between impotence and illusion

8/3/2019 Between Impotence and Illusion

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B etw een Im potence and Il lusion :A dorno's A rt of T heory and Practic e

Michael Sullivan and John T . Lysaker

In general, the judgement generated within the student move-ment while it was breaking away from its teachers Horkheime rand Adorno and moving towards a more orthodox Marxism . . .has gained currency: that the Frankfurt School propagated a pessi -mistic resignation that prohibited political practice and privilege dan ivory-tower quietism .

- Russell A . Berman, "Adorno's Radicalism"Yet the conclusion remains that although Adorno ' s "Copernicanturn" toward non-identity may have revolutionized theory, it i snot yet a theory for revolutionaries .

- Susan Buck-Morss, "The Dialectic of T . W. Adorno"The fact of the matter is that Adorno's talk of the mediation be-tween intellectual praxis and political praxis remained abstrac tand vague . . . [T]he whole of his theoretical effort was to continu eto interpret the world, whereas the point had been to change it .

- Susan Buck-Morss, Origin of Negative DialecticsThe views expressed above retain their currency today. Despite a re-

surgence of interest in the Frankfurt School, and amidst an ever increas-ing proliferation of publications pertaining to their work, these charge sof pessimism, quietism, and resignation lead an afterlife in contemporar y

We would like to thank the following readers for their comments on earlierdrafts : Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Charles Scott, John Lachs, John Stuhr, George Trey, andTerry McInnis .

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88 Adorno's Art of Theory and Practic e

Adorno scholarship . On one hand, the critique of Adorno's sheer nega-tivity carried on in the eighties by Habermas and others brought th e"conclusions" of Buck-Morss and the views of the student movemen tinto the present. On the other hand, an entire field of Adorno literaturehas arisen that, though unconvinced of his irrelevance, leaves unaddres-sed the question of how his work might involve itself in matters of politi-cal practice. In the first instance, we stand before what is rapidly becom-ing an orthodox conclusion: progressive thought must abandon Adorn oif it is to carry on with the project of emancipation . In the second in -stance, though the literature is sympathetic to Adorno, in not addressingspecifically the question of the relation of Adorno's critical theory topractice, it leaves Adorno's, and ultimately its own, contribution toemancipation in question . It is only in a critical investigation of this rela-tion that Adorno's contribution to the possibility of emancipation come sto light.' Indeed, such an investigation is a prerequisite for any authenticcritical theory. We find it imperative, therefore, insofar as these two re-sponses (dismissal and silence) remain predominant, to take up again th equestion of Adorno's failure to provide a theory for revolutionaries .What is also intriguing about Adorno's supposed failure is the contras tit allows one to draw between an apparent later quietism and an earlie rFrankfurt School commitment to the unity of theory and practice . Doug-las Kellner construes the development of the school in such a way :

Secondly, Horkheimer 's an d Adorn o ' s works abandon ed any r evo -lutionary intentions . The orig in al cr i t ical theory, as we have seen ,made the theory -praxis relation its foundation ston e . . . . At least the1930s work of critical theory was shaped by an emancipatory in ter -est in the liberation and happiness of the individual and the con-struction of a socialist society . This revolut ionary in tent ion can b efound in all its work on philosophy, art, Nazism, an d the family . I nthe 1940s, however, members of the Fran kfurt School surren dere dthis belief in the desirability of a mor e ration al socialist society an deven attacked rationality and the ration alization of society itself . 2

1. This is not, of course, to suggest that recent work on Adomo outside the questio nof the relation of his thought to political practice is uninteresting or unproductive . It israther to claim that the import of such work for the project of emancipation is uncertai nuntil the question is addressed . O ur work wil l focus pr imar i ly on th is ques t ion and thus i twill consider on ly that l i terature which explicit ly addresses the relat ion, or n on relat ion, o fcritical theory to practice .2. Douglas Kellner, "The Frankfurt School Revisited : A Critique of Martin Jay's TheDialectical Imagination, " N ew German C r i tique 2 .4 (Winter 1975) : 146-47 .


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Michael Sullivan and John T. Lysaker 89

The question of Adorno's relation to political practice thus has impli-cations for how one reads the history of the Frankfurt School . If onefinds in the later works of Adorno (and Horkheimer) a dissatisfyin gspiral in to pol i t ical bankruptcy, a quest ion of som e pivotal turn for th ewor se will n ecessarily ar ise .' In fact, locating "the fall" may be all tha tremains if one concludes, following Piccone, that taken as a whole"Et]he subject matter is no lon g er exciting . " 4 W e see thing s otherwise .Adorno ' s later w ork is exci ting , i ts dismissal is premature, and i ts cr i t -ics beg the question ag ain st the very posit ions they would banish to th e"No-man' s land between the borders of East and W est " 5 or "the brinkof what Lukacs has called the `Grand Hotel Abyss ."' 6

IThrough the seventies and early eighties, assessments of Adorn onearly always beg an with the question : does he provide us with any ave -nue for positive political action? Most commentators answered nega-

tively . In an attempt to problematize this st i ll unchallen ged r esponse, i tseems prudent to probe the commitments and expectations that in -form the question Adorno's fate apparently hangs upon . What shoul dalso give us pause is the fact that the neg ative assessmen t n oted above i saccompanied, almost always, by a call for a return to the Frankfur tSchool's earlier demand that theory never supersede practice . Such acall merits in vestigation, for it supposes that this earlier comm itment re -sulted from a clar ity of visi on that was n ot itself always already in ques -tion . The issue here turns on how one reads the development of th e

3. Our task in this paper will be to defend Adorno's work against the critique scited above . Though it is Adorno upon whom we shall concentrate, admittedly, thecollaboration of Horkheimer and Adorno was an especially intense one, and it is fo rthat reason not always possible to separate the two. As our analysis will conclude, however, with an interpretation of Adorno's aesthetic writings, it seems prudent in thi scase to distinguish between their contributions .4. Paul Piccone, review of T he Dialect ical Im agination by Martin Jay, T e l o s 16 (Sum-mer 1973) : 150 .5. Susan Buck-Morss, "The Dialect ic of T .W . Adomo," T e l o s 14 (Winter 1972) : 14 3 .6 . Piccone 149. There are two inappropriate dualisms that are often impose dupon Adorno's work and then interpreted as grounds for its dismissal . The first dual-ism involves locating Adorno's work on the continuum of optimism and pessimism .Robert Hullot-Kentor does an excellent job in exposing the facile nature of this impo-sition in " Back to Adomo," T e l o s 81 (Fall, 1989) : 5-29 . The second dualism invokes aconstructive/nonconstructive opposition . It is the issue of Adorno 's supposed " non-constructive" fall into theory that we take up here .


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90 Adorno's Art of Theory and Practice

Frankfurt School . Is it simply a matter, as many commentators wouldhave it, of regression from a "heroic period" to a postwar "failure ofnerve," an abandonment of initial neo-Marxist aspirations? Perhaps ,but the question is, how did that abandonment occur? Was it simply afailure of nerve, or can we see at work in the development of the Frank -furt School an intensification of its primary questions? Perhaps wha tseems so obviously to be a shift towards quietism in the later works wil lappear starkly different if one sees in the Frankfurt School's histor ysuch an intensification . Indeed, the very thought of what it woul dmean to make a positive contribution to political action stands in ques -tion . Kellner is correct: the issue of theory and practice is the "founda-tion stone" of the early Frankfurt School, but not only as a commit-ment. Above all, it founds as a question .Already in Horkheimer's 1937 essay, "Traditional and Critical The-ory," the question of the relation of theory and practice is evident . Theessay begins with the question "what is `theory'?" The question is cm-cial because, to parody Kant, practice without theory is blind . If prac-tice is not to reduce to sheer nihilism, the destruction of the status qu ofor the sake of its destruction, it needs to be accompanied by a corre-sponding theory of emancipation, a description of what life beyon dsundered life could be . But if practice without theory is blind, theorywithout practice is empty. "The issue . . . is not simply the theory ofemancipation ; it is the practice of it as well ."' The question thereforearises: what is the relation of the theory of emancipation to the practic eof emancipation? One might envision the theoretical enterprise to b eprimarily constructive in nature, producing the categorical structure swithin which the practice of emancipation could be realized . At on epoint Horkheimer writes: "Constructive thinking, then, plays a mor eimportant role than empirical verification in this theory as a whole, i ncomparison with what goes on in the activity of common sense" (TC T221 ; KT 169) . This seems to suggest that theory and practice are twoseparate stages: theory produces the goals and practice pursues them .Horkheimer refuses this separation, however, for "in regard to the es-sential kind of change at which the critical theory aims, there can be n ocorresponding concrete perception of it until it actually comes about "(TCT220 ; KT 169) . The vision of theory is limited to the heights of th e

7 . Max Horkheimer, "Traditional and Critical Theory," Critical Theory (New York :Seaburv, 1972) 233 ; Kritische Theorie II (Frankfurt/Main : Fischer , 1968) 181 . Cited here -after within the text as TCT and KT .


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Michael Sullivan and John T. Lysaker 9 1

shoulders it stands upon . While i t mig ht t inker w ith social forces, rea-ligning them in apparently novel ways, such does not amount to th e"essential kind of change" emancipation requires .

This creates a significant problem. Theory is unable to envision e xnihilo the goals n eeded to di rect eman cipatory pract ice . The very possi -bili ty of theory thus becomes an issue for theory . If i t is assumed alongwith traditional theory that the role of theory is to generate goals t oguide practice, the question remains simply one concerning how suc hgoals might be discovered . But if theory will fail to generate thes eg oals, and n ecessar i ly fai l as Horkheimer sug g ests, then theory can n o tbe what we in it ially supposed it was and we m ust raise again the ques -tion "what is `theory'?" Likewise, the very possibility of political activi -ty, understood as a project involving theory and practice, become sproblematic . Wh at, after all, could political activity m ean without som esense of what the relation of theory and practice is or even could be ?The issue is decis ive because one cann ot return to the i l lusion that the -ory could shape practice in a self-suffic ient man n er . O n ce that il lusio ndissipates, theory finds itself in a quandary, one exacerbating the ten-sion already inherent within the traditional question of theory an dpractice . It is no longer just a question of proper relation, but also aquestion of what "theory" and "practice " are in and of themselves .

Horkheimer's response to this quandary is to call on theory "to de-termine for itself what it is to accomplish and serve, and this not i nfragmentary fashion but totally " (TCT 242-43 ; KT 190) . Indeed, inHorkheimer's view, this is not merely the present task of thinking, buti ts "characteristic mark ." This response suggests two things . Firs t, th erelation of theory an d practice does cen ter the essay, but as a question ,for the essay con cludes with a task in which theory, unable to fathomits own relation to practice, is called upon to determin e itself in this rela -t ion . O n what this determin ation could be, however, the essay is silent . I tseems superficial to sug g est, therefore, that a staunch co mmi tmen t to th einseparability of theory and practice anchors the work of the earl yFran kfurt School . In a sen se i t does, but i t is a commitmen t without di -rection, given Horkheimer's inability to develop a successful mode lthat shows how theory mi g ht relate to practice . In fact, the essay drives u sto the quan dary outlin ed above : theory, practice, an d polit ical action areterms about which we can no longer pretend to have any concrete un-derstanding . Thus, the attempt to characterize the work of the late rAdorn o and Horkheimer as having forg otten pract ice is wrong headed .Pr actice was always a question , and as we shall see, one in tensi fied rather


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than forgotten in the developments of the later work . 8To perceive such a con tinui ty of questionin g at work in the develop-ment of the Frankfurt School is not to deny, however, that difference sdo separate the early and later w ork ; and this brings us to our secon dpoint. There is a naivete in the claim that theory's " characterist i cmark" is "to determine for itself what it is to accomplish and serve . "The thoug ht l in g ers in this remark that reason is somehow self- legis lat -ing, a thought Horkheimer himself terms an illusion . In works like Di-alectic of Enl igh tenment , i t is precisely the persisten ce of this illusion tha tis scrutinized . The essay "Traditional an d C ri t ical Theory" is therefor enot without internal tensions, tensions indirectly exploited in late rworks . Neverthless, it is important to see how the spirit that animate slater works like Dialectic of Enlightenment emanates from the warningHorkheimer directs toward all concerned with emancipatory practic eat the conclusion of "Traditional and Critical Theory" : "But conform -ism in thought and the insistence that thinking is a fixed vocation, aself-en closed realm within society as a whole, betrays the very essen c eof thought" (TCT 243; KT 191) . The exhortation is that thought mustbe kept open to critique, even to the point of a willingness to abando ntraditional modes of thinkin g . In so abandonin g them, however, on e i sless dropping them as worn metaphors than working through them .Out of this exhortation one could thus read the later works as eve rmore radical pursuits of questions already plaguing essays such a s"Traditional and Critical Theory . "W hat needs to be shown at this juncture, then, is how works like Dia-l ec t ic o f En l ightenm en t can be viewed as in tensif icat ions of the very issu e- the relation of theory and practice - that Horkheimer was alread yexploring with great difficulty in "Traditional and Critical Theory ." Ifthe Frankfurt School's development is viewed in this way, the ver yquestion of the relation of the later works to questions of political ac-tion becomes a revived one, with theory and practice centering th ediscussion . Rather than having fallen silent on the question, perhap sAdorno and Horkheimer never let it alone .Amidst its gen ealog ical excesses, on e can fin d in Dialectic of Enlightenm en t

8 . In fact, we can see an interesting inversion of Marx's development in th eFrankfurt School. Marx begins with an attempt to criticize ruthlessly all that exists an dends up t ry ing to implement chang es on the basis of socialis t mechanisms . The Frankfur tSchool, on the contrary, starts out hoping to implement, along neo-Marxist lines, som echanges on behalf of emancipation but ends up ruthlessly questioning "emancipation "and the relation of theory and practice .


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Michael Sullivan and John T Lysaker 9 3

a persistent theme: "The point is rather that the Enlightenment mustconsider i tself, i f men are n ot to be wholly betrayed ."9 W hile pursuin gthe aims of emancipation, Horkheimer and Adorno raise the questionof the extent to which emancipatory practice and theory already con -tribute to unfreedom and undercut emancipation . The fear is thatwhile "social freedom is inseparable from enlightened thought," dom-ination may be so as well (DE xiii ; DA 13) . If so, "jilt' enlightenmen tdoes not accommodate reflection on this recidivist element, then i tseals its own fate" (DE xiii ; DA 13) . Thoug ht directed toward eman cipa -t ion, i f i t is to be adequate, must concern i tself with i ts own emancipa-tion : "With the abandonment of thought . . . enl ighten men t has relin -quished its own realization . . . . [T]rue revolution ary pr actice depen ds o nthe intran sigen ce of theory in the face of the insen sibility with which soci -ety allows thoug ht to ossify " (DE 41 ; DA 58-59) . Theory' s turn to a r ig or -ous self-critique is, therefore (as much in Dialect ic of Enl ightenm ent as in" Tradit ion an d C ri t ical Theory"), a quest ion of both the theory an d th epractice of emancipation . The moral here seem s clear : not on ly is there acon tinuity between the early and later works surroun din g the question o fthe relation of theory an d practice, but also an y attempt to ask of the late rwor ks their view of polit ical action must take into accoun t that the possi -bility of polit ical action , understood as eman cipatory practice, is precise -ly the issue . From " Tradition al and C rit ical. Theor y" through the Dialecticof Enlightenment, the question of how " emancipatory practice " is to dojust that, without regression, is always in the fore . To say with SusanBuck-Morss that what is needed is a " theory for revolutionaries " is tosuppose this question already answered, that one already knows howtheory would inform revolutionary practice . Moreover, not only doesBuck-Morss's demand beg the question of the relation of theory t opractice, it seals off from critique precisely the issue that is most i nneed of it: how a theory might be "revolutionary." l oThere is a deeper moral here . If the question "Does Adorn o provid eus with an y aven ue for posit ive political action ?" is to be asked, withou tpresupposing in an unarticulated fashion what " political action " is, i tmust be seen that any question of political action is simultaneously a

9. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adomo, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York :Continuum, 1986) xv; Dialektik der Aufklarung (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1981) 15 .Cited hereafter within the text as DE and DA -10. Buck-M orss 's cr i t ique that Adorn o has revolut ionized theory but failed to provid ea theory for revolutionaries is premature . It assumes that the question of a revolutionarytheory has been answered, when in fact, as we have seen, it remains a crucial question .


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question of reason and its critique . The question is: how is thought tofunction in the attempt to overcome alienated life without becoming aco-conspirator in the practice of domination? To construe the ques-tion differently is to act as if the problems of theory and practice wer ealready resolved; but, again, from as early as "Traditional and Critica lTheory," the absence of such a resolution was apparent . Granted ,there was some expectation that resolution might be forthcoming, bu teven then, those expectations were held in check, and as their work de-veloped toward the 1944 publication of Dialect ic of Enl ightenment , thoseexpectations gradually diminished until finally they were taken up a squestions themselves . The question of the relation of theory and prac-tice was, therefore, present from the beginning . What underwenttransformation as their work progressed was the very expectation thatthis question could be resolved in its present form .

I IIf one daims that the question of political activity is a question of reas -

on and its critique, one is simply asking how emancipation could becarried out without a regression into positivism or a leap into the fanatica lterrorism that all premature revolutions bring . The worry over pos i tiv is mis the philosophically deeper one . On the one hand, our present situatio nis sundered, and the need for alternatives is obvious . On the other hand ,how are we to generate new values if all we are capable of is reaction ?

[Al thought which is worth any thing at all must absorb the weig h tof reali ty an d no t simply flee from it . O therwise, we end up wit hthat which Kafka called "the empty, happy journey ." There is adifference, however, between in tegratin g this power of the existen tinto thought and merely capitulating before it . "If we are not to fall into an "empty, happy journey," the mystery of thi s" integration" must be unlocked. Theory must give practice, in some fash-ion, a manner in which it can both "absorb" and transform the real . Thi sg ives us, then, yet again , the question of how theory i s to relate to practice .

Since Kant, achieving the correct relationship between theory andpractice has amounted to selecting the right means given particula rends. Confronted with corrupt means, the left, in order to criticiz e

11 . Theodor Adorno, "On the Historical Adequacy of Consciousness," interviewwith Adorno an d Peter von Haselberg, Telos 56 (Summer 1983) : 102 .


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existing structures, pursued immanent critique : prevailing practice swere judged in terms of the very ideals they aspired to . After successfulimmanent critique, however, a poignant problem arises . In the searchfor new means to achieve the ideals that prevalent practices fail to ac-complish, it becomes apparent that theory has no understanding o fthese ideals apart from their role in those practices found to be defi-cient . While the temptation is to substitute ideals, one cannot simpl yreplace one set of ideals with another without falling prey to the illu-sion that reason is self-legislating . 1 2 This leaves emancipatory theorybetween a rock and no-place : it has neither the ends nor the mean swith which to achieve emancipation .

The space between the rock and no-place is tighter than might first ap-pear. Without ends or means, it is a serious question whether there is anypossible content to the idea of emancipation itself. Indeed, the structureof ends-means rationality itself comes into question. It appears we mus teither do the impossible - generate new ends ex nihilo - or pursue theSisyphean path of incrementalism, assuming the direction of deficien tpractices . What would it mean to pursue emancipation through an ends -means rationality, when the very idea of what it is to be an "end" or a" means" is radically in question? This is a problem of the independenc eof theory from the tainted practices it is trying to reform . This is not just aquestionfor theory, however, but for projects of reform as well, becaus ewhen theory proceeds without independence, so does practice .

The liquidation of theory by dogmatization and thought taboo scontributed to the bad practice ; the recovery of theory's inde-penden ce lies in the in terest of practice i tself . The in terrelation o fboth mom en ts is no t settled once an d for all but fluctuates histori -cally . Today, with theory paralyzed an d disparaged by the all-g ov -ernin g bustle, i ts mere existence, however impotent, bears witnes sagain st the bustle. This is why theory is legitimate and why it i shated ; without it, there would be no changing the practice thatconstantly calls for chan ge . Those who chide theory anachron ist i cobey the topos of dismissin g , as obsolete, what remain s painful a sthwarted . (ND 143 ; NDK 144-45 )

12 . Adorno unveils this illusion in Negative Dialectics : "Theory does not contain an-swers to everything; it reacts to the world, which is faulty to the core. What would befree from the spell of the world is n ot under theory's jurisdiction." Theodor W .Adorno, Negative Dialectics (New York: Continuum, 1973) 41 ; Negative D ialekt ik (F rank-furt/Main : Suhrkamp, 1966) 39 . Cited hereafter within the text as ND and NDK .


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At this jun cture, then, i t would appear that polit ical activity must eithe rproceed without the direction of theory or not proceed at all . As th eusual interpretations would have it, Adorno opted for the latter. Bu tthis is a false dilemma, because it supposes that one already know swhat "political activity" is . This is, of course, given the silence one i sdriven to when asked about the relation of theory and practice, pre-cisely what we have shown not to be the case .

Despite this problematic silence, the demands that theory serve thedesires of practice have not abated . Theory has not only been calle d"anachronistic" but vilified as impotent as well . What is required, theslogan runs, is a theory at one with practice ; however :

The call for unity of theory an d practice has irresistibly degradedtheory to a servant's role, removing the very traits it should hav ebroug ht to that unity . The visa stamp of pr actice which we de -man d of all theory became a censor's placet . Yet whereas theor ysuccumbed in the vaunted mixture, practice became non con cep -tual, a piece of the politics it was supp osed to lead out of ; it be -came the prey of power . (ND 143 ; NDK 144)Practice demands of theory not only that it produce the idea of eman-cipation, but also that it do so in such a fashion that the idea will con-form to the present possibilities open to practice . Practice demand s"emancipation" from theory without paying attention to what is de-manded by its demand . After all, in order to provide practice withemancipation, both a conception of emancipation and an understand-ing of how one would relate such a conception to practice is required .The point Adorno's work drives one to again and again is the painfu llack of both .

Admittedly, demands for the practical relevance of theory strike asharp chord with those committed to resolving the contradictions evi-dent in contemporary social l ife . No one would want to confess impo-tence in the face of such pressing needs . And yet, Adorno says onemust. His claim is precisely that such impoten ce must be faced if an y -thing like "emancipatory practice" is to be possible .

I would prefer to close our conversation by urg in g reflection on afact that is all too easily repressed pr ecisely in the zeal of the will t ochange : that attempts really to chang e our wor ld drastically in an yparticular f ield are imm ediately exposed to the overpowerin g


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force of the status quo and seem con demn ed to impotence . Who -ever wants to change things can apparently do so only by makin gthis impotence itself and his own impotence as well into a factor o fwhat he does . 1 3

Note that the impotence under discussion here is not solely the impo-tence of theory, but also the impotence of those "attempts really tochan g e our wor ld drastically," that is, i t is the impoten ce of practice a swell . One stands before alienated life and demands a change - some -thing , anythin g else . Alas, on e comes to see that the theoretical vantag epoints one occupies are impoverished by the same status quo on eseeks to escape . A feeling of impotence is accompan ied by the real iza-tion of one 's impl ication in the funct ion ing of the sys tem . Thus the is -sue of one's own self-formation/deformation comes to the fore . To ap-proach critically what is, one must critically approach oneself . To doso, to ask the question of self-formation, is to ask the question of th eindependence of theory, to examine critically the objective condition swhich make thought what it is .While our position remains one between a rock and no-place, it is an o-place that arises less from a "failure of n erve" than from per sistent-ly following the question of the relation of theory and practice . Thequestioning of Adorno and Horkheimer has brought critical theory t othis paralyzing juncture because in the absence of any resolut ion of th eproblem of theory and practice, the very structure of ends-mean sration ality collapses . With this collapse of a means-ends portrayal ofeman cipation, the expectation of the arr ival of new, revolutionar y en d sin any form can no longer be maintained . They can neither be gener-ated ex nihi lo n or somehow culled out of existing ways of l i fe v ia an in -strumental rationality ; either procedure is blind to how its own self -formation/deformation incorporates what it seeks to overcome . Onemight suspect that such a fate is tantamount to the end of reason ;Adorn o would have i t otherwise . The quest ion of reason i tself remains ,even in this awkward posi tion . His sugg est ion i ron ically echoes Hork-heimer's at the end of "Traditional and Critical Theory." Yet ratherthan determin in g "for i tself what i t is to accomplish and serve, " reaso nmust n ow, Adorn o in s is ts , undertake an an alysis of i ts own self -forma-tion in order to uncover its inability to determine itself

13 . Theodor W. Adorno, "Education for Autonomy, " interview with Hellmu tBecker, T e l o s 56 (Summer 1983) : 110 .


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II IThe question of reason and its self-formation is a question Adorn o

takes up in "Subject and Object." He begins with an acknowledgmen tof the severe difficulties reason encounters in trying to account for it -self: i t always seems to presuppose the relation i t is strugg ling to deter -mi n e . Yet rather than attempt to provide a new account in the face o fthese difficulties, given the problems inherent in producing anythin g"new," he turns instead to an investigation of previous attempts . Hetraces in these accounts how various efforts to demarcate th eboundaries of reason' s relation to the world fail to consider reason' s(and their own ) self-formation .Adorno ' s approach, his starting point in "Subject and Object," i sunique. He commences without any provisional definition of howsubject and object relate to one another . This illustrates his commit-ment to the demand that theory recognize itself in the impotence re -marked upon earlier; in fact, the en tire essay is written w ithin a con fes-sion of the depth of its own impotence . To write concerning subject /object without havin g established any critical accoun t of their relation ,and without being able to, necessarily, is paradoxically to develop aposi t ion while placing i ts fundamen tal commitmen ts radical ly in ques-tion. Adorno is thus true to his own admonishment of would-be criti-cal theorists: "Proponents of the abstract thesis that every man' sthought is conditioned should be most concretely reminded that so i stheir own, that it is blind to the supra-individual element which alon eturns individual consciousness into thought" (ND 36 ; NDK 44) . Theissue here is n ot simply r evisabili ty, however . A commitmen t to revisa -bility is meaningful only given provisional accounts of what the issu ein question could be . Such accounts are, however, precisely whatAdorno eschews . Instead, he turns toward his theoretical inheritancein the hope that critical reflections thereon might produce new possi-bil ities for thought . Such possibil it ies emerg e n egatively, however, ar is -ing out of the collapse of what amoun t to present im possibi li t ies . Withregard to the question of political action, these analyses are Adorno' slegacy . What remain s to be seen is whether Adorn o's attent ion to suc hfailures achieves any positive result for our understanding of the rela-tion of theory and practice and the possibilities of political action .

"Subject and Object," as a meditation upon reason's relation to itsown self -formation , s ign als a methodological departure f rom Dialect ic o f


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Enlightenment . In 1944, Adorno and Horkheimer attempted to explai nthe failure of the enlightenment to become enlightened about itself b ygivin g a g enealogical account of the formation of enl ightenmen t rat ion -ality. They addressed the question of reason 's self-form ation via a posi -t ive account of how reason had come to assume, by the late 1930s, a fas -cist form . In "Subject an d O bject," however, in r adically followin g ou tthe question of theory and practice, Adomo offers no such account .Thus on e need n ot accept the accuracy of the gen ealogical account tha tDialect ic of Enl ightenme nt offers in order to find on eself between a r ock an dno-place . As an y "theory for revolutionar ies" wil l need to con front th equestion of theory's relation to practice, a critical theory m ust necessaril yinvolve itself with the question of reason and its self-formation .

This ra ises an issue with Habermas . He argues that the totalizing cri -tique of Dialect ic of Enl ightenment reduces to an uninhibited skepticismwith regard to the possibilities of enlightenment rationality . "On theiran alysis, i t is no lon g er possible to place hope in the liberating force o fenlightenment. Inspired by Benjamin's now ironic hope of the hope -less, they still did not want to relinquish the now paradoxical labor ofconceptualization . We no longer share this mood, this attitude ." 1 4Haberm as rejects this mood because he feels that with such skepticis mHorkheimer an d Adorn o deprive themselves of an y measure with whic hto eng age in constructive cr i tique . Habermas assumes, though, that noconstruct ive momen t emerg es f rom the n egat ive cr i t ique carr ied out i nwork like "Subject and O bject ." O ur claim, however , is that the questio nof how r eason is to bear i ts self-formation is , in fact, a construct ive at -tempt to work out of "no place," and thus not wholly skeptical ." Thechallenge Adorno takes up is to find a way of thinking about emanci-pation wherein reason 's critical but necessarily sublimated enactmentof its self-formation does not translate into barbarism .

As noted above, the discussion of subject/object entails seemingl yinsurmountable difficulties . Both the subjective and objective mo-ments of a given relation are in danger of perpetual equivocation :

14. Jurgen Habermas, T he P h i losoph ica l Discour se o f Mod er nity (Cambridge : MIT ,1987) 106 .15. Robert Hullot-Kentor confronts Habermas's charge in another manner . Heargues that Habermas's reading of Dialectic of Enlightenment is terribly one-sided . In -stead of being a quasi-Nietzschean abandonment of reason, Dialec tic o f Enl ightenm ent is ,

according to Hullot-Kentor, much as we suggest, an intensification of reason's self-cri-tique. See Hullot-Kentor' s " Back to Adorno" 9-14 .


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The terms [subject and object] are paten tly equivocal . "Subject," forinstance, may refer to the particular individual as well as to genera lattributes, to "consciousness in general" in the language of Kant' sProlegomena . The equivocation is n ot removable simply by termin o -logical clarification, for the two meanings have reciprocal need ofeach other; one is scarcely to be grasped without the other.' 6

In order to determine anything as a subject -- as a particular individ-ual - one must employ a generic concept; that is , one must design at ethe subject as such via somethin g objective . "Even in proper names, areference to that un iversal is sti ll implied . They mean on e who is calle dby that name, not by any other ; and `one ' stands elliptically for `onehuman being' (SO 498 ; KG 741) . Speech that would con sider the sub-ject can do so only with reference to what is an object. On the otherhan d, to beg in with the "object," viewin g the subject as derivative, is t obegin with nothing at all, for something can only become an objec tg iven a point of v iew from which it is considered . Thus one can estab-lish priority in either moment only with the assumption of anuncritical formulation of the other moment . Any attempt to defin esubject and object already presupposes an understanding of how the yare r elated .

Although Adorno's analysis appears only to draw out the impossi-bil ity of defin in g the relation of subject an d object, i t does, in fact, un -cover the "interdependence" of the subjective and objective moment .This tension allows subjects and objects to be what they are since an yattempt to speak of either moment necessarily invokes the other .Moreover, as we shall see, this tension-laden "interdependence" canneither be demarcated into a binary relation nor resolved into an or-gan ic un i ty . The issue then is twofold : what resul ts f rom r esolving thistension, and what would it mean to maintain it?While remaining attentive to this interdependence, Adorno demon-strates how accounts of reason that ignore or artificially resolve thi sfundamental tension necessarily uncritically appropriate their ownself formation and thus blindly perpetuate their social and intellectua linher i tance . This is evident in attempts to prioritize the subject . Kan tlocates reason 's activity in the subject, in the space of transcendenta l

16 . Theodor W. Adorno, "Subject and Object, " The Essential Frankfurt School Reader(New York: Continuum, 1982), eds . J . Arato et al ., 497-98 ; Kulturkritik and Gesellschaft I I(Frankfurt/Main : Suhrkamp, 1977) 741 . Cited hereafter within the text as SO and KG .


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Michael Sullivan and John T. Ly saker 10 1subjectivity . He claims that the transcendental unity of apperceptio n(TUA) am oun ts to pure subjectivity . The functioning of this pure sub-jectivity, the unifying operation that transcendental subjectivity is ,must have "somethin g" to un ify in order to i tself be what i t is : a provi-dential power unifying inner and outer sense into coherent experi-ence . This "something" belongs, however, not to the transcendental ,but to the empirical . TUA, in order to establish coherency in experi-ence, must first already have before it some content as an intuition .Moreover, if there is to be such a content there must first be a nempir ical ag ent at work in the world . Thus TUA an d the content that i tunifies must be equally primordial . The empirical subject cannot beunderstood as an instantiation of a prior pure subjectivity becaus esuch "pure subjectivity" already draws an empirical sustenance fro mthe very object i t is supposed to con struct - - - empir ical individuals . "I tis evident that the abstract concept of the transcendental subject - it sthought forms, their unity, and the original productivity of conscious-ness --- presupposes what it promises to bring about: actual, live indi -viduals " (SO 500 ; KG 744) . That this leaves reason to the workin gs o fthe status quo is clear . In prioritizing the subjective, Kant circum-scribes the powers of reason within transcendental subjectivity . Reaso nis able to treat, "autonomously," whatever comes before its jurisdiction ,that is, whatever becom es conscio us . Reason's contribution to humanactivity takes place on ly after i ts tran scenden tal structures have allowe dwhatever is at issue into con sciousness . Reason must, in operat ing in thi smanner, assume without question the form of these transcendenta lstructures . If we are com mitted to the view that these structures are th eresult of our social and in tellectual inheritance, however, then to assum ethe Kantian paradigm is to accept these structures as g iven ." In such anaccount, reason en ters into hum an activity too late to con fron t cri t icall ythe limits of i ts self-form ation . In what is supposed to be the subject' srise to self-legislation, one finds instead only self-abnegation .At the other extreme, prioritization of the object likewise imprison sreason w ithin the status quo . To expel the subjective mom en t from reas -on in the name of an "objectivism" is to proceed as if objects showe dthemselves from themselves without an y admixtur e of social forces . Ifreason is treated as an empty conduit for knowledge, it is left at th e

17 . Roughly put, the view that human beings are social products locates the set of re-lations throug h which transcen dental subject ivity operates in an already existing set of so-cial relations ; e .g ., language games, institutional structures, locally contingent patterns o finterpersonal behavior, etc .


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10 2 A dorno's A rt of T heory and Practic e

mercy of social forces that always already inform both subjective an dobjective moments . Ironically, this reduces to a pure subjectivism be -cause the forces con st i tut ing subject iv i ty ( thus g iv ing the knower his orher point of view) are given free reign ; "the supposedly pure objectlacking any admixture of thought and visuality is the literal reflectio nof abstract subjectivity" (SO 503; KG 7 4 7 ) . 1 8 Hence the attempt tomove to a pur e object ivism also prevents reason from cr i t ically appro-pr iat ing i ts self -formation .If it remain s un tenable to privilege either the subjective or the objectiv emom ent, perhaps one could find r esolution in a fusion of the two . A n ysuch attempt, however, renders reason impotent in the same man n er i nwhich objectivism does . In claiming that reason emerges out of event sthat fuse the subjective and objective momen ts, one directs on e 's atten -tion toward w hat is required to achieve that fusion . O n e takes what is dis -t inct as given and passes uncr it ically over the con ditions respon sible forthat distin ctn ess . Whereas objectivism treats reason as a "sphere of bein gof absolute orig in s," fusion disreg ards the problems of origin altog ethe rand with them the possibil ity of a cr it ical treatment of its self-formation .

Another route one might take to escape what appears to be a nirresolvable tension between subject and object posits their anteceden tunity in unarticulated experience . Such a unity would prefigure, as aprecondition, the articulation of any distinction between subject an dobject . The problem with such an appeal is twofold . In the first in-stance, it is a mystery what such a unity could be, given that any at -tempt to articulate it, ipso facto, loses it . Moreover, from the standpoin tof the question of theory and practice, such a unity is both uninterest-ing and unhelpful because it cannot, in principle, contribute to prac-tice . In r a is ing an issue for pract ice one is in volved in ar t iculate exper i -ence and thus, as the antecedent unity fades, the troubling question ssurrounding the relation of subject and object return . Therefore, ap-peals to an antecedent unity of subject and object, regardless of ho wquestionable these might be in and of themselves, provide no direc-tion for issues of political practice .The tension between subject and object appears, therefore, to be an i rr e -solvable one an d necessarily so . It has become eviden t that an y attemp tto prioritize one moment above another, or to dissolve the relatio n

18 . Adorno also writes: "The reified consciousness that mistakes itself for nature i snaive: having evolved, and being very much mediated in itself, it takes itself - to spea kin Husserl' s terms - for a `sphere of being of absolute origins"' (SO 505 ; KG 741) .


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Michael Sullivan and John T. Lysaker 1 0 3

into either an antecedent or an achieved unity, results in abandonin greason to the arbitrariness of its self-formation . 1 9 The question of sub-ject and object arose negatively out of the question of reason and it sself-formation, which itself grew out of the question of theory an dpractice. A theory of emancipation - "a theory for revolutionaries"-that forgets its own self-formation can, given the above analysis, be nei-ther revolutionary nor emancipatory. But suppose the question of selfformation is kept at the fore, suppose one decides to accept and main-tain this seemingly irresolvable tension . What then? The problem thenbecomes that we do not really know what it would mean to " maintain "this tension . To recognize that it needs to be maintained is not t oachieve anything, but only to, perhaps, prevent one's falling into th eregressive scenarios outlined above . Something more, as Horkheimernotes, is needed . "Present meaning and future verification of a propo-sition are not the same thing. The judgment that a man is sick, or thathumanity is in agony, is no prognosis, even if it can be verified in aprocess subsequent to its formulation."2 0 This sounds like a royal re -turn to the space between the rock and no-place -- precisely the loca-tion where the critics of Adorno and Horkheimer expected to find us .If the above analysis is correct, however, these critics are here as well .The issue then, as stated earlier, is whether any positive moment, anyglimmer of what it would mean not to dissolve the tension betwee nsubject and object, emerges from this negative critique . 2 '

IVIf the subject does have an ob jective core , the object's subjectiv equalit ies are so m uch mor e an elemen t of objectivity . For i t is onlyas something definite that the object becomes anything at all . Inthe attributes that seem to be attached to it by the subject alon e, th esubject's own objectivity com es to the fore . (SO 502-03 ; KG 747)

19. Thus one does not have to read Adorn o "again st the grain," as AndreasHuyssen sug gests, in order to rescue him from the charg e that his work betrays a n ostal -gic yearnin g for a strong bourgeois ego. In fact, the main thrust of the work displace ssuch a conception . See "Adorno in Reverse : From Hollywood to Richard Wagner, "New German Critique 29 (Spring-Summer 1983) : 8-38 . For a thorough refutation of thecharge of nostalgia see C a l v i n Thomas, "A Kn owledge That Would Not Be Power :Adorn o, Nostalgia, and the Historicity of the Musical Subject," New Ger m an Cr it ique 4 8(Fall 1989): 155-75 .

20. Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of R eason (New York : Con tinuum, 1947) 44 .21. In "A Knowledge That Would Not Be Power," Calvin Thomas is content to


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W ith this, Adorno pr ovides an extreme redirect ion for cr i t ical think-in g : in order to maintain the tension between subject and object, i tmust move through the subject. In contrast to traditional views inwhich thought achieves purity via departure from the subject, Adorn osugg ests that "adequate expression of a matter does not involve anelimination of subjectivity, but rather that the matter itself can b ebrought to language only through the most extreme refinement an dexertion of subjectivity " 2 2 To demand that thought begin with th esubject is simply to confess that beginning with the object is impossi-ble . One cannot go through the object, for the object only appears al -ways al ready un der descr ipt ion . If i t were wi thout "the subjective mo -men t [description ], the object would come diffusely apart like the fleet -in g sti rr in g s and instan ts of subjective lif e" (SO 509 ; KG 756) . Thus th edemand that thought begin with the subject amounts only to a de-mand that thought acknowledge its own contingencies .An y social practice could be treated as a subject, as an idiosy n crati cproduct ion of an ag e . Viewed in this way, the import of a philosophy i slargely a matter of how it relates to and enacts its social and historica lcondi t ions . In "Subject and Object," Adorno approaches Kant withthese concerns and discovers, somewhat ironically, that the remark sKan t makes about "tran scen dental subjectivity" provide a better meas-ure of the empirical subject than Kant 's overt descr ipt ions of "empir i -cal subjectivity ." Kan t, and G erman idealism mor e gen eral ly, incorpo-rated into transcendental subjectivity all the ideals the bourgeois indi-vidual supposedly embodied : creativity, spontaneity, autonomy, andfreedom . But havin g w edded these traits to the tran scen den tal subject ,Kant tacitly betrayed their absence in the lives of empirical subjects .Em pirical life lacks the splen dor of the achievemen ts carried out at th etranscen dental level . For example, TUA un ifies the temporal flow (an dthus all of experien ce), but in a way that n ecessarily can n ever be expe -r ien ced without loss of that unification . Furthermore, the properties o ftranscendental subjectivity are so distinct and foreign to empirical liferemain in this negativity in his effort to free Adorno from the claim that his work o nsubject and object amounts to a regressive nostalgia for a unified ego . While accen tuat-ing the negative moment of Adorno's work accomplishes this, it does little to answe rthe question of its relation to political practice .

22 . Adorno, "On the Historical Adequacy of Consciousness" 102. What is radical i nAdorno's treatment of this point, in contrast to traditional neo-Kantian views, is that i tnot only prioritizes the subject, but also problematizes the status of the " subject," that is ,it raises questions concerning what the demarcation of the " subject" amounts to .


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Michael S ul l ivan and John T Lysaker 10 5

that Kant is only able to locate these ideals within the space of tran-scendental subjectivity via transcendental deduction . While they serveas the condition of the possibility for empirical individuals, they them-selves never become manifest. In a sense, therefore, what Kant gives tothe empirical subject on the one hand - its most prized ideals in tran-scendental subjectivity - he withdraws on the other, because thes eideals are never actualized in the empirical subject . "We" are told of"our" world-making powers, but the "we" is impersonal and faceless ,far removed from the bustle of empirical life .

There is no mistaking the ideological function of the thesis . The morein dividuals are really degr aded to function s of the social totality as i tbecomes more systematized, the more will man pure and simple ,man as a prin ciple with the attributes of creativity and absolute domi -nation, be con soled by exaltation of his min d . (SO 5 00; KG 744 )Ironically, Kant's philosophy, which in elevating the transcendentalsubject effaces the empirical subject, nonetheless provides an accurateportrayal of social life. In rendering creativity, freedom, spontaneity ,and autonomy faceless, Kant captures the impotence of the empirica lsubject before the seemingly external political and social structure sthat dictate its fate .

There are two salient features of Adorno's critique . First, it reveal show, despite Kant's attempt to prioritize the subject, the objec treemerges, rupturing the veneer of a supposedly self-sufficient subjec-tivity . "That even man as a constituens is man-made - this disenchantsthe creativity of the mind" (SO 504; KG 749) . 2 3 The second and moreimportant feature is how a dialectical analysis allows objectivity t oemerge from subjectivity. While "subjectivity" here just refers to thehistorically contingent philosophy of Kant, the manner in which "ob-jectivity" is thought against this "subjectivity" is key . 2 4 Those force sthat are extrasubjective, that inform and constitute existing particular ,individual events (including persons), are "objective . " Every particularidentifiable as such will be a product of the interplay of numerou s

23 . See also ND xx; NDK 8 : "To use the strength of the subject to break throughthe fallacy of constituitive subjectivity - this is what the author felt to be his task eve rsince he came to trust his own mental impulses . "

24 . In place of "objectivity" and "subjectivity," one could here substitute "univer-sal" and "particular" as Adorno himself does at various times throughout the essay .(See, for example, SO 4 9 8 ; KG 741 .)


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"objective" forces. These forces, however, are only analyzable insofaras they emerge in the particular they constitute . This produces some-thing of a paradoxically self-critical nominalism :

The subject's reflection upon its own formalism is reflection o nsociety, and results in a paradox: on the one hand, as the lateDurkheim intended, the form-giving constitutive elements havesocial sources, but on the other hand, as current epistemology ca nboast they are objectively val id ; in Durkheim 's argumentations ,they are already presumed in every proposit ion that demon strate stheir con ting ency . The paradox is l ikely to be at on e with the sub -ject 's objective imprisonment in i tself . (SO 510 ; KG 757 )

We call this a "paradoxically self-critical nominalism" because whil ethere are only particulars, universals having no independent existence ,particulars themselves are but concretions of extrasubjective force sthat in giving shape to particulars are historically contingent "univer-sals ." On the one hand, to say that "[t]he subject's reflection upon it sown formalism is reflection on society" is to highlight the contingenc yof what has been called the universal or objective moment of this para-dox. The universal, the particular's "form," has "objective validity,"but it is a validity that has its roots in historically situated social forces ,not in nature . On the other hand, to speak of "the subject's objectiv eimprisonment in itself" is to undercut the nominalistic aspect of thi sparadox: the particular or subject can only be such within the interplayof universal or objective (that is, extra subjective) social forces .

This self-critical paradoxical nominalism does not appear to answe rAdorno's critics, however, for it can do nothing to further our under -standing of how one might maintain the tension between subject an dobject. The results of the analysis of Kant appear wholly negative ; allthat becomes evident is that releasing the tension of subject and objec tforgets reason's own self-formation . This offers nothing constructive tothe question of political action, except perhaps a repetition of the warn-ing, acknowledged as contentless, not to resolve artificially the tensio nbetween subject and object . More insidiously, Adorno 's attempt to gothrough the subject to extricate critical theory from its precarious posi-tion between "a rock and no-place," seems to have failed . Rather thanhaving achieved extrication, Adorno ' s analysis appears only to hav eheightened critical theory's consciousness of its own impotence .

Closer scrutiny, however, reveals greater gains . The call to go throughthe subject provides critical theory with a powerful strategy. Adorno's


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peculiar self-critical nominalism frees the particular and establishes it asthe locus of concern. This amounts to a demand that critical theory con-sider actual practices in its analyses. In doing so, it arrives at a concret estrategy for pursuing the question of theory and practice . 2 5 What themove to the subject uncovers is relations between subjects and objects ,universals and particulars, already embedded in practices . Theory nolonger finds itself as the custodian of abstract values, chiefly concerne dwith the question of their application . Instead, theory directs itself to es-tablished relations of subject and object, attending to the universals tha temerge therein. It probes these relations for moments of domination, fo rinstances, like those found in Kant, where one moment is denied, the ob-jective-empirical, in favor of the other, the subjective-transcendental .

It might be objected, citing this very analysis of Kant, that Adorno' sproject can serve only to expose notable failures. But what if the proj-ect encountered a practice that maintained the tension between subjec tand object? What if it encountered a practice whose very possibilit yrested upon a self-effacing nominalistic interplay of universal and par-ticular? Perhaps "speculation on the state of reconciliation" alon gthese lines might deepen our understanding of the thought tha t"peace is a state of distinctness without domination, with the distinc tparticipating in each other" (SO 499-500; KG 743) . 2 6

VMartin Jay, in A d o rn o , writes :

Deny ing the possibility of intersubjective commun ications in favou rof aesthetic experience, which was essentially in dividual, does not ,however, sugg est a very plausible progr amme for realizing C r i t ica lTheory's utopian potential . Remainin g "fearlessly passive" in on e ' sepistemology may be un derstan dable as a defen se again st concep timperialism, but i t is hardly a for mula for political activism . 2 725. Perhaps this is what Adorn o has in mind when he wr ites: "In places wher esubjective reason scen ts subjective contin g ency, the primacy of the object is shimmer -ing through - whatever in the object is not a subjective admixture . The subject is th eobject's agen t, not its con stituent : this fact has consequences for the relation of theor yand practice" (SO 506 ; KG 752) .26 . In "A Knowledge That Would Not Be Power, " C alvin Thomas cites this line i norder to disting uish Adorno's sensibility from a "phallic nostalgia for a los tplentitude" (162-63) . He does little, however, to explore the mor e important question ,namely, what mig ht such a state be .27. Martin Jay, Adorno (Cambridge : Harvard UP, 1984) 78 .


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108 Adorno's A rt of Theory and Practice

We see here, once again, the familiar charge that Adorno offers us n o"formula" for polit ical activity . More specifically, Jay claims that in th eturn to aesthetic theory Adorno effectively abandons critical theory ' sefforts to construct a "plausible programme" for realizing its utopia naspi rat ions . 2 8 W e reject Jay ' s analysis for two reasons . Along with cr it ic sl ike Buck-Morss and Kelln er, Jay appeals to an impl ici t cr i t ical meas-ure when he arg ues that Adorn o's work fai ls to produce "a formula fo rpolitical activism ." He assumes an understanding of what such a for-mula could be and then criticizes Adorno for not having one . Thequestion is, however, as we have argued throughout, what could suc ha "formula" be? In the absence of such a measure, Jay's criticismamounts to posturing.

What is also problematic in Jay ' s analysis is where he locate sAdorno's failure - in the turn to aesthetic theory. One could readAdorno's work in aesthetic theory in terms of the analysis exactedupon Kant above ; except in the case of artworks, Adorn o finds a prac-tice that maintains the tension between subject and object. Jay cr it i-cizes the turn to aesthetic theory because it privileg es "aesthetic experi -ence " over the "possibility of intersubjective communications," but itis not clear that Adorno's reflections on art are as concerned with aes-thetic experience as they are with how artwor ks work, how they emerg eout of a "precarious balance" between objective and subjective mo-ments. To read Adorno as privileging aesthetic experience is to mis-read his demand that thought go through the subject . C ast in terms o faesthetic experience, the "subject" is limited to individual human be-ings, but, as argued above, the "subject" refers to any particular prac-tice . Therefore, one could read the turn to aesthetic theory not as th eabandonment of the concern with political action, but as a furtherin gof the questioning we have followed from "Traditional and Critica lTheory" to "Subject and Object": the questionin g of the possibil i ty o femancipatory theory and practice in the need to maintain the tensio nof subject and object.The first notable feature of Adorno ' s remarks on art is that heidentifies artworks as the very maintenance of the tension betwee nsubject and object :

28 . With a different emphasis, Adorno's turn to aesthetic theory is often malignedas an abandonment of all Enlightenment ideals . As Robert Hullot-Kentor points out ,however, a concern with the role of reason in aesthetic judgment is in fact typical ofEnlightenment thinking. See Hullot-Kentor's "Back to Adomo" 14-18 .


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For the art work as well as for aesthetics, subject and object aremoments . Their r elation is dialectical, which means that the sever -al components of art - material, expression, form or whatever-are each simultaneously subjective an d objective . . . . The recipro -cal relationship of object an d subject in ar t works is a precar iou sbalance, not an identity of the two . 2 9

The artwork exists, then, as a force field, as a constellation of moments a tonce both subjective and objective . The crucial questions are: how is itthat artworks exist in this way, that is, how do they maintain this tension ,and what results from this maintenance? We will pursue these question sthrough an analysis of one particular aesthetic moment "construction "- the logic through which individual works of art are organized .

The principle of construction enters the aesthetic force field in oppo-sition to art's nominalistic tendency . The particularity of artworks pres-ents the illusion that art could somehow be purely particular, followin ga logic exclusively its own. Construction belies this illusion. "The needto force the reluctant nominalistic moment to objectify itself brings int obeing the principle of construction . Construction is that form which isneither imposed ready-made from outside nor emerges from the interi-or of works; instead, it springs from their being reflected in subjectiv ereason" (AT 316 ; AT 330) . While construction does give the artwork alogic of its own (particularity is, of course, just a concretion o fextrasubjective forces), it does so only through the manipulation o fthese forces . This logic, however, has no independent standing outsid ethe work, but emerges only as these extrasubjective forces coalesc ewithin the work's particularity. Extrasubjective forces (materials, genres ,themes, etc .) are brought in construction to a problem of form . Theproblem is, how are these forces to be synthesized into a particular ar-rangement? The synthesis of these extrasubjective forces within a prob-lem of form is the reflection of these forces in subjective reason . As be-fore, "subjective" does not refer to the individual artist, but in this case ,to the specificity of a particular problem of form. "The subject in awork of art is neither the viewer nor the creative artist nor some abso-lute spirit. It is spirit, to the extent to which it is embedded in, and me-diated and preformed by, the object" (AT 238 ; A T 248) . 3

29. Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (London: Routledge an d Keagan Paul, 1984 )238 ; Asthetishe Theorie (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1970) 248 . Cited hereafter within thetext as AT and AT .

30. Of the individual artist, Adorno writes that "the artist 's absolute act is of


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In bringing to bear extrasubjective forces on a particular problem o fform, construction is able to appropriate its social inheritance in a criti-cal fashion. Construction's vehicle of resistance is not a transcendenta lmoment of human freedom, but the very problem of form it would re -solve . "[W]orks of art, and that includes the so-called individualisti cones, speak the language of a ` W e, ' not of an `I, ' and they do so to theextent to which they refrain from conforming in some extrinsic fash-ion to that ` W e ' and its idiom" (A T 240; AT 250) . Artworks are able torefrain from conformity because the manner in which they enact theirsocial inheritance does not merely reproduce their historical heritage .In the alignment of extrasubjective forces around a particular proble mof form, such forces are drawn into a new force field and thus trans -formed . New interplays of moments result in new possibilities for or-ganizing extrasubjective forces . In aesthetic construction, therefore ,one can see a glimmer of how one might respond to the need to main-tain the tension between subject and object .

The moment of construction is not without liabilities, however, par-ticularly in an age dominated by instrumental rationality. In the syn-thesis of these extrasubjective forces there is always the risk that a struc -ture of domination may arise :

W hat dist ing uishes con struction from composit ion in the broades tsense - the sense in which we speak for instance of a "pictoria lcomposition" - is the unmitigated subjection not only of all tha tcomes to it from outside but also of all partial momen ts inher en t inthe artistic process. To that extent con s truction is an extens ion o fsubjective domination w hich incr easing ly dissimulates its essence a sit is bein g pushed farther and farther . C on struction tears elemen t sof reality away from their origin al context, altering them in dividuall yun til they become susceptible to a n ew un ity which is as heteron o -mous and super imposed as the or ig in al one . (AT 84; AT 91 )

This danger does not inhere in construction per se, however, but presentsitself only when the principle of construction is "pushed farther and far-ther," hypostatized as th e artistic moment. Construction is only ameaningful moment within its dialectical interplay with mimesis and ex-pression, among others (A T 65-67, 422-23 ; AT 72-74, 452-53) . Further-more, construction is a principle only within particular works and thu sminuscule importance . He mediates between the problem he confronts as a given an dthe solution as it potentially inheres in his material " (A T 23 9 ; A T 2 4 9 ) .


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Michael Sullivan and John T Lysaker 1 1 1

should not be fetishized into an abstract directive fo r all artistic en deavors .C onstructing impeccable diagonals, axes, and vanishin g lin es in apicture, taking an econ omic approach to motifs in m usic - non eof this has an y r elevance un less it is developed in r eference to aparticular picture or composition . This is the on ly use of the ter m"artistic construction" that seems legitimate and does not fetishiz ethe concept of construction . (AT 406; AT 433 )

Thus in situating construction as one aesthetic moment among many,a structure of domination may perhaps be avoided . It is by bringingthese extrasubjective forces into an alignment that can itself be integ-rated with other aesthetic m omen ts that construct ion successful ly pro-duces a particular work of artW e have treated the momen t of construct ion as a microcosm for th eartwork as a w hole . If we reinsert it, however, into a dialectical inter -play with other aesthetic mom en ts, in to the full play of the artwork, a sit were, the reasons for Adorno's turn to aesthetic theory become evi-dent. In the works of an artist the caliber of Beethoven, Adorno find snothing less than the "emancipation of the subject from myth and th ereconciliation of both " (AT 303 ; AT 316) . He writes:

The incom parable achievement of Beethoven , whose music is a sdeeply affected by the nominalistic motif as is Hegel's philosophy ,w as to have injected into intervention (w hich is dem anded by th eproblem o f form) the au tonom y and f reedom o f an increas ingl yself-conscious subject . W hat, in the eyes of a self-subsistent work o fan, looked l ike repression B eethoven legit im ated in term s of i t ssubstance . (A T 315 ; AT 329 )

As before, "subject" must not be mistaken for the individual humanbeing , here Beethoven, but is to be understood in terms of the pract ic ein question, in this instance the part icular work of art . To speak, there -fore, of the "subject's" freedom and autonomy is to speak of its rela-tionship to its social inheritance . Beethoven's work is momentous i nthe way in which i t appropr iates i ts self formation ; n amely, in the man-ner outlined above in the discussion of construction - through a rea-l ign men t of social forces around a form al problem . It does not achiev eits individuality through a deceptive repression of its self-formation ,but rather through its transformation of this inheritance into its own" free " an d "autonomous" particularity .


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In 1944, twenty-five years prior to the publication of A esthet ic T heory ,Adorno found just such a remarkable instantiation of freedom in Bee-thoven's late quartets :

W hen m ortally sick, Beethoven hurled away a n ovel by Sir W alte rScott with the cry : "Why, the fellow writes for money," and ye tproved a most exper ienced an d s tubborn bus inessman in d ispos -in g o f the last quartets, which were a most extreme ren un ciation o fthe market; he is the most outstanding example of the unity o fthose opposites, market and independence, in bourgeois art .Those who succumb to the ideolog y are precisely those who cove rup the con tradiction in stead of takin g i t in to the consciousn ess o ftheir own pr oduction as Beethoven did : he went on to express i nmusic his ang er at losing a few pence, and derived the metaphysica lEs Muss Sein (which attempts an aesthetic banishm ent of the pres -sure of the world by takin g it in to itself) from the housekeeper's de -man d for her mon thly wag es . (DE 157-58 ; DA 180-81 )

In analyzing achievements such as Beethoven's, we can put our fingeron the pulse of Adorno's hope in his turn to aesthetic theory . Whereasthe analysis of construction provides a faint sketch of how one mightproceed to maintain the tension between subject and object, the abov eanalysis points toward what might be possible through such mainte-nance - the existence of particulars free from domination . Art demon-strates such freedom, however, only in a microcosmic sense, given tha tthe aesthetic moment is engulfed by the whole of social relations . Thu sart does not provide us with a ready-made road to freedom, but ratherprods our thinking toward what such freedom could be . Such freedomis, of course, a property of practices, not persons. Persons become freeonly through participation in practices that are themselves free . 3 1

VIIn Adorno ' s readings of the history of music Beethoven's work s

reach heights that remain unsurpassed: "Subsequent to Beethoven ,31 . With this point we take ourselves to be in substantial agreement with Jarneson' s

claim that freedom for Adorno is a question of heteronomy . (See Fredr ic Jameson , LateMarxism [London : Verso, 1990] 82-83 . Cited hereafter as LM .) Jameson, unfortunatelyleaves the content of heteronomy undetermined . In locating freedom as a property ofpractices, not persons, and in specifying as free only those practices that maintain thetension between subject and object, our analysis attempts to overcome this problem.


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Michael Sullivan and John T Lysaker 113

there has not been a single work that matches his late quartets in terms o ftruth content" (AT 298 ; A T 310) . His works reveal and, in some sense ,establish a possibility for maintaining the tension between subject an dobject. And yet, it is not as if, in the interest of adding further conten tto the concept of emancipation, one could continue to produce work sin the manner of Beethoven. Beyond the sobering realization, note dearlier, that artworks embody freedom only in a microcosmic sense, it i salso necessary to recognize that the objective conditions that made Bee -thoven 's achievements possible were unique (AT 298 ; A T 310) . Thus, in -sofar as these conditions have changed, the time for such works has pas -sed . "For the subjective art of Beethoven what is constitutive is the highl ydynamic form of the sonata, and along with that the late-absolutist styleof Viennese classicism, which reached its peak with Beethoven. Nothingof the sort is conceivable again because style has been annulled" (AT295 ; AT 307) . The problem is twofold . Style - " ic]onventions that arein a state of equilibrium, however tentative, with the subject" (AT 293 ;AT 305) - has been annulled due to the increasing impossibility of in-tegrated works in art's loss of its "collective validity, " in its loss of anunderstanding public, in its estrangement from the receptive capacitie sof its audiences and even its critics . 3 2 The grandiose equilibrium tha tcharacterizes so much of Beethoven's work even with its moments o fdissonance is no longer possible without regression into ideology ,without writing as if social reality were itself receptive to such internallydifferentiated complexity. Instead, the social inheritance that mus tnow be formally absorbed into a work of art is precisely its collectiv einvalidity 3 3 Thus, the integral wholeness of Beethoven's works, a

32 . See also Philosophy of Modern Music (New York : Seaburv, 1973) 7-1 1 ; Philosophie de rneuen Musik (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkarnp, 1975) 16-19 . Cited hereafter as PMM and M .Adorno argues here that this process of estrangement leads to a triumph of kitsch ove rthe avant-garde .33. In som e sense, this was already a problem for Beethoven . Adorno writes : "The re-pr ise is the very crux of the sonata form . It endow ed what was decisive since Beethoven -the dynam ics of thematic developmen t - with a retroact ive confirm ation, l ike the effect o fa film on a viewer who stays on after the endin g an d watches the begin nin g all over again .Beethoven m astered this by way of a t o u r d e f o r c e which became his trademark in the opti-mal moment of the final reprise, he presents the result of those dynamics and of that pro-cess as the ratification and justification of the earlier moment, of what had already bee nthere in the first place . This marks his com plicity with the guilt of the gr eat idealist ic sys-tems in philosophy, with the dialectician Hegel, in whom finally the very essence of th eneg ations, and thereby of becomin g itself, flows back in to the theodicy of the already exist -ent. By way of the reprise, then, music - itself a ritual of bourgeois freedom - remains ,like the society in which it exists and which exists in it, in thrall to mythic unfreedom "Mahler (Frankfurt/Main : Suhrkamp, 1960) 127 . Tran slation by Fr edr ic Jameson in LM 17 0 .


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constitutive force in his development of subjects free from domina-tion, is presently an objective impossibility .Beethoven's status for the present is further problematized when

on e realizes that his was, in fact, a "subjective art, " one whose pr inc i -pal variations were brought together within the work ' s developmentthrough his own musical genius . The time of the liberal subject is ,however, over : "the artist has become the mere executor of his own in -tentions, which appear before him as strangers - inexorable demand sof the compositions upon which he is working " (PMM 17 ; PNM 25) .G iven the dissolution of the subject into an in creasing ly seamless socia lwhole, the artist, much like the ego, can no longer pretend to be mas-ter in his or her own house . Beethoven ' s example is, therefore, nolonger exemplary. "Only today, when subjectivity in its immediacycan n o long er be reg arded as the supreme categ ory s in ce i ts real izat io ndepends on society as a whole, does the inadequacy of even Beetho-ven 's solution, which extended the subject so as to cover the whole ,become evident . " 3 4 Two central moments in Beethoven 's productionsof free particulars (integrated compositions and the principle of sub-jective variation) are thus no longer open possibilities . One cannothelp but wonder then, whether our claims in the preceding sectio nwere n ostalg ic at best . We have claimed that Adorno's turn to aesthet-ics gives critical theory an invaluable prod toward thinking concretel ywhat freedom might be, and yet insofar as the prod presupposes th ework of an artist whose time is past, its import is once again suspect .

Given that it may be anachronistic to turn to Adorno ' s analysis o fBeethoven in order to argue for the relevance of his aesthetic work t oquestion s of political practice, i t seems pruden t to explore som e of hi sinvestigations of a more contemporary aesthetic phenomenon, that is ,modernism s5 Whereas Beethoven produced free particulars, modernmusic, according to Adorno, produces only negativity : "Its [modernmusic's] truth appears guaranteed more by its denial of any meanin g

34. Theodor W. Adorno, Prisms (Cambridge : MIT, 1981) 157 ; Kulturkrit ik an dGesellschaft I (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1977) 162.

35. In what follows, we are concerned neither with the accuracy of Adorno's theor yof modernism nor with the possibility that the present, in perhaps being "postmod-em," opens possibilities (e .g ., in popular culture) that escape, as Jameson suggests ,Adorno's criticisms of the culture industry. Our goal is simply to show that despite th eparadoxical negativity of modernist works, Adorno's turn to aesthetics nevertheless pro-vides a concrete future for cr it ical theory . With that in mind, we have limited our discus-sion to a cursory presentation of Adorno ' s reading of Schoenberg' s twelve-tone system .


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in organized society, of which it will have no part - accomplished b yits own organized vacuity - than by any capability of positive mean-ing within itself. Under the present circumstances it is restricted to de -finitive negation" (PMM 20; PNM 28) . Amidst the barbaric achieve-ments of the twentieth century and within an increasing cultural divi-sion of labor, music and art in general no longer find any meaning t ogive voice to. Of course, the import of this atrophy of meaning extend swell beyond the history of musical form. "The subject of modern mu -sic, upon which the music itself presents a case study, is the emanci-pated, isolated, concrete subject of the late bourgeois phase" (PMM57 ; PNM 59) . As social document, therefore, modernist pieces, in thei rlack of meaning, function as de facto obituaries of the liberal subject .

According to Adorno, bourgeois music strives to maintain the integ -rity of the individual work by synthesizing individual moments int othe equilibrium of the whole, by placing a premium upon develop -mental consistency. In an effort to maintain this consistency as th ebourgeois period progressed, an increasing emphasis was placed upo nthe requirements demanded of the work by its thematic material (tha tis, its form) . As noted earlier, such a synthesis is achieved in Beethove nvia the subjective variation of individual moments through the devel-opment of the work; variation occurs, but "the identity of the themati cmaterial remains firmly established" (PMM 55 ; PNM 58) . Brahms fur-ther integrates the principle of variation . In his work, " [s]ubjectifica-tion and objectification are intertwined . Brahms's technique unite sboth tendencies, forcing the lyric intermezzo and academic structur einto meaningful union" (PMM 56-57 ; PNM 59) . In this further unifica-tion nothing coincidental or superfluous takes place. All moments ,both subjective and objective, are thematically derived from the mate-rial of the work itself. At the height of bourgeois subjectivity one see snonidentity in identity . The moments of the work are distinguishe dfrom one another and yet indistinguishable from the thematic materia lof the work itself

Schoenberg's works are an even more radical attempt to preservethe integrity of the work. They exemplify, inexorably, the bourgeoi sprogram of allowing the logic of form to dictate the development of anindividual work, thereby realizing in a hyperbolic manner a principl eof bourgeois subjectivity. In the twelve-tone system, the logic of th erows exhausts the piece by dictating every possibility "Static twelve -tone technique actualizes the sensitivity of musical dynamics in the


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face of the unconscious recurrence of the same . This technique make ssuch a sensitivity sacrosanct . The tone which recurs too early, as well a sthe tone which is `free' or coincidental in the face of totality, become stabo o " (PMM 64; PNM 65) . W hat was freely derived in Beethoven an dBrahm s is, in the twelve-tone sy stem, ordered into formation . Schoen -berg reproduces the n onidentity in identity of his predecessors, yet no tin their mutual interplay ; rather, his works arise in the m utual dissolu-tion of both . 3 6The seam less consistency afforded the subject by the employm ent o fthe twelve-tone system simultaneously ensures the subject ' s disappear-ance . Bourgeois subjectivity originally turned to the logic of form i norder to maintain the integrity of the work . In doing so, it treated ma-terial necessities as means of control - means that could enable th eunhindered, and therefore free, unfolding of the work out of its mate-rial necessity . Instead of providing liberation, however, these mecha-nisms of control became a m eans of enslavement . The twelve-tone sys-tem, in depriving variations of the identity against which they might b enonidentical, deprives them also of their freedom . Each mom ent is as -signed a place with frightening precision, and the subject stands befor ethe work ' s progression in the garb o f a technician . There are no longermoments within the whole but only the whole . "Thus the techniquebecomes the designation of the material, establishing itself as alien t othe subject and finally subduing the subject by its own force " (PM M68 ; P N M 6 8 ) . The tw elve-tone system, in ossifying under the w eight o fits own logic, renders the subject obsolete . In the triumph of the wholeover the particular one loses not only the subject, but otherness per se .Any potential moment (e .g ., expression) external to the logic of thetwelve-tone system is barred entrance into the work from the outset .W hat before gave voice to free particulars through the logic of its for m(that is, the bourgeois musical work), now eo ipso excludes them andgives voice on ly to itself.

In excluding all otherness, in forsaking all reference beyond itself ,the twelve-tone system produces works of art that are wholly withou tmeaning. "The dissolution of the illusory features in the work of ar t[moments outside of the logic of the system] is demanded by its ver y

36 . Adorno writes : "Everything yet nothing is variation ; the procedure of variatio nis again relegated to the material, preforming it before the actual composition begins "(PMM 61 ; PNM 63) .


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consistency. But the process of dissolution - ordained by the meanin gof the totality - makes the totality meaningless" (PMM 70-71 ; PNM 71 ) .In order to have meaning a work must either refer to something outsid eof itself (that is, be symbolic) or be itself internally differentiated such tha tthe interplay of its moments (e .g ., form and expression) give voice to oneanother . Thus, it is dear why Adorno insists that the artworks of moder-nity have no meaning . In existing only within the confines of their ow nlogic such artworks collapse in upon themselves and give voice not totheir engagement with an other but only to their alienation : "[P ]ure iden-tity becomes the identity of what has been annihilated, the identity o fsubject and object in a state of complete alienation . "3 7

Whereas the truth content of Beethoven 's work involves free particu-lars, Schoenberg's twelve-tone sytem eliminates the possibility of fre eparticulars and dissolves the subject in the process . And yet, Adornoclaims, the truth content of the latter is precisely this negativity . WhatAdorno writes of Beckett's play Endgame applies equally here : "Meaningnothing becomes the only meaning " (NTL 261 ; NZL 305) . Meaning-lessness becomes the truth content of twelve-tone works because it ar-ticulates concretely the inevitable despair that riddles attempts t oachieve meaning in alienation .

In an historical hour, when the reconciliation of subject and objec thas been perverted to a satanic parody - to the liquidation of th esubject in objective presentation --- the only philosophy [and music ]which still serves this reconciliation is one which despises this illu -sion of reconciliation and - against universal self-alienation -establishes the validity of the hopelessly alienated, for which a sub -ject itself scarcely any longer speaks . (PMM 27-28 ; PNM 34-35 )

A musical attempt to overcome alienation would succeed only in mys-tifying the conditions responsible for that alienation . Modern musicbecomes true therefore, albeit paradoxically, only in absorbing th eradical untruth of the present social situation . It thus assumes, as i t

37 . Theodor W . Adorno, "Trying to Understand Endgame," Notes to Literature 1(New Y ork : Columbia UP, 1991) 251 ; Noten zur Literatur (Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp )293 . Cited hereafter within the text as NT L and N ZL . Adorno' s analysis of Beckett almostmirrors his analysis of Schoenberg . On Adorno's reading, Beckett's play also collapses inupon itself, thus giving voice to the absurdity of modem subjectivity : "art cannot break espell of a detached subjectivity ; it can only give concrete form to solipsism" (NTL 249 ;249 ; NZL 291) .


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must, its social inheritance, that is, its collective invalidity . 3 8 Trappe dwithin its own tautological logic, modern music can only remain tru ein formally decrying its self-imprisonment .

The stringent brevity and compression of some of Schoenberg' sgreatest movements likewise manifest the unfreedom of the modernage . The characteristic grandiosity of Beethoven's compositions disap-pears in twelve-tone works along with the subjectivity that mediated it .

No works could exhibit greater concentration and consistency o fformal structure than Schoenberg's and W eber n ' s shortest move -ments . Their brevity is a direct result of the demand for th egreatest consistency . This demand precludes the superfluous . Inso doing, this consistency opposes expansion in time, which ha sbeen the basis for the conception of the musical work since th eeighteenth century, certainly since B eethoven . The w ork, the age ,and illusion are all struck by a single blow . Criticism of the exten -sive schema is interlocked with criticism of the content, in terms o fphrase and ideology. M usic, compressed into a moment, is vali das an eruptive revelation of negative experience . It is closely re -lated to actual suffering . (PMM 37 ; PNM 43 )

This brevity and compression of movement captures the withdrawal o fmusic and musical experience into an isolated quadrant within an eve rincreasing cultural division o

between impotence and illusion

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