GRGR(16): Adorno on Reverential Silence

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

Peter Petto schrieb:

> As I was reading the recent issue of Lingua Franca, a quote from Theodor 
> Adorno brought our recent discussion of meaningful silences to mind:

> >"In America, I was liberated from a certain naive belief in culture," he 
> >confessed shortly before his death in 1969. In Europe, he had simply taken 
> >for granted "the fundamental importance of the mind -- 'Geist.' ... The 
> >fact that this was not a foregone conclusion, I learned in America, where 
> >no reverential silence in the presence of everything intellectual prevailed."

> It made me wonder what TRP would say about the fundamental importance of 
> the mind, wonder what he is saying about it in GR, and wonder whether this 
> American/European distinction is valid.


  Yes, the "Hippopotamus King Archibald" (- that's how Adorno was internally 
  called by his homeboy Horkheimer) was liberated by America in more than one 
  way. Having escaped the Holocaust he, like many others in his situation, later 
  suffered from the 'survivor trauma'. Also after his return to Germany he was 
  quite concerned about keeping his American citizenship. Regarding the "belief 
  in culture" there, nevertheless, wasn't a complete change in his views. 
  Confrontated with American popular culture, and sobered by the macro crimes (- 
  though he later, in the "Negative Dialektik", corrected himself with view on 
  Paul Celan, his "To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbarian" was influential 
  on left intellectual post war Germany as hardly anything else), he changed 
  from a "naive" to an "elaborated belief in culture". This genius, who studied 
  composition at Alban Berg & knew people like Schönberg, Thomas Mann (- in 
  "Doktor Faustus" Adorno did far more than the music theory ...)Reich or Brecht 
  from face-to-face communication, went once a year to Paris where he visited   
  partys with relatives of the aristocrats Proust is writing about in his "A la 
  recherche ...". But the sociologist, he also was, was challenged forever by 
  his observation that the collective ignorance of intellectual high priest 
  ambitions creates a mentality which is closer to Rousseauian freedom than the 
  one you usually find in serious old Europe. Though TWA has written terribly 
  'reactionary' things on popular culture, he was also deeply fascinated (- 
  quite similar to TRP's view on S/M ...). This is beautifully expressed in one 
  of Henscheid's fictional Frankfurt School anecdotes: One day in the 60s     
  Adorno, doing a lecture on aesthetics, is asked by a student, whether his     
  condemnation of Jazz is is also true for the Beatles. Very very long Adorno   
  thinks about this and says then: "Yes, for them too". The funny thing about   
  it is that Adorno never needed to think a long time to give printable       
  answers. Furthermore, he would, even if asked for the time, never have given  
  such a simple answer. But maybe this kind of humor is too German. So I give   
  you a really funny one of TWA's 'reactionary' aphorisms [- Parental Advisory: 
  Explicit Content]: "In Anglo-Saxon countries the whores look as if they give  
  you with sin at the same time torment of hell" (m.o.p.a.t. from "Minima   
  Moralia", p. 55). Many important German post war intellectuals/writers have 
  learned crucial things from America. Horkheimer, Adorno, Uwe Johnson,   
  Theweleit, Martin Walser, Jörg Fauser, Habermas, Diedrich Diederichsen, 
  Luhmann, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann & Rainald Goetz (- tonight I'm gonna watch his 
  new play "Jeff Koons" together with Lars in the Hamburger Schaupielhaus). Of  
  course there were others, like Ernst Bloch, Enzensberger or Grass, who, though 
  they were overseas personally, have rejected the American experience and have 
  a certain reputation because of this. Celebrating their Anti-American slips   
  makes some German intellectuals feel like being Che Guevara or someone. And   
  don't ask how it was in early '91 (- the second Gulf war): Intelligent people 
  buying the supermarkets empty, hanging sheets out of their windows with   
  slogans like "Don't kill us!" & saying on demonstrations things like "We   
  Germans know what war brings to the people" without getting red. Oh dear ... 
  No, the only true cultural strategy for post war German intellectuals/artists 
  is to give up all high priest ambitions, roll up a big one and mix it all   
  together: Oldest Hebrew, newest Afro-American  & all the classic shit in   
  between ...  
                                                Nichtidentisch, KFL
  
  PS: Luhmann, who studied Parsons around 1960 at Harvard & taught regulary at  
  American universities, in an interview: "In case of the USA this [the bad 
  reputation of intellectuals - KFL] has not in the first place to do with   
  ressentiments against science or the social sciences, but with doubts about 
  the high aspirations of general theory. This is particulary true for all 
  things in the political tradition and concerning political opinions. Though 
  the relations of the great universities and Washington are very close, 
  'eggheads' are not liked, and it is expected of an intellectual that he 
  expresses himself in an understandable way and that he says something 
  practical on things themselves". (m.o.p.a.t. from Archimedes und wir, p. 16).

  PPS: 'Der Spiegel': "Professor Adorno, two weeks ago, the world still seemed  
        to be allright ..."
        Hippopotamus King Archibald [- interrupting]: "Not to me".