Dialectic of Enlightenment, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer

The Institut's disillusionment with orthodox Marxism was reflected in the shift away from the centrality of class conflict with 'a new motor of history' (Jay, 1996: 256) reflected in Adorno's and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment. Here the hope remained of a break in the continuum of history. The focus was on the larger conflict between humans and nature before and after capitalism. This was partly in recognition of the fact that forms of domination were being expressed in forms other than simply economic ones, and might be traced back to the early development of science and technology. Cultural issues were no longer to be explained with recourse to the relationship between superstructure and substructure of orthodox Marxism. Thus, even Marxism was cast in the enlightenment tradition and a legitimate target for critical theory. (The concept of reification was crucial in this respect). 

There were tendencies in the enlightenment that had influenced the rise of instrumental reason as opposed to objective reason, and in its rational attack on myth had produced its own myth. Things, and nature too, were seen to be inferior objects, that might be controlled and ordered accordingly. Concepts were replaced by formulae, and mathematics was taken to provide explanations of all phenomena. Other more dynamic, contradictory explanations were dismissed as unscientific and mythic. Historical development was simply explained as a series of repetitions. The discovery of atoms was paralleled by the increasing atomisation of humankind (Jay, 1996: 261). According to Enlightenment thinking (Cartesian duality), the separation between subject and object was absolute, and explained other hierarchical distinctions as if they were natural and unchanging. Thus domination was seen to simply be the natural order of things and a justification for imperial expansion, mastery of nature, racism, sexism, fascism, and the like. For Adorno, this is where negation must be used to reveal such falsehoods (and to make its undialectical 'one-dimensionality' apparent in the case of Marcuse). For Adorno and Horkheimer, 'Nonidentity' stood in contrast to any reconciliation of the opposites of subject and object.

Adorno and Horkheimer reject the optimistic thinking of Hegel and historical materialism as no distinct praxis presented itself - within reason. This belief rested on too many assumptions - it was too 'instrumental' for A & H. This is not to say that they thought it a bad idea to change society or indeed a recognition that it needed changing, but simply that no obvious or viable way to do this seemed to present itself to logic. Emancipation from oppressive conditions, rested on a memory of what had been lost (this is echoed in Berger's essay on the human relationship to animals, and the connection to the rural landscape). The problem can therefore be seen as how to forge a reconciliation with nature? They rejected Engels's crude version in the dialectics of nature, and wrestled with the dichotomy of history and nature. Hegel thought the process of history was of the human spirit becoming conscious of its alienated conditions. They rejected this view (from idealist philosophy) as it assumed that consciousness and subjectivity were somehow transcendental (I think?) preferring the idea of nonidentity alongside negation. This explanation makes clearer the quote (elsewhere) about their emphasis on the motor of history and questioning of the agents of change (workers reaching a stage of revolutionary consciousness) and the reliance on the economic substructure (determining the cultural superstructure). The dream of the negation of negation (of alienation returning to itself) in Hegel and Marx, was limited by Adorno to 'the dialectic... could only be negative' (1996: 278). This is what Negative Dialectics explores. Praxis therefore also was de-emphasised as it was felt that praxis was not possible (except in theory itself). This is in stark contrast to Marxist thinking that sought to unify theory and praxis. Critical theory was a revision of Marx and a rejection of some of the founding principles.  

They employed historical materialism in an open-ended way rather than as a set of received truths.  



[this is where Zizek appears in the recentring of the ego for strategic purpose]
They were highly skeptical of the 'ego cogito' (Descartes) - it was cast as a tool of domination although alternatives were not posed. Reason had lost its way, and what they called instrumental, subjective reason 'was the handmaiden of technological domination. [Yet] Nonantagonistic reason was always a hope, but one whose existence, albeit through negation of the status quo, prevented the uncritical apotheosis of nature.' (Jay: 1996: 272) 

In light of the 'culture industry' essay, and without a clear strategy for action, the only solution was to cultivate negation (cf. Jeremy Valentine suggests concentrating on untranslatability and unpredictability). To Adorno, 'negation and the truth it precariously preserved could be expressed only in tentative, incomplete ways. Here Critical Theory's fundamental distrust of systematising was carried to its extreme. The location of philosophical insight was no longer to be found in abstract, coherent, architectonic systems, as in Hegel's day, but rather in subjective, private reflection.' (Jay, 1996: 277)

Adorno's Minima Moralia uses aphorisms to this effect. For instance, 'the splinter in the eye is the best magnifying glass' demonstrates how pain might be turned to effect (p.80). 

The negative critical impulse allowed the future possibility of writing poetry that would no longer be an act of barbarism. This paraphrases how martin Jay ends his book trying to reconcile the famous Adorno quote: 'To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric' (1996: 298 - from Prisms, p.34). 

I wonder how one might begin to write code that is not barbaric.