4 Court of Appeal, or, Adorno WithAdornowearriveatahistoricizedaccountofphenomenalityanddis- satisfactionunavailableearlier,developedasitisfromMarx.ForAdorno, thecritiqueoffactperceptionassocialartifactisresearchinthephenom- enologyofideology.Assuch,itsuggestsaculturalexplanationofthemo- tives for phenomenophilia, one echoed in criticism by Fredric Jameson, Mary Poovey, and Jonathan Crary, among others. Adducing Marx’s Eco- nomicandPhilosophicalManuscripts,JamesonremarksinThePoliticalUncon- sciousthat theveryactivityofsenseperceptionhasnowheretogoinaworldin which science deals with ideal quantities, and comes to have little enoughexchangevalueinamoneyeconomydominatedbyconsider- ations of calculation, measurement, profit, and the like. This unused surplus capacity of sense perception can only reorganize itself into a new and semi-autonomous activity, one which produces its own spe- cificobjects,newobjectsthatarethemselvestheresultofaprocessof looking away 154 abstraction and reification, such that older concrete unities are now sunderedintomeasurabledimensionsononeside,say,andpurecolor (or the experience of purely abstract color) on the other. . . . astyle likeImpressionism,whichdiscardseventheoperativefictionofsome interest in the constituted objects of the natural world . . .offers the exerciseofperceptionandtheperceptualrecombinationofsensedata asanendinitself.1 Complementarily, Poovey suggests that one reaction to the consolida- tion of the modern fact is a romantic resistance to “the need to yoke knowledge systems to observed particulars.”2 These readings of romanti- cismandmodernismarguethatthesocialandeconomicdominanceoffact perceptioninthenineteenthandtwentiethcenturiesprovokesacounter- reaction in which invisible (Poovey) or autonomously sensory (Jameson) realms take on the character of “compensation for everything reification bringswithit”(Jameson,PoliticalUnconscious,236). Adorno’s work is a part of the reaction Jameson sketches, and he is himself an analyst of its formation. Adorno connects the developments Jameson observes to the ideological legacy of Hegel’s philosophy of his- tory,attendingespeciallytoHegel’sreformulationofwhatcountsasgiven. To the extent that Hegel’s philosophy is a defense against Kant, Adorno can be seen to enter the discourse of phenomenality and dissatisfaction tofulfillKantianpromisesoverlookedordismissedinthenineteenthcen- tury. From the perspective of the phenomenality/dissatisfaction association, themoststrikingfeatureofAdorno’swritingisitspointeduseof“Schein” to refer, for the first time, to fact perception.3 In the twentieth century, 1. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981),229–230. 2.AHistoryoftheModernFact:ProblemsofKnowledgeintheSciencesofWealthandSoci- ety(Chicago:UofChicagoP,1998),327. 3.TheEnglishtranslationofAestheticTheoryrenders“Schein”as“semblance,”un- derliningthesenseoffalselikenessorfiction;it’silluminatingtopreservetheGerman word,however,becauseitencompassesnotonlysemblance,butthegeneralizedsense ofillusionthatisusuallylinkedtomerephenomenalityandtheradiancethatisitsac- knowledgedattraction. court of appeal, or, adorno 155 “the facts that have been advanced as a counterweight to mere illusion havethemselvesbecomeasortofcloakandsoreinforcetheimpressionof mere illusion [blossen Schein].”4 The uncanny luster of facts absorbed without attention to the conditions that make them appear as they do— fact perception that goes directly to the bloodstream—is the height of Schein.5HenceAdorno’sspecialdislikeofpositivism,whichwouldliketo identify data exempt from the need for historical analysis.6 All kinds of perception are historically bounded, but what we have been calling fact perception is most likely to dispense with a qualifying metalanguage and thekindsofmentalreservationthatitbrings.HerewemightrecallRich- ardMoran’sideathattheproposition“P”inducesbeliefandcommitment more strongly than the proposition “I believe that P.”7 For Moran, this qualifying effect is a reason not to muffle in representations of reflection 4. HF 29; Nachgelassene Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,2001),IV13:45,hereafterNaS. 5.Adornoaddsinthesamebreaththatdialecticsshouldnotsimplyconsistin“the demonstrationthatwhatappearstobeabrutefact[einfactumbrutumentgegentritt]is inrealitysomethingthathasbecomewhatitis,somethingconditionedandnotanabso- lute....Itwould...bejustasfoolishtodemandofhistorythatitshouldconcentrate solelyontheso-calledcontext,thelargerconditioningfactor,asitwouldbeforhistori- ographytoconfineitselftothedepictionofmerefacts”(HF20–21,translationmodi- fied;NaS13:32). 6.T.W.Adornoetal.,ThePositivistDisputeinGermanSociology,trans.GlynAdey andDavidFrisby(London:Heinemann,1976).Seealso,e.g.,HF164andIntroduction toSociology[1993],ed.ChristopheGödde,trans.EdmundJephcott(Stanford:Stanford UP,2000),37. 7.AuthorityandEstrangement:AnEssayonSelf-Knowledge(Princeton:PrincetonUP, 2001),85.Moran’smentorforthispointistheSartreofBeingandNothingness.Adorno complementarilyviewsSartre’sbrandof“commitment”asacelebrationofunfreedom in disguise: “the prescribed form of the alternatives through which Sartre wants to provethatfreedomcannotbelost[dieUnverlierbarkeitvonFreiheit]negatesfreedom” (“Commitment,” Notes to Literature [1974], Vol. 2, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen [New York: Columbia UP, 1974], 79–81, translation modified); Gesammelte Schriften, ed.RolfTiedemann(FrankfurtamMain:Suhrkamp,1986),11:413,hereafterGS.Sim- ilar remarks in Negative Dialectics stress existentialism’s blurred sense of facticity and “existence”:“existentialismraisestheinevitable,thesheerexistenceofmen,tothesta- tusofamentalitywhichtheindividualistochoose,withouthischoice[Wahl]beingde- terminedbyanyreason[BestimmungsgrundderWahl],andwithouttherereallybeing anotherchoice”(NegativeDialectics[1966],trans.E.B.Ashton[NewYork:Continuum, 1992],49–52,hereafterND);GS6:60. looking away 156 facts to which one wants to commit oneself. For Adorno, the fact/value conflation’s coercion of assent to the given is a good reason to maintain awareness of reflection, lest we endorse without noticing it historically conditioned facts that don’t deserve affirmation. In this context, Schein names the “façade of facticity [der sich durchsetzenden Faktizität]” (HF 30; NaS 13:46)—an illusory rhetorical aspect of fact perceptions—that is “boundup”with“theaffirmativepower[Druck]ofsociety.”8Adorno’side- ology critique releases conscientious objectors to the world “as is”—the “thinkingmenandartists[who]havenotinfrequentlydescribedasenseof being not quite there, of not playing along, a feeling as if they were not themselvesatall,butakindofspectator”(ND363;GS6:356).Likereal- ism,ideologycritiqueassumesthatthepersonwhotarriesinappearanceis tacitlycriticaloffactperception;unlikerealism,itvalidatesthatcriticism, and dismisses any need to apologize for reservations about whether “this could be all” (ND 363; GS 6:356). Any embarrassment should be on the sideoffactsthathavethenervetopresentthemselvesasnecessities.9 Protestingagiven,then,includingprotestthattakestheformofseeing a fact with mental reservation as Schein, not only is distinguished by Adorno from “denying” fact, but is the opposite of denial. Adorno illus- trates this point to his Frankfurt students by recalling “the experience of havinghishousesearchedearlyintheNationalSocialistregime”(HF19; NaS 13:30). The house search exceeds the distinction between fact per- ceptionandperceptionofSchein: 8.AestheticTheory[1970],trans.RobertHullot-Kentor,ed.GretelAdornoandRolf Tiedemann(Minneapolis:UofMinnesotaP,1997),110,hereafterAT;GS7:168. 9.Socialfactspotentenoughtobepossiblynaturalaretheonesmostatissue,which is to say that the question of the natural cannot help being at issue. Kantian critique renderstimeandspace,butnotqualitativeexperiencesoftimeandspace,leavingroom forthesocial/naturalambiguity.Whatshouldcountasaconceptandasanintuitionare historical,asJ.M.BernsteinpointsoutinhisanalysisofAestheticTheory(TheFateof Art:AestheticAlienationfromKanttoDerridaandAdorno(UniversityPark:PennState UP, 1992), 198–200; see also page 166 below); similarly, Adorno insists that “natural beauty”“isatitscorehistorical”(AT65;GS7,102).WhenAdornocitesapprovingly Hegel’sideathat“theconsciousnessofapeople”is“likeanecessity;theindividualis raisedinthisatmosphereandknowsofnothingelse”(ND327;GS6:321),hisemphasis isonthesuitabilityofnecessityasafigure.Later,AdornowillstressthatHegelianne- cessitiesarestillonlyquasinecessities. court of appeal, or, adorno 157 theveryconceptof“fact”ensuresthatitcannotbeinsulatedfromits surrounding environment—just as I could probably not have really experiencedthathousesearchifIhadnotconnecteditinmymindwith the political events of the winter and spring of 1933. If all that hap- pened was that two relatively harmless officials belonging to the old policeforcehadturneduponmydoorstep...myexperiencewould havebeenquitedifferentfromwhatitwas....Afurtherfactorshould not be overlooked, if the dialectic is not simply to degenerate into somethinglikeasuperstitionoratrivialpursuit[leeresSpiel].Byre- ferring something back to the conditions that prove immediacy to have been conditioned, you do indeed strike a blow against immedi- acy, but that immediacy survives nonetheless. For we can speak of mediation only if immediate reality, only if primary experience, sur- vives.(HF20–21;NaS13:31–32;seealsoND301) The dissociation between the incident’s malignancy and its “relatively harmless”strictlyempiricalfeatures,aswellasitsutterlackofalegitimate rationale,giveitillusionisticqualitiesthatarepartofits“primaryexperi- ence.” The illusory core of the incident is one of the main facts about it: notexperiencingitasScheinwouldnotmakeitanymorefactive,andab- stractingitsfullfacticitywouldnotmakeone’sunderstandingoftheevents of 1933 clearer or more complete. To the contrary: a fact like the house search “is both an actuality and at the same time a socially necessary illu- sion[gesellschaftlichnotwendigerSchein]”—asAdornoremarksinalater lecture of “the organic nature” of an ideological society as a whole (HF 118;NaS13:170;seealsoND327). IagreewithJameson,then,that“virtuallythecentralissueraisedbythe relationship between the universal and the particular . . . iswhat Adorno will call positivism (along with its accompanying value, ‘nominalism’),” if onemeanspositivism“inasgeneralizedaculturalandintellectualfashion as possible.”10 Adorno does use the term broadly, and seldom attempts to present positivist philosophers’ views. Rather, “positivism” stands for one pole of fact/value conflation, in which value emanates unidirectionally 10. Fredric Jameson, Late Marxism: Adorno, or, The Persistence of the Dialectic (New York:Verso,1990),89. looking away 158 fromaparsimoniouslyempiricalconstructionoffact.WhileJamesonem- phasizes Adorno’s polemic against positivism, I’ll emphasize equally his polemicagainstthecounterforcethatappearsparentheticallyinJameson’s comment as “nominalism” and also informs idealism. Adorno knows that everything depends on what counts as a fact, and takes exception to con- venient uses of the fact/value conflation in either direction. Positivism locks too much out of the category of fact, yet self-servingly inclusive ontologiescanelicitfromAdornostatementsofwhichanypositivistwould beproud.ToliveuptoAdorno’smeticulousanalysisofexperience,every- one,includingthepositivist,hastopaymore,notless,attentiontofactsand valuesalike.11 1. critique of facticity Nineteenth-centurysocialthoughtfromHegelandMarxtoDurkheimre- turnsagainandagaintothepeculiarrealityofthesocialfact.Marx’spages on commodity fetishism remain the most vivid example of this line of thought for contemporary readers.12 Adorno is haunted by Durkheim’s characterization of the fait social that feels like an impenetrable “thing,”13 and reminds his students that anyone who has had the impression of “‘run[ning] into a brick wall [auf Granit beisst]’” has experienced the violence of the social fact (Introduction to Sociology, 36; see also 50–51, 77; NaS 15:66). As Adorno’s lectures on sociology show, nineteenth-century thought draws his attention to the urgency of this enigma. What is uniquelyAdorno’sishisrealizationthattheartworkistheotheroftheso- cialfact(andhenceofthecommodity)14tosuchadegreethataphilosophy 11.Itfollowsthat“thestrongestargumentagainstapositivistviewofsocietyisthat, inplacingtheconceptofexperiencesofarintheforegroundinthenameof‘empiri- cism’or‘logicalempiricism,’itactuallyfettersexperience”(IntroductiontoSociology,51; NaS15,90). 12.KarlMarx,Capital[1867],trans.BenFowkes(NewYork:Vintage,1977),1:163ff. 13.ÉmileDurkheim,TheRulesofSociologicalMethod[1912],ed.StevenLukes,trans. W.D.Halls(London:Macmillan,1982).Durkheim’saccountisallthemorehaunting becauseitisuncomplaining,writtenfromwithintheenigma. 14.SeeAT236;GS7:350–351. court of appeal, or, adorno 159 thataimstoexplainsocialfacthastoberewrittenfromtheperspectiveof aesthetics and vice versa. This philosophy and aesthetics—or to be more exact, the hybrid enterprises that replace them—are the complementary projects of Adorno’s late books, Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory. They constitute between them the dialecticization of the discourses of phenomenalityanddissatisfaction. Adorno’s attitude toward fact perception in his late work resembles Hegel’s toward public opinion, that it “is to be respected as well as despised [ebenso geachtet als verachtet].”15 Now, “respect [Achtung]” is the senti- ment Kant matches to “objective liking” (CJ 210)—the minimal consent one gives to facts simply by absorbing their existence. As Ferenczi ob- serves,factrecognitionismarkedbyadmissiontotherealmofcalculation; howevergrudgingly,we“reckonwith”facts.Publicopinion,forexample, may hold little insight, and yet the fact that people think something has to be reckoned with. Respecting facticity, objective liking respects pre- ciselythekindofexistencethatKantianaestheticssetsaside.Wemayalso count as facts, however, ontologies even more ambiguous than that of public opinion; and there are of course divergent approaches to what ought to count and why. Adorno’s rereading of Hegel belabors a sig- nificant difference between Hegel and himself in this regard: Hegel con- flates value with fact far more readily, and is generous and inconsistent aboutwhatcountsasfact—atreacherouscombination.Thismayseemto be a counterintuitive conclusion. Adorno’s contempt for positivism sug- gests that he himself would like a more capacious approach to fact; since “dialectics is necessarily and permanently concerned with the critique of mere facticity” (HF 19; NaS 13:30), as Adorno points out, and Hegel is none other than the philosopher most responsible for the historicization of facts, one might think that Hegel’s critique of facticity would suit Adorno. And it does, up to a point. Nonetheless, Adorno’s early-sixties thought concludes that Hegel’s critique, unlike his own, enlarges the do- 15. G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991), 355; Werke (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,1970),7:485.Adornoisfondofthiscatchphraseandechoesitin“Skoteinos, orHowtoReadHegel,”inHegel:ThreeStudies[1963],trans.ShierryWeberNicholsen (Cambridge:MITP,1993),113,hereafterHTS;HF93;andIntroductiontoSociology,7. looking away 160 main and strengthens the value of social fact, and with it the affirmative powerofsociety.ThisconclusioninstigatesAdorno’slongreplytoHegel andMarxinNegativeDialecticsandAestheticTheory. ItiseasiertounderstandhowHegelcancometobeseenasthecham- pionoffactwhenwerecallthata“fact”isnotmereexistencebutexistence recognized conceptually, already raised to consciousness. The notion of facticity registers the way in which value in Hegel is attached to history. (AsTimothyBahtiarguesofHegel’sLecturesonthePhilosophyofHistory— in perceptual language—unimportant events “rot away” from historical consciousness;they“vanishlikeadeceptiveappearance.”)16 Between 1957 and 1969 Adorno alludes repeatedly to Hegel’s phrase “thecourseoftheworld[derWeltlauf].”17InHistoryandFreedomAdorno introduces “the course of the world,” among “various turns of phrase” such as “‘the logic of things,’” as a reasonable synonym for world spirit (HF 27, translation modified; NaS 13:42). I’ll return momentarily to this correlation. First, however, let’s note that Adorno identifies the course of theworldwithworldspiritatjustthistime.In“AspectsofHegel’sPhilos- ophy”(1957)AdornodefendsHegelagainstthecomplaintthathedisplays “acomplicity[Einverständnis]withthecourseoftheworld”(HTS45;GS 5:290); by History and Freedom, he describes precisely that complicity as a necessaryeffectofHegel’sphilosophyinacid,psychological,andnearlyad hominemterms(whicharethenmoderatedagaininthemorepublicutter- anceofNegativeDialectics;forthisreason,I’llemphasizeHistoryandFree- domthroughout).In“Aspects”heassertsthatHegel’sphilosophyis“essen- tially negative” and that Hegel “denounced the world, whose theodicy constituteshisprogram,initstotalityaswell”(HTS30;GS5:275–276);in “Skoteinos,orHowtoReadHegel”(1963),themidpointofAdorno’sre- interpretation, he still opines that “with incomparable tact, even the later chaptersofthePhenomenologyrefrainfrombrutallycompactingthescience oftheexperienceofconsciousnessandthatofhumanhistoryintoonean- 16.AllegoriesofHistory:LiteraryHistoriographyafterHegel(Baltimore:JohnsHopkins UP,1992),97. 17. Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977), 401–412.See“AspectsofHegel’sPhilosophy”(1957),inHTS45;HF27,43,47,51, 59–68,72;ND318;AT49. court of appeal, or, adorno 161 other,” rather allowing them to “hover, touching, alongside one another” (HTS 142; GS 5:371). At the outset of History and Freedom, however, Adornoannouncesthat“inHegelhistoryisregardedimmediatelyasprog- ress in the consciousness of freedom, such that consciousness for Hegel amountstoarealizedfreedom”(HF3;NaS13:9);andthelecturesintheir entiretyarguethat,deployingan“affirmativeconstructionofhistory”(HF 49;NaS13:73),Hegel“interpretsthisprimacyoftheuniversal,thisactual primacyoftheconcept,asifitmeanttheworlditselfwereconcept,spirit, andtherefore‘good’”(HF43;NaS13:65).Whatemergesthroughthearc of Adorno’s Hegel-centric works is the thesis that Hegel’s creation of a new kind of facticity—the facticity of those particulars that have a course, thatis,ofhistoryastheongoingactivityofspirit—expandscompulsoryaf- firmation. Adorno locates Hegel in the tradition of fact/value conflation in a re- markable passage of History and Freedom, in his lecture of November 24, 1964. Having just suggested that Hegel’s “hypostatization of reason” can be interpreted as “the hypostatization of mankind as a species . . .that maintains itself as a whole” over individual claims (HF 44; NaS 13:67), Adornocontinues: the human race in fact [tatsächlich] can only survive in and through the totality. The only reason why the optimism [Geschichtsoptimis- mus]ofthephilosophyofabsolutespiritisnotameremockeryisbe- causetheessenceofalltheself-preservingactsthatculminateinthis supremeconceptofreasonasabsoluteself-preservationisafterallthe meansbywhichhumanityhasmanagedtosurviveandstillcontinues todoso.Andithassucceededindoingsodespiteallthesuffering,the terrible grinding of the machinery and the sacrifices of what Marx would have called the forces and means of production. The infinite weakpointofeverycriticalposition(andIwouldliketotellyouthatI include my own here) is that, when confronted with such criticism, Hegelsimplyhasthemorepowerfulargument.Thisisbecausethere isnootherworldthantheoneinwhichwelive,oratleastwehaveno reliableknowledgeofanyalternativedespiteallourradarscreensand giantradiotelescopes.Sothatweshallalwaysbetold:everythingyou looking away 162 are, everything you have, you owe, we owe to this odious totality, eventhoughwecannotdenythatitisanodiousandabhorrenttotal- ity.18(HF47;NaS13:71–72) Bycallingthephilosophyofspiritakindof“optimism,”Adornoappends it to the debate set off by the Berlin Academy’s 1755 essay contest “All is right” (discussed in Chapter 2), in which Leibniz and Kant participated. Moreover,heechoesKant’soutlineofthedilemmafacedbyreasoninthe First Critique, namely whether and how to go about confirming that one must reconcile oneself to the given world after all “because there is no otherworldthantheoneinwhichwelive,oratleastwehavenoreliable knowledge of any.” Adorno doesn’t much like this moment of the First Critique; like most readers, he interprets it in isolation from the passages on transcendental illusion and hears Kant’s acceptance as robust rather than minimal—he finds in it at best the “self-satisfied, manly resignation ofaphilosophysettlingdownintheexternalmundussensibilis”(ND73;GS 6:80).Hegel’srebellionagainstthispassageoftheFirstCritiquecouldbe said to drive his entire project, and Adorno agrees strongly that Kant’s conclusionsshouldnotbeusedinthepositivistwaytopersuadehumanity to “affix itself to the finite” (ND 383; GS 6:376). Nonetheless, Adorno’s placing Hegel next in line in the chronicle of optimists indicates that he does no better (and since I don’t share Adorno’s reading of the First Critique, to me Hegel’s contribution looks even worse than it does to Adorno—itlookspositivelyregressive).HegelhistoricizesKant’scognitive understanding of human limitation in order to inject history with exi- gency,makingitseemcircumscribing.Sincebydefinitionthehumanspe- cieshasnootherhistorythantheonethathasoccurred,“italwayslooksas if human beings and the course of the world that is imposed on them are trulysimilarinnature,aregenuinelyidentical....asifwehadnorightto complain about the course of the world that has made people what they are”(HF72;NaS13:107).AsKantdemonstrateshowtoidentifyexigency through critique, Hegel invents a method—Hegelian dialectic—for re- vealing social facts as effective exigencies, given-substitutes. In the end, 18. See also HF 43, on Hegel’s “realism,” and ND 300–360, especially 303–304, 319–320.