Archive for the ‘adorno’ Category
“anal sounds” and communism
From a transcript of Horkheimer and Adorno trying to talk out a new version of the Communist Manifesto published in the new NLR:
ADORNO: How does it come about that work is regarded as an absolute? Work exists to control the hardships of life, to ensure the reprod-uction of mankind. The success of labour stands in a problematic relationship to the effort required. It does not necessarily or certainly reproduce the lives of those who work but only of those who induce others to work for them. In order to persuade human beings to work you have to fob them off with the waffle about work as the thing in itself.
HORKHEIMER: That’s how it is among the bourgeoisie. This was not the attitude of the Greeks. The young worker on the motorbike treats work as his god because he enjoys riding the bike so much.
ADORNO: But even if he really does enjoy it, that subjective happiness still remains ideology.
HORKHEIMER: But if you were to tell him about our idea that it is supposed to be enjoyable, he would find that hard to understand and would rather we left him in peace.
ADORNO: All that is delusion.
HORKHEIMER: Yes and no. It really does call for great effort.
ADORNO: So does riding a motorbike.
HORKHEIMER: That is an objectively measurable effort; he is happy to make it. His true pleasure in motorbike riding is in the anal sounds it emits. We just look foolish if we try to give explanations that are too precise.
book now at the grand hotel abyss, brighton
REGISTRATION NOW OPEN FOR ADORNO- 40 YEARS ON
The conference will take place 6th of August in the IDS Building on
the campus of the University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RE (see map
below).
The conference will be free-of-charge. However, places will be limited
so please register beforehand to avoid disappointment.
Anyone wishing to attend the conference should register via email to
Simon Mussell: s.p.mussell@sussex.ac.uk
Speakers include
Prof. Max Paddison – University of Durham
(Chair: tbc)
“Aesthetics, Politics, and the Ideology of Nature: Adorno Reconsidered”
Prof. Alexander Duettmann – Goldsmiths
(Chair: Keston Sutherland)
“Kafka, Adorno, and the Life of the Letter”
Dr. Drew Milne – University of Cambridge
(Chair: Gordon Finlayson)
“Ideology and Idiolects: Adorno and the Grammar of Argument”
Please see here for further details.
the impoverishment of experience
From a grimly funny post at Socialism and/or barbarism, this is from Adorno’s Negative Dialectics:
This law is however not one of thinking, but real. Whoever submits to dialectical discipline, must unquestionably pay with the bitter sacrifice of the qualitative polyvalence of experience. The impoverishment of experience through dialectics, which infuriates mainstream opinion, proves itself however to be entirely appropriate to the abstract monotony of the administered world. What is painful about it is the pain of such, raised to a concept.
Having woken early by dream jolt, and having read this passage again, I wondered just now what Adorno’s dreamlife was like, given the not unfamiliar pattern of feeling (or non-feeling) described above. I had no idea that the following existed when I asked Google my question of the morning, but at the low price of ₤6.75 (second-hand, shipping included) I’ll find out in a few days. The publisher’s webpage promises that “Brothel scenes, torture and executions figure prominently.”
