucial to Adorno's pro-ject of using the subject to break down the subject; experience of intui-tion as "subjective" and "internal" is a social realtiy, not an epistemo-logical one. He points out the connection between exchange relations andthe experience of oneself as a transcendental subject rather than embed-ded, changing individual:

42. Gloria Anzaldia, Borderlands/LaFrontera:The New Mestiza(San Francisco:Spinsters/AuntLute, 1987);Connolly,Politicsof Ambiguity.43. Wellmer,"Reason,Utopia,andthe Dialecticof Enlightenment," . 49.44. TheodorW. Adorno,AgainstEpistemology: Metacritique,rans.WillisDomingo(Cambridge,MA: MITPress,1984),p. 46.


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If the exchange form is the standard social structure, its rationalityconstitutes people; what they are for themselves, what they seem tobe to themselves, is secondary. They are deformed beforehand bythe mechanism that has been philosophically transfigured as tran-scendental. The supposedly most evident of things, the empiricalsubject, would really have to be viewed as not yet in existence; inthis perspective, the transcendental subject is "constitutive."45

In such a world, intuition can only be experienced as unreliable evenwhile seeming certain; thus the poles of rationalism and irrationalism.But Adorno's practice of looking for the cracks in the edifice of socialand self-constitution leads to the awareness of "actual, live individuals"where philosophy and theory posit transcendental subjects.46The practice of negative dialectics reminds us that a focus on thespecific does not eliminate the ability to see history or social structure.Rather, it shows us the particular forces at work in the unities that we somisleadingly label "history" and "society." Intellectuals are called uponby Adorno to call attention to particularoperations of power ratherthanto build a new grand edifice of unified theory.IV. Specificity: Between System & EventWhat exactly can specificity and constellations provide that later theoriescannot do just as well-or better? Adorno's concern for totalization insocial theory has been expanded upon by Lyotard and Foucault, amongothers, while his insistence on dialectics and theory capable of addressingsocial totalities, most specifically modern capitalism, has been retainedby Jiirgen Habermas. Both Lyotard and Habermas have written ofAdorno as trapped in earlier paradigms and aporias that they haveescaped, but they have avoided these problems more than transcendedthem. Their failure to provide a method that enables political practiceleads us to reconsider the difficulties they have fled.Habermas's critique of Adorno is by now better known than Adoro'swork itself. Habermas finds Adorno trapped within the philosophy ofconsciousness, a trap he claims to have avoided. Further, he readsAdorno as an irrationalist, as one who rejected reason altogether. Haber-mas's defense of reason against those he takes as its opponents has beenperhaps his least compelling work. His attack on the Dialectic of Enlight-enment portrays Adorno as a simple Nietzschean (if there could be such a

45. Adorno, "Subject and Object," p. 501.46. Ibid., p. 500.


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thing).47 He accuses Adorno of performative contradiction in usingreason to demonstrate reason's limits.4 While he mentions paradox inthis same passage, the force of the contrast between contradiction andparadox escapes him. He reads Adorno as a "pessimist" who had givenup on modernity.Habermas, however, simply fails to come to grips with Adorno'sthought. This is due to an overriding constitutional difference betweenthe two thinkers: if Adorno is a prophet crying in the wilderness, Haber-mas aspires to be a legislator. Whatever their shared substantive concernsor even their shared relation to critical theory, they are fundamentallyopposed at the levels of methodology and ontology. To the legislator, theprophet appears only as the isolated, ineffective, negative voice; whenthe prophet cries for justice and reconciliation, the legislator demandsthe program. If perhaps Adorno's charges of paranoia are excessive,Habermas's charges of irrationalism and pessimism certainly are.While Adorno has been charged by Habermas with a neglect of theintersubjective world, in fact in practice he relies more completely uponsuch a world than does Habermas. Adorno's intersubjective realm is notan abstraction, an object of discussion, but is the field within which hiswork makes any sense at all. While Habermas writes of communicationwithin an intersubjective realm, his insistence on and belief in the possi-bility of consensus betrays the monological nature of his thought.49Habermas represents the return of a reason ignorant of its own locationand limitation.

The dispute between these two illuminates one aspect of specificity as amethodological principle. While Habermas would endorse "specifying"the location and role of institutions and actors, his allegiance to systemstheory precludes any real appreciation of the singularity of those actorsand institutions. In his quest for a robust intersubjectivity, Habermascan give no weight (or only negative weight) to elements that disrupt orexceed integration.50 Further, Habermas cannot finally rest with

47. In Habermas's eading, heDialecticof Enlightenment as(1) Horkheimer'sworkwhen it was good-i.e. the first chapter; 2) otherwiseAdorno's,reflecting he "weak-nesses" hatranthroughouthis work.Fora discussion ndrefutation, ee RobertHullot-Kentor,"Backto Adorno," Telos,81 (1989):5-29.48. Habermas,ThePhilosophicalDiscourseof Modernity,p. 119.49. For a moreextensivediscussion f thispoint,see DavidRasmussen,ReadingHaber-mas(OxfordandCambridge,MA: BasilBlackwell,1990),esp. ch. 3.50. SeeNancyFraser,"What'sCriticalAbout CriticalTheory:The Caseof HabermasandGender," n UnrulyPractices:Power,Discourseand Gender n ContemporaryocialTheory Minneapolis:University f MinnesotaPress,1989).


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Adorno's belief that critical theories are always addressed to a particulargroup of agents; as Raymond Geuss has observed, the later Habermasfeels compelled to eliminate the specificity of critical theory and provideit with quasi-transcendental foundations, thus substituting grammaticalstructure for intersubjectivity.51

Lyotard shares with Habermas the view of Adorno's pessimism and ofhis subject-centeredness. He characterizesAdorno as the proponent of anegative theology, a theology appropriate to the carnage of World WarII, but argues that that moment is past: in language reminiscent of Fried-rich Nietzsche, he asserts that "we have the advantage over Adorno ofliving in a capitalism that is more energetic, more cynical, less tragic."52In this new capitalism, "the tragic gives way to the parodic" as repre-sentation is collapsed upon itself (or the social is placed entirely withinrepresentation). Lyotard has no patience with Adorno the prophet. IfHabermas is the social theorist as legislator, then Lyotard is the philoso-pher as jester. Neither has any patience with the prophet. If Habermaswants Adorno to buck up and get to work, Lyotard wants him to stopworrying and have some fun.

Lyotard argues that Adorno's resistance to capitalism remains en-snared within capitalist rules of representation and equivalence, and hemoves instead toward revealing "another libidinal apparatus" thatmoves in a way "incommensurable with that of kapital."53 Lyotardheigntens the epigrammatic, the singular, seeking to free objects fromdetermination within systems of representation. He moves past Adorno'scare for the specificity of elements within a constellation to an effort todetach elements from any field whatever.In many ways, Lyotard provides a refuge from Habermas's legislativecompulsion, but he moves beyond specificity to decontextualized singu-larity. The "eventhood of the event" is an important corrective to mag-isterial theory, but in Lyotard's hands it threatens to go beyond micro-politics to no politics. As Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson describe it,Lyotard "throws out the baby of large historical narrativewith the bath-water of philosophical metanarrative and the baby of social-theoreticalanalysis of large-scale inequalities with the bathwater of reductive Marx-ian class theory."54

51. Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the FrankfurtSchool (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 64.52. Jean-Francois Lyotard, "Adorno as the Devil," Telos, 19 (1974): 128.53. Jean-Francois Lyotard, Derive a partir de Marx et Freud (Paris: Union GeneraleD'Editions 10/18, 1973), p. 17.54. Nancy Fraser and Linda J. Nicholson, "Social Theory Without Philosophy: AnEncounter Between Feminism and Postmodernism," in Feminism/Postmodernism, ed.Linda J. Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 25.


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To the extent that Lyotard avoids this problem, he does so through thesame mechanism that Adorno endorses. Lyotard states that "this thingthat I call here the differend bears in the Marxist 'tradition' a 'well-known' name"; "it is that of practice or 'praxis.' "55Lyotard backs offfrom the strong statement that there is no universality and no resolution,and instead argues that "universality cannot be expressed in words,unless it be unilaterally";56"the differend cannot be resolved by specula-tion or in ethics; it must be resolved in 'practice,' in what Marx calledcritical practice."57 This is precisely Adorno's point. The "practice"invoked here is not simply "action" as that is so often understood, but isthe practice of interpretation of constellations. Adorno neither agreeswith the later Habermasian transcendental "resolution," in which hewould see "the liberal fiction of the universal communicability of everythought," nor with the strongest Lyotardian formulation, in which dis-course inevitably does injustice to the event.58 Adorno's constellationsallow for events to shine forth without abandoning theory altogether.Specificity is not particularityor singularity, not isolated eventhood, buttraces patterns without grand systems.None of this is meant to suggest that Adorno had nothing to learnfrom anyone else, or that we should read Adorno instead of Habermas,Lyotard, or anyone else. It simply means that Adorno is not dead, sub-sumed within or surpassed by later thinkers. As the prophet of latecapitalism, Adorno has a unique place amid the legislators and thejesters. Adorno's practice was theoretical and isolated, but he neverabandoned the hope of political action and change. When the prophetcries "We are lost!," the aim is not resignation but action. Failure torecognize this is due perhaps to society's rejection of the prophet ratherthan deficiencies in the prophet's message.

The nature of the change desired is much too vague for orthodoxMarxists, even for Habermasian critical theorists, but Adorno provides areal indication of his aims.A new categorical imperative has been imposed by Hitler uponunfree mankind: to arrange their thoughts and actions so thatAuschwitz will not repeat itself, so that nothing similar will happen.When we want to find reasons for it, this imperative is as refractory

55. Jean-Franqois yotard,Peregrinations: aw, Form,Event(NewYork: ColumbiaUniversityPress,1988),p. 61.56. Ibid.57. Ibid., p. 62.58. TheodorW. Adorno,MinimaMoralia, rans. E. F. N. Jephcott London:UnwinBrothersLtd., 1978),p. 80.


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as the given one of Kant was once upon a time. Dealing discursivelywith it would be an outrage, for the new imperative gives us a bod-ily sensation of the moral addendum-bodily, because it is not thepractical abhorrence of the unbearable physical agony to whichindividuals are exposed even with individuality about to vanish as aform of mental reflection. It is in the unvarnished materialisticmotive only that morality survives.59

This thought, which had been developing in Adorno before Auschwitz aswell as after, tells us much of the reasons for, as well as the limitationsof, interpretive practice.To fully understand it, we must ask, what happened at Auschwitz? Weknow of the torture and extermination, the attempts to annihilate humanpersonality as well as races and peoples. But even before the eventAdorno understood this attempt as part of identitarianism run wild, asparanoia. Such paranoia can only understand reconciliation as annexattion, as imperialism. Preventing Auschwitz requires that we head offsuch paranoia, in its theoretical forms as well as political ones, for the!two are never really separate. To this extent, interpretation itself is apolitical practice, is political action. Crying out for the pain of the worldis political action.The crying that Adorno urges here is perhaps surprising. The focus onthe pain of bodies appears here as the last refuge of morality becauseevery other form of domination has become too mundane, too everyday,and too embedded in societies to form the basis for judgment. Bodies, in|their singularity and specficity, are here the "objects" that can bringdown the transcendental, paranoid subject. It is for this reason thatAdorno argues against the law's rule of equivalence. Law "is a preserva-tive of terror" because it provides statutory authority for terror over"its" citizens, thus blinding us to the evidence of bodies, and alsobecause it cloaks inequalities beneath a veneer of equality.60Thus, thepolitical action he might endorse is not simply parliamentary, seeking tochange laws and enact better ones. Rather, his "reconciled condition"requires a rethinking of law itself, of its implication in domination. Hecasts the whole class of legislators under suspicion.

What, then? Is this a call to social or cultural change without attentionto the juridical sphere? Adorno is almost opaque at this point, but I sus-pect his answer would be, "no." For all their dangers, laws can alsooperate to ban the bodily assaults that are one of the overwhelming lega-

59. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 365.60. Ibid., p. 309.


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cies of Auschwitz. He insists, however, that laws are always dangerous,that in modernity they deform the right.At this point, two arguments seem plausible. In the first, familiarscenario, Adorno "gives up" on the world, whether in his enormousguilt of survival or in his basically mandarin instincts. Indeed, were it notfor his new categorical imperative, that is a plausible view. Let me sug-gest another. Perhaps Adorno is remaining faithful to his conviction thatlegislation is an inappropriate model for philosophy, and that thespecific actions and thoughts required will be found, only to be chal-lenged again, in processes of dialogue rather than monological state-ments. Rather than revealing exhaustion, Adorno's silence on whatactions to take (he is more vocal on which to avoid) is consonant with hisdesire to find "proximity" to the alien within and without our selves. Heis akin to Lyotard in this, but he does not move, as Lyotard often seemsto, toward valorizing the existing world for lack of another. Adorno'ssilence is always the silence of negation, of the demand for happinessthat will not, can not accommodate itself to less.

V. ConclusionRecognition of constellations requires the ability to accept introspectionand implication in a system that is not of one's own making, or thatperhaps is not fully endorsable, and yet within which one inescapablylives one's life. It is to see domination within oneself as well as without,or, to use less bifurcated language, to recognize one's position as a nodein the network of meaning and power that is made visible by constellativework. The paranoid personality is precisely that one closest to its owndestabilization without the resources or ability to tolerate that instability,resulting in a flight from internal probing toward external threat-perception.Adorno's critique of reason leads us not to nihilism, but to the recov-ery of forms of reason that enable us to resist domination and fosterreciprocity. As an enterpriseinvolving actual others, theory must be localand specific, thereby providing the possibility of actual democratic deci-sion making rather than submissive endorsement of a "consensual"order. This specificity, however, must not sacrifice all generalizations;without generalizations conceptualization and argument are impossible.Indeed, the opposition between general and particularis seen by Adornoto be illusory at some point; generality without specificity is meaningless


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in its abstraction, ust as specificitywithoutgeneralizations unintel-ligible.61Politicsis alwaysa limitedenterprise, lternatelyronic andtragic.Itis limitedbylanguage,by thelimitsof possibility mbodied nparticulardiscourses,by materialresources. t is simplynot the case that commonactionwillresolveallchoicesso that thebest becomes heonly importantgood, or thatwe willall agree.Thesystematicphilosopher annotreallyacknowledgehis. Adorno'sstrengths hisrefusal o abandoneithersideof thetension.Thisabandonment asoccurred,however, n thegenera-tion following his. The dispute between critical theoristsand post-moderns s at leastpartlya battle betweenuniversality ndparticularity,with both sidesresisting ragedy.Both campstry to fall to one side oranotherof the Adornianaporia:Habermas eeksthe end of dominationin reason and speech that come to agreement,while Lyotardseeksguerillaresistance o univocality.Adorno standsin the middle,awarethat his wordsalways say more than he means but neverabandoningreason as Habermas uggests.Thus, we may learn from his attemptsat non-universalhistoryandphilosophy.He providesus with models and warnings or developinghistorically pecificargumentsagainstoppressionand domination.Aninsistenceon specificityremindsus that we do exist in particularimesand places, that these places/timeshave particularpower formationsthatmaynot haveexistedearlierandmaynot lastforever,andit encour-agesusto develop ormsof reasonandactionthat addressourneedsandproblems rather than those of another place/time. Surely this is"reason"enoughto reconsiderAdorno'splacein political theory.

61. Ibid.,p. 146.

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