Theodor Adorno's

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Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014
1-1-1995
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Michael D. Parkhurst
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Parkhurst, Michael D., "Theodor Adorno's "political deficit"." (1995). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February
2014. 1950.
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THEODOR ADORNO'S 'POLITICAL DEFICIT'
A Dissertation Presented
by
MICHAEL D. PARKHURST
Submitted to the Graduate School of the
University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
February 1995
Department of Political Science
© Copyright by Michael D. Parkhurst 1995
All Rights Reserved
'
THEODOR ADORNO'S 'POLITICAL DEFICIT
A Dissertation Presented
by
MICHAEL D. PARKHURST
Approved as to style and content by:
Eric Einhorn, Department Head
Department of Political Science
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My most heartfelt thanks go to the people who sustained
me spiritually and intellectually over the last seven years,
especially Marjorie Abel, Mark Reynolds, Bruce Saxon, Martin
Courchaine, and Renee Heberle.
I'd like to thank my parents for the support and
generosity they've always shown me. I would like to thank
my committee, and the teachers who exemplified for me the
practice of theory.
Finally, in a most non-Adornian gesture, I would like
to dedicate this to two institutions, with whom I had the
pleasure and genuine privilege of working: the GEO and UWW.
iv
ABSTRACT
THEODOR ADORNO'S 'POLITICAL DEFICIT'
FEBRUARY 1995
MICHAEL D. PARKHURST, B.A., REED COLLEGE
Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST
Directed by: Professor Nicholas Xenos
This dissertation explores what some critics have
called the 'political deficit' in the work of Theodor
Adorno; his harsh criticism of late capitalist society seems
to demand some explicit discussion of oppositional or
revolutionary politics, but Adorno refuses any consideration
of political strategy or tactics.
I trace Adorno' s 'deficit' through his analyses of the
economic, psychoanalytic, and cultural dimensions of
contemporary society, to show that much of his work can be
taken as an implicit argument for the irrelevance of any
imaginable form of 'politics, and for the practical
'
impossibility (in the present) of revolutionary politics in
any meaningful sense.
In the middle chapters of the dissertation, I discuss
what Adorno sees as the still potentially liberatory moments
of art and theory, given that praxis has fallen into an
indefinite period of hibernation.
The final chapter attempts an immanent critique of
Adorno' s foreclosure of meaningful politics, arguing that a
v
.
renewal of critical theory will depend upon a more thorough
commitment to the interdisciplinary program Adorno and his
Frankfurt School colleagues attempted. Specifically, social
theory needs to connect the insights of political economy to
cultural analysis and attention to the constitution of
subjectivity
Finally, I suggest some non-Adornian avenues for a
renewal of critical theory, emphasizing two moments whose
political significance has been neglected by both first- and
second-generation critical theory. First, I argue we need
to rescue the dialectic of desire and recognition from
premature Hegelian harmony, to understand the importance of
intersubjectivity for any 'progressive' political project.
Lastly, I argue that critical theory would do well to
incorporate some sustained attention to the meaning and
practice of solidarity, as the positive cohesion necessary
to sustain a political movement.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
iv
ABSTRACT
v
Chapter
INTRODUCTION
1
I. VALUE, DESIRE, AND REASON: THE EROSION
OF SUBJECTIVITY
13
A. Value: State Capitalism & the End of
Liberalism
15
B. Desire: the Obsolescence of the Ego 31
C. Reason: The Obsolescence of Ideology 55
II. AESTHETIC THEORY AND PRAXIS 73
A. Autonomous Art as Praxis 7 6
B. The Culture Industry and Praxis 84
C. A "Politics Industry" 95
D. Monopolies and Markets in the Culture
Industry 104
E. The Death of the Political Subject Ill
III. THE PRACTICE OF THEORY 118
A. Theory as Praxis 119
B. Individuality and Critique 124
C. An Ethic of Negation 139
D. The Limits of Philosophical Praxis 153
IV. DESIRE AND SOLIDARITY: RESUSCITATING POLITICS 163
A. A Message in a Bottle 167
B. Excursus: Hegel and Civil Society 171
Rediscovering Politics 183
C.
D. Renewing Critical Theory 188
E. Recognition and Solidarity 201
BIBLIOGRAPHY
vii
:
INTRODUCTION
In the twenty-three volumes of Theodor Adorno's Gesam-
melte Schriften, there is none titled "Politische Schrift-
enM ; politics seems not to figure very prominently in his
work. At the same time, virtually every paragraph he had a
hand in is informed by a sophisticated and critical parti-
—
sanship in the very best sense: Adorno never allows the
reader to forget that even the most recondite topics are
bound up in a "damaged" state-of-affairs which must be
understood as historical and therefore (potentially) corri-
gible
.
This infamous pessimist asserts over and over again
that a post-scarcity Utopia is a technical possibility. The
industrial revolution and the advent of a truly global
economy have made it possible to dispense with the stick
with which humanity has threatened itself from time immemo
rial
It cannot be denied ... that in the increasing degree of
satisfaction of material needs, in spite of their deforma-
tion by the social apparatus, the possibility of a life
without indigence is incomparably more concretely possible
than before. Even in the poorest lands, no one would need
to go hungry anymore. 1
That people starve under capitalism is for Adorno a fully
sufficient (if hardly exhaustive) indictment of the irrati
nality of the disenchanted economy. While he was no enthu
1