Introduction: Adorno Criticism TodayAuthor(s): Peter U. HohendahlReviewed work(s):Source: New German Critique, No. 56, Special Issue on Theodor W. Adorno (Spring - Summer,1992), pp. 3-15Published by: New German CritiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/488326 .Accessed: 17/09/2012 16:54

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Introduction Adorno Criticism Today

Peter U. Hohendahl

While the Marxist project has fallen on hard times, especially after the collapse of communism, the work of Theodor W. Adorno has re- ceived more attention than it did during the 1970s when Western Mar- xism was the most significant oppositional theory in literary and cul- tural studies. The return of Adorno after years of relative neglect is par- ticularly remarkable, since his work does not easily fit into any of the intellectual trends of the late 1980s and early 1990s. There is a growing awareness now that Adorno criticism cannot continue in its traditional form, since its grasp of Adorno's work was predicated on general assumptions which have been challenged. First, it has become quite clear that the textual basis of American Adorno criticism has been shaky. Some of the existing translations are inadequate and have to be replaced. While particularly true for Aesthetic Theory, even in the case of Dialectic of Enlightenment, as Robert Hullot-Kentor demonstrates in his new translation, there is still room for improvement.' Second, the need for more accurate translations is closely related to the style of revisionist readings of Adorno's texts, since they make use of more radical forms of exegesis. The feminist reading of Dialectic of Enlighten- ment by Andrew Hewitt, which challenges the traditional philosophical appropriation of the text, and Miriam Hansen's re-reading of Ador- no's theory of mass culture, which critically responds to the postmo- dernist attack on Adorno's work, exemplify such approaches.2 Third,

1. In this issue of New German Critique, pp. 109-42. 2. Miriam Hansen, "Mass Culture as 'Hieroglyphic Writing': Adorno, Derrida,

3

4 Adorno Criticism Today

our historical map has become problematic and needs revision. This concerns the way in which Adorno is perceived within the Frankfurt School or how he is to be situated in the culture of the United States during his years of exile. In short, Adorno criticism stands at a crucial turning point. By responding to new questions the contributors to this issue have entered the forum of a larger and multi-focused debate that began to emerge during the early 1980s but fully crystallized only dur- ing the last two or three years. Its unmistakable markers were Haber- mas's critique of Adorno in his Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, the conference on Critical Theory organized by Telos in 1990 and the ensuing discussion in that journal, and finally, the publication of Fred- ric Jameson's Late Capitalism in 1990.

The present debate is by and large not about placing Adorno on a historical map, although forms of mapping may well be included in the various critical agendas. For instance, Fredric Jameson's radical claim that Adorno's work represents the legitimate form of Marxism for the 1990s implies a trajectory that leads from the Lukitcs of the 1920s, via the work of the Frankfurt School during the 1930s and 1940s, to Adorno's late writings, especially Negative Dialectics and Aes- thctic Theory. Similarly, the contention that Adorno's postwar theory anticipates the poststructuralist turn of the 1970s reorganizes the his- torical map by taking Adorno out of the history of Marxism and clai- ming him for the history of the poststructuralist project. On this map, Adorno obviously stands closer to Nietzsche and Heidegger than to Lukitcs, Gramsci and Habermas.

l[he following remarks do not mean to offer a survey of Adorno's American reception during the last twenty years or so. Instead, the)y will focus on the interface between reading and appropriation. The re- sult might be a tentative typology of recent Adorno criticism in the United States. Accordingly, I will emphasize common elements within a specific approach rather than nuances of reading and historical fluc- tuations within the work of individual critics. I shall distinguish the fol- lowing positions: (1) a strategy of(political) distancing, which we find in

Kracauer," in this issue, pp. 43-75; Andrew Hewitt, "A Feminist Dialectic of the En- lightenment: Horkheimer and Adorno Revisited," in this issue pp. 143-170.

3. For a comprehensive study of the reception of Critical Theory in North America see Martin Jay, "Adorno in America," in Jay, Permanent Exiles: Essays on the Intellectual Migrationjrom Germany to America (New York: Columbia UP, 1985) 120-40; see also the more recent discussion in Peter Uwe Hohendahi, Reappraisals: Shifting Alignments in Post- war Critical Theor9 (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991) 198-228.

Peter U. Hohendahl 5

the theory of the New Left but also, and ultimately more forceful, in the more recent work ofJifirgen Habermas; (2) the poststructuralist re- reading, which appropriates Adorno and frequently uses him against the rationalist position of Habermas and his disciples; (3) the postmo- dernist critique, which has developed in recent cultural studies theory; and (4) a return to the "authentic" Adorno, a strategy which challenges both the poststructuralist reception and the postmodernist critique.

''he political critique of Adorno has focused on his persona as well as on his writings, especially on his late writings. This approach has dominated much of German Adorno criticism during the 1970s when the New Left (most of them Adorno's disciples) tried to rewrite and utilize Adorno's work for their struggle against an increasingly repres- sive West German state. From the point of view of the New Left, the evaluation of Adorno could either stress the necessary distance be- tween the political vanguard and Adorno or underscore those ele- ments in his writing that could, when used in a different context, be revitalized. While the first strategy would tend to call for a more ortho- dox Marxist position (with a possible emphasis on the Feuerbach the- ses), the latter strategy would call attention to the Marxist heritage in the work of Adorno and the Frankfurt School: it would underscore the orthodox moments in Adorno's writing as the real reason for Ador- no's shortcomings in the political arena. In this second reading, the Frankfurt School failed, not because its members abandoned the safe ground of Marxist theory, but because they carried along too much or- thodox baggage. This position is summarized succinctly in Paul Picco- ne's 1977 remarks that "in Adorno, especially, the dialectic becomes dehistoricized to cover the whole of Western civilization as the genesis of the domination of the concept. Consequently, critical theory does not even attempt to prefigure the future by elaborating the mediations necessary to bring it about, and becomes purely defensive; it ultimate- ly retreats to defend particularity, autonomy, and non-identity against an allegedly totally administered society where thinking itself disap- pears as a dispensable luxury."4 Although couched in a more academic style, the Adorno chapter in FredricJameson's Marxism and Form (1971) voices a similar concern, describing Adorno's later work, especially

4. Paul Piccone, "General Introduction," The Essential Jrankfurt School Reader, ed. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: Urizen, 1977) xviii.

6 Adomrno Criticism Today

Negative Dialectics, as a "massive failure" insofar as negative dialectics tries, against all odds, to save philosophy itself.

What Jameson alluded to in the early 1970s - namely the complex- ity of Adorno's thought, especially of his conception of negative dialec- tics - became the focal point of the poststructuralist re-reading of Adorno's writings during the 1980s. The deliberate attempt to stress the difference between Adorno's thought and the conceptual appara- tus of Marxist theory characterizes the poststructuralist approach to Adorno. This strategy could be directed either against other members of the Frankfurt School (such as Horkheimer or Marcuse) or at the post-Adornian turn of Critical Theory in the work ofJtirgen Habermas and his students (for instance Thomas McCarthy). In other words, the question of reason and rationality becomes the touchstone for the poststructuralist reading. Hence the poststructuralist appropriation tends to deny the dogmatic unity of Critical Theory; it seeks to fore- ground epistemological problems and shows relatively little interest in the question of social praxis and political commitment. In this config- uration Adorno is perceived as a rigorous antimetaphysical thinker who struggles against any form of (Hegelian) synthesis, someone who seeks out ruptures and breaks, and consistently attacks the traditional epistemological preference for identity. Thus, the work of Heidegger, Lacan, and Derrida form the new context for the interpretation of Adorno. As Rainer Nigele notes: "Given the eminent presence of Hei- degger, especially in Derrida's and Lacan's thinking, a careful reading of this setting apart (Auseinandersetzung) might perhaps be the best beginning to trace the constellation of Critical Theory and Deconstruc- tion."6 Adorno's rigorous and somewhat polemical critique of Heideg- ger in Negative Dialectics serves a special purpose by underlining the parallel between Adorno and Derrida: both developed their own ver- sions of negativity through a critique of Heidegger's ontology.7

5. Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971) 58. Jameson makes this attempt responsible for a lack of political commitment. Interestingly, however, Jameson equally insists on the unique quality of Adorno's work as a model of dialectical thought process.

6. Rainer Naigele, "The Scene of the Other: Theodor W. Adorno's Negative Dia- lectic in the Context of Poststructuralism," Boundary Two 11 (1983): 1-2, 67.

7. While intellectual historians such as Martin Jay and Eugene Lunn have emphasi- zed the Hegelian tradition in the writings of the Frankfurt School and theretore also underscored the centrality of the concept of totality as the epistemological key and the historical horizon of their project, the poststructuralist approach focuses on Adorno's cri- tique of traditional logic, especially identity logic and its extension into the concept of the

Peter U. Hohendahl 7

The one-sided insistence on the subversion of the subject foreg- rounds, however, the potential danger of this approach, since Adorno, unlike structuralist Marxism (Althusser), did not treat the subject as a moment of pure ideology. Negative Dialectics does not simply cancel the subject; rather, the text unfolds the dialectical tension between the prin- ciple of domination and the resistance to the social system. This point has been emphasized by the defenders of the Enlightenment project. It is not surprising therefore that the poststructuralist approach emphati- cally validates what Habermas severely critiqued. Habermas's repeated interventions (first in The Theory of Communicative Action and later in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity) against the loss of a rational grounding of Adorno's and Horkheimer's project during the 1940s (beginning with Dialectic of Enlightenment) indeed mark the boundary between the poststructuralist celebration of the non-communicative aspect of lan- guage and the defense of communicative rationality.

The poststructuralist insistence on Adorno's refusal to support the grand design of historical synthesis and teleology - his conscious re- fusal, in other words, to read the Marxist tradition through the lenses of Hegel - deserves our special attention, since it sharply contrasts with the understanding of Adorno's work in the debate on postmoder- nism and in recent discussions of mass culture. Here Adorno and Horkheimer play the role of the heavies who have, without much re- spect for details, developed a totalizing theory of mass culture based on questionable notions of the development of twentieth-century capi- talism. Exclusively preoccupied with an outdated and outlandish con- ception of high culture, they fail to address the interaction between so- cial groups and their (popular) cultures. In a binary logic that contrasts modernism and postmodernism, Adorno is perceived as a firm and sometimes rigid defender of the modernist position, especially in his work on modern music and his late aesthetic theory.

The emphasis of this critique centers on the concept of heterogenei- ty and its application to modern mass culture. According to Jim Col- lins, who tries to summarize the postmodernist position vis-a-vis mass culture, Adorno's and Horkheimer's reading of mass culture is charac- terized by three problematic tendencies: (1) the assumption of a center

subject. This reading wants to destabilize what by and large Marxist theory has taken for granted and therefore also ascribed to Adorno, namely a stable concept of subjectivity and agency. The poststucturalist reading would force Adorno's critique of subjectivity.

8 Adorno Criticism Today

that defines the cultural essence of an era; (2) the presupposition that all cultural production is based on a unitary master system; and (3) the the- oretical belief that the evaluation of art has to distinguish between au- thentic art and inauthentic, mass-produced pseudo-art. Collins portrays Adorno as a cultural critic who sees himself as a defender of high culture against the onslaught of mass culture.8 Remarkably, though, this critique has a purely descriptive quality and is unable to define more clearly Horkheimer's and Adorno's theoretical frame, i.e., the conception of advanced capitalism (Fordism) and its fundamental restructuring of the relations of production. It never views, therefore, Adorno's cri- tique of identical mass culture in its proper context: namely, as a re- flection of the power of western rationalism. In a strange reversal, Adorno and Horkheimer would seem to become the defenders of the very Enlightenment which their own analysis challenged.

Miriam Hansen's essay "Mass Culture as 'Hieroglyphic Writing"' res- ponds to and critiques the postmodernist position insofar as she explicit- ly uses Adorno's writings on mass culture to challenge the narrow read- ing of Dialectic of Enlightenment in the postmodernist culture debate." By focusing on the concept of the hieroglyph Hansen underscores the mas- king of reification in the production of images by the culture industry, a masking which is coupled, however, with an element of authentic desire. Consequently, her reading emphasizes the critical moment in the silent film. Hansen speaks of a "double vision" where reified images are both vehicles of regressive consumption and means of articulating authentic moments of modernity. This argument implies an emphatic defense of Adorno against stereotypical charges of elitism. Yet by the same token, Hansen also marks the difference between Adorno's use of the hiero-

gl)yph and its function in Derridian film theory - an unmistakable rejec- tion of poststructuralist readings of Adorno's theory of mass culture.

While the centrality of modernism can hardly be questioned in Ador- no's writings, the claim that Adorno celebrates modernism dogmatically and uncritically, is more problematic. As Andreas Huyssen has pointed out in his reading of Adorno's writings on mass culture - which can be seen as an answer to Jameson's position'0 - in Adorno's work mod- ernism and mass culture cannot be separated; they are, so to speak,

8. Collins 10. 9. In this issue pp. 43-75. 10. See FredricJameson, "Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,"' Social Text 1.1

(197,9): 130-48.

Peter U. Hohendahl 9

opposite sides of the same coin." Thus Jameson's claim that mass cul- ture must be understood as the supplement of high culture turns out to be much closer to Adorno than he would have one believe.

For this reason, it is not entirely surprising that Jameson changed his position in his 1990 study of Adorno. Now he maintains that Adorno's version of critical theory, a dialectical version, "which was no great help in the previous periods, may turn out to be just what we need today."'2 Hence, he no longer perceives the connection between Adorno's Mar- xism and postmodernism diachronically as different phases in history but rather synchronically as intertwmined moments of a larger historical dialectic which an overarching Marxist theory has to unfold. What makes Late Marxism: Adorno and the Persistence of the Dialectic so highly controversial is Jameson's twofold claim: first, his emphatic defense of Adorno as a Marxist philosopher and, second, his attempt to close the gap between Adorno's aesthetic theory, which appears to be so firmly grounded in modernism, and a postmodernist problematic. Obviously, this reading involves a process of recoding which reassembles the elements of Ador- no's theory in unfamiliar ways, in itself a postmodernist approach that man)y ofJameson's critics have rejected as hermeneutically unsound.'"

Peter Osborne, for example, argues that a fundamental incompati- bility exists between Jameson's method of reading and Adorno's phil- osophical position. Osborne criticizes especially Jameson's procedure of "translating" Adorno's language into the idiom of the most recent postmodernist debate. Can one really, for example, conflate Adorno's concept of the constellation with Althusser's concept of structural causality? Osborne attempts to demonstrate that Jameson's reluctance to perform an immament reading (and critique) is not just a minor philological question but a central issue for Jameson's and, by exten- sion, for our grasp of Adorno's position. If the emphasis is placed, as in the case of Late Capitalism, on a strategy of "rewriting" Marxism, the exact historical structure of Adorno's Marxist theory becomes a secon- dary problem. Consequently, Jameson's reading tends to move away

11. Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Blohmington: Indiana UP, 1986) 16-43.

12. Fredric Jameson, Late Marxism: Adorno or the Persistence of the Dialectic (London: Verso, 1990) 5.

13. In this issue, see Peter Osborne's review essay "A Marxism for the Postmo- dern? Jameson's Adorno" pp. 171-192; also Robert Hullot-Kentor's highly polemical commentary "Suggested Reading: Jameson on Adorno," as well as the more balanced review "A Matter of Tradition" by Eva Geulen, both in Telos 89 (Fall 1991).

10 Adorno Criticism Today

from the text, sometimes to such a degree that it contradicts its textual basis. Jameson should receive credit, however, for asking the crucial question: what is the meaning and function of Adorno today? His an- swer stresses the local character of Adorno's theory, that is, its embed- dedness in the West, as well as its limited but important function within this "First World" - namely, that of upholding dialectical thinking. Intcrestingly enough, this final and somewhat pessimistic note appears to exclude rather than include the moment of critical negativity as a form of social opposition and intervention.

The pressing question, then, can be formulated in the following way: what are the parameters for the return of Adorno? How should his writings be approached and used during the 1990s? Is, as Jameson suggests, the power of theory the major challenge for Adorno's new readers? Or is the critical potential (through negativity) a viable mo- mpnt in the process of appropriation? The defense of Adorno is fre- quently structured as a two-pronged attack against deconstruction and/or postmodernism on the one hand and the post-Marxist theory of Habermas on the other. Strategically, this defense - which inciden- tally shares with Jameson an orientation towards the future (the true Adorno has still to be discovered...), although it does not recognize Jameson as a potential ally - describes and evaluates criticism of Adorno as intentional or unintentinional misreadings caused by the particular biases of Adorno's critics. This insistence on the absolute truth value of Adorno's theory is particularly ardent in some of the essays on Adorno published in Telos. During the 1970s the journal, while sympathetic to the work of the Frankfurt School, still kept a critical distance, although in the more recent essays of Thomas Huhn and Robert Hullot-Kentor this distance has disappeared.' For these authors, the restitution of Adorno's work marks a decisive turning point in the American intellectual debate. Adorno's return signals the return of a dialectical and materialist theory lost during the 1980s in the writings of Jameson, Eagleton, and Habermas.

Unlike the poststructuralist approach, Hullot-Kentor and Kuhn insist

14. It is interesting to note, however, that Paul Piccone has not changed his critical position vis-a-vis Adorno. In his reply to Hullot-Kentor he emphasizes the need for criti- cal t'sting.

See Piccone, "Does Critical Theory need Saints or Foundations?" Teios 87 (Spring 1991): 146-57. See also the differentiated position of Russell A. Berman in his

Modarn Culture and critical Theory (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1989).

Peter U. Hohendahl 11

on and emphatically defend Adorno's dialectical reason as the essential core of Critical Theory. In other words, Dialectic of Enlightenment does not, as Habermas charged in The Theory of Communicative Action and Philo- sophical Discourse of Modernity, chart the end of reason, but unfolds its cri- tique through the means of reason. In this defense both Kant and Hegel (not to mention Schiller) can retain their traditional positions as part of the intellectual heritage on which Adorno drew. For Hullot- Kentor, in sharp contrast to Habermas's theory of social differentation in nmodern society (where the aesthetic realm is indeed separate and in- dependent from rationality), the utopian moment of the Enlightenment renmains grounded in the aesthetic." Hence in Adorno's work libera- tion cannot be thought without aesthetic reflection. In this construc- tiovn, which seems unaware of the logic of Habermas's theory of moder- nity, art and reason remain entwined because reason is seen as critical philosophy rather than as instrumental reason or purposive rationality.

As the direction of Hullot-Kentor's argument makes quite clear, the ground on which the return of Adorno is conceived is first and fore- most epistemological. The argument against Adorno's "pessimism," an argument which plays an important role in the defense of Adorno's politics, derives from theoretical rather than immediate political or so- cial considerations. Thus the question of Adorno's political commit- ment (or his lack thereof) and the broader question of the theory/prac- ticc dialectic have again come into the foreground. Indeed, with Mic- hael Sullivan and John Lysaker,'6 one has to ask how these questions shoulld be addressed. Possibly, as they suggest, the)y have to be refor- mulated in the 1990s - that is, theory is asked to question our ways of thin king about politics.

At the same time, however, it is worth noting that this approach can possibly become an isolated, purely "theoretical" procedure unless the deconstructive analysis simultaneously reflects upon its own embeddedness in social practices. Put differently, the critique of the New Left and its search for a revolutionary solution of America's social and racial problems during the 1960s and 1970s must fully under- stand its own involvement in the rather different social and political quandaries of the 1990s. The New Left's criticism of the Frankfurt School, which contrasted Adorno and Horkheimer's critique of reason

15. Robert Hullot-Kentor, "Back to Adorno," Telos 81 (Fall 1989): 5-29. 16. "Between Impotence and Illusison: Adorno's Art of Theory and Practice" to

appear in the next issue of New German Critique.

12 Adorno Criticism Today

with Marx's definition of revolutionary class conflicts, may have al- ready failed in this respect by not asking rigorously enough as to whether the late capitalist society of the 1960s could be theorized with the tools of classical Marxist dogma. The danger might be a repetition of this mistake, but now from the end of theory: the epistemological probe as the ultimate and unquestionable frontier. Can one legitimately invoke Adorno's defense of theory against the power of conventional prac-tice through Negative Dialectics without noting its specific function as a response to and critique of a presumably post-ideological society no !onger in need of theory because technology had replaced philoso- phy? Also, we must not forget that Adorno predicates his opposition to the :raditional demand for the unity of theory and practice on his con- cept of a totally administered society that leaves its members with the futi!le choice between a revolution that would not change the structure of domination and individual rebellion.

1hus the epistemological problematic must come to terms with the need for a deconstruction of traditional concepts through rational ar- gun:cnt and reflection and a simultaneous questioning of theory's in- dependence. Sullivan and Lysaker argue that Adorno's late work does

acc,,:nplish this. They also disagree with Habermas's thesis that Hork-

heimer and Adorno abandoned the rational grounding of critical re- flecion. Ultimately, they try to demonstrate that Adorno's epistemolo- gy can neither be reduced to subjective idealism (which then can be- conme pessimistic when the circumstances are not favorable for the subject) nor to objective materialism or positivism.

!!he politics of the Frankfurt School and of Adorno in particular can be addressed in a number of ways: for instance, through a criti- cal reassessment of the historical context,'7 or through the interface with strands of contemporary theory, or finally, through the con- fro!:ation with the present situation, both as lived experience and as a structural configuration. In any case, we must not forget that con- ceix:ng the history of the Frankfurt School and the biography of Adorno (such as in the works of Martin Jay,'8 Rolf Wiggershaus,'"

17. Peter Uwe Hohendahl, "The Displaced Intellectual? Adorno's American Years Revisited," in this issue pp. 76-101.

18. Martin Jay, Adorno (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984). 19. Roll' Wiggershaus, Die IFrankfurter Sczhuie: Geschichte, Theoretische Entwicklung,

Poiitische Bedeutung (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1986).

Peter U. Hohendahl 13

Helmut Dubiel,20 and others) has been, and inevitably so, a political intervention, an attempt either to underscore the lasting importance of Critical Theory or to question its political validity - through the dif- ferentiation of historical phases or through the contrast betwzeen Amner- ican and European, respectively German culture. The assessment of the Frankfurt School's exile in the United States has been especially contro- versial in terms of its political implications. On the one hand, it has fostered the m)yth of Critical Theory's cultural elitism; on the other hand, it has encouraged a bias against American mass culture that has fueled the politics of the postmodernism debate. Clearly, the historical dimension cannot be separated from the theoretical and political. An): construction of the Frankfurt School's development depends, whether acknowledged or not, on the theoretical as well as political position of the observer. Dubiel's and Habermas's work evince this underpinning by strongly differentiating between the early phase of Critical Theory (1932-1938) and the later y)ears. But then so do their critics, who den)y the significance of this development, especially in the case of Adorno.

While the phase model tends to emphasize the distance and thereby the impossibility of the immediate use of Adorno's theory, the insis- tence on the unity of Adorno's oeuvre tends to go hand in hand with a politics of resurrection. Here the historical embeddedness of all theo- retical production (which the Frankfurt School took for granted) is ei- ther ignored in favor of theory as a primary agent or renegotiated in more complex forms of interfacing and imbrication. This moment of renegotiation, however, as Andrew Hewitt points out, can no longer rely on a conventional construction of "the reader" or even the con- struction of contemporary American readers. Instead, these renegotia- tions are particular events, motivated by particular interests and agen- das. As Hewitt shows, a feminist appropriation, for example, must conme to terms with the tensions and performative contradictions be- tween a forceful critique of patriarchy in Dialectic of Enlightenment on the one hand and a masculinist philosophical discourse that structures this critique on the other. More specifically, Hewitt argues that the project of liberation in Dialectic ofEnlightenment, which would benefit women, is mostly articulated in general human terms that in part presuppose the very domination it is supposed to overcome. By shifting from a model

20. Helmut Dubiel, Wissenschafisorganisation und poiitische Erfahrung: Studien zur friihen kritischen Theorie (FrankturtiMain: Suhrkamnp, 1978).

14 Adorno Criticism Today

of domination (based on alienation) to a model of power (which would include models of domination), Hewitt prepares the ground for a femi- nist re-reading of Dialectic of Enlightenment, a reading that brushes Hork- heimer's and Adorno's text against the grain, thus bringing into the fore- ground the tension between the goal of liberating women and the limits of the employed philosophical discourse. Hence only the interaction between Critical Theory and women readers, mediated through femi- nist theory, can produce critical feminist readings; they are not auto- matically available through the means of an immanent approach.

While reading strategies of affirmative appropriation tend to submit Adorno's work to a preconceived frame of reference (for instance, deconstruction) and thereby test Adorno's "usefulness" for contempo- rary criticism, a look at the contemporary scene from the vantage point of Adorno's writings proves to be equally provocative. This becomes apparent in Miriam Hansen's discussion of Adorno and mass culture and in Andrew Hewitt's analysis of Dialectic of Enlightenment, which brings together Adorno's concepts of alienation and domination with Foucault's concept of power. Both essays push Adorno's theory to the extreme point where it shows its limits - but also its persistent poten- tial to intervene in the present debate.

Michael Steinberg's similar strategy of reading, strongly inflected by Benjamin's theory of modernity, compares Adorno's concept of abso- lute music in the German tradition (from Bach to Schoenberg) with a decidedly anti-Hegelian reading of that tradition. In some respects this critical comparison, which underscores the limitations of Adorno's un- derstanding of romantic and modemrn music, brings Steinberg close to the well-known stereotype of Adorno's elitism, though his use of Benja- min's model (stressing fragment and allegory) resists the conventional opposition of high and low culture. Ultimately Steinberg's attempt to subvert Adorno's conception of the German musical canon by showing its implicit traditionalism, which Adorno's theory ultimately supports, makes his critique significant. For Steinberg, heroic subjectivity, as Adorno celebrates it in his reading of Beethoven's music, contains an ideological moment as well. Steinberg, on the other hand, argues for a redemption of modernity beyond Adorno's Hegelian construct.

In Steinberg's appropriation, proximity to and distance from Ador- no are inseparable; the one cannot be achieved without the other. Is it time, then, to acknowledge that Adorno has become a "classic," an au- thor whose writings retain their vitality by both inviting new readings

Peter U. Hohendahl 15

and resisting unmediated appropriation? If so, then clearly not in the sense of Gadamer's definition of the classical, which stresses the har- monious "IVerschmelzung" (amalgamation) between the horizon of the classical text and that of the present. In the case of Adorno, the most productive strategy of reading appears to emphasize the hermeneutic double-bind of understanding (V/erstehen) and critique.

Adorno's appropriation at the beginning of the 1990s in this country poses new issues, since not only the political constellation but also the social and cultural problematic have changed in ways that hardly fit the definition ofAdorno's totally administered society. This discussion will have to come to terms with Adorno's postwar writings on modern society and social issues, but also with his turn to aesthetic theory which his critics sometimes perceive as a renunciation of politics. Clearly, from the point of Adorno's theory, a binary opposition of aes- thetic theory and political practice is hardly a legitimate response. In Aesthetic Theory Adorno again and again stressed the intertwinement of social and aesthetic aspects in the work of art. In this respect, the target of his criticism was precisely the bourgeois aesthetic and its attempt to separate once and for all, through a simplified version of a theory of autonomy, political and aesthetic realms. Yet this necessary defense of the social and thereby political character of the art work speaks more to the configuration of the early 20th century. It would be hermeneuti- cally implausible to ignore this distance and treat Adorno's text and the nature of its intervention as direct responses to the postmodern condition of the late twentieth century.