tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8708273719674528189.post1081152332260478917..comments2024-03-22T00:20:38.510-07:00Comments on Adam Riggio writes: Contradictory Heritage, A History Boy, 08/09/2017Adam Riggiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14606510835439580828noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8708273719674528189.post-69425076419925088902017-09-08T15:28:42.438-07:002017-09-08T15:28:42.438-07:00Yeah, not sure about this reading to be honest. Fo...Yeah, not sure about this reading to be honest. For one thing, I think it's worth noting that Adorno doesn't see capitalism as a decisive break from other forms of human society. We always had an instrumental relationship to the world; capitalism has just given us way, way more powerful tools for dominating it. Of course, capitalism's also much more totalistic than previous forms of social organisation in Adorno's view.<br /><br />More importantly, though, Adorno actively opposes any kind of positive account or model of emancipation, and the Nature = God reading certainly is just such a positive account. I think you need to read his discussion of instrumentalisation and domination in the context of his negative dialectic, i.e. that we can only be emancipated by thinking against our conceptual frameworks, in order to draw attention to what they exclude. In particular, the way that they obscure the existence of real, concrete suffering. Through this negative dialectic, which is a constant, ongoing process, we can become more and more emancipated. But, it provides no account at the beginning of what that emancipation would look like; there's no end goal set out for us, and certainly doesn't give us a simple model like "We should reject instrumentalisation and be one with nature."Michael Hemmingsenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05390854349398626567noreply@blogger.com