Thinking as Gesture: A Note on Dialectic of EnlightenmentAuthor(s): Alexander García DüttmannReviewed work(s):Source: New German Critique, No. 81, Dialectic of Enlightenment (Autumn, 2000), pp. 143-152Published by: New German CritiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/488550 .Accessed: 02/06/2012 13:47

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Thinking as Gesture: A Note on Dialectic of Enlightenment

Alexander Garcia Duittmann

The idea that there is a relationship between thinking and exaggera- tion, which proves to be constitutive of thinking itself and its presenta- tion, is an idea Adorno repeatedly formulates without ever expressly and systematically developing. Because this relationship is meant to allow thinking to relate to truth, the lack of a systematic development cannot be explained as the result of a simple omission on the part of the philosopher. The question must be raised whether Adorno's idea does not in itself amount to an exaggeration. Does the exaggeration of think- ing not thwart the attempt to develop a thought systematically? Does the absence of a systematic development of the idea that the very con- stitution of thinking depends on exaggeration not result from exaggera- tion itself, from the impossibility of justifying it?

Every justified exaggeration is no longer an exaggeration. Once justi- fied, exaggeration is either an external device or a necessary limitation of thought. In both cases it ceases to be an exaggeration which consti- tutes thought and its claim to truth; indeed it ceases to be an exaggera- tion capable of constituting thought and its claim to truth. The external device may serve the purpose of rhetorical emphasis, yet strictly speak- ing its function cannot be justified from the point of view of thought. Thought as such stands in no need of rhetorical emphasis. Thus, exag- geration does not constitute a thought it emphasizes rhetorically. As soon as it has been justified as a rhetorical device or supplement, it also ceases to be an exaggeration. It has been domesticated.

A necessary limitation, on the other hand, belongs to thinking itself.

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144 Thinking As Gesture

The moment critique has elucidated this belonging, the necessary limita- tion can no longer be viewed as an exaggeration that is active in even' thought. The insight into thinking and its predisposition to deviate, to overshoot the object it deems to grasp cognitively, is indebted to a cri- tique which understands that exaggeration is an illusion, even if it locates the necessity of the illusion in the very structure of thinking. Once again the justified exaggeration no longer appears to be an exaggeration. To the extent that it is justified, it pertains to the past of an uncritical or pre- critical thinking. Given that any justification of an exaggeration can always be identified as an actualization of one of these two possibilities, one may state that in general there are no justified exaggerations, or that exaggerations can be justified only at the price of their relinquishment.

We seem to be moving in a circle. On the one hand, the assertion that thinking is in essence exaggeration rouses the suspicion of being an arbitrary assertion, an unjustified exaggeration, which has nothing to do with thinking. On the other hand, the systematic development of the idea that exaggerations are constitutive of thinking, a development which alone can render this idea plausible, leads to its own negation and thereby annuls the possibility of an insight. To define insight in terms of an intuition or an inspiration at odds with any systematic development and justification, does not open the circle, for to give such a definition means to renounce thinking.

The circle which envelops thinking and prevents it from being free, or, more precisely, which comprises thinking within its movement, can be described as a peculiar dialectic of enlightenment. Enlightenment seeks a way out of exaggeration, an escape from the overwhelming experience, which thought cannot penetrate and which Adorno and Horkheimer designate as myth. Yet the further it proceeds in its destruc- tion of the mythical, the more it falls prey to myth and engenders the mythical. An entirely enlightened thought, a thought which, having become identical to itself, as it were, would meet no resistance and would be just as little a thought as a mere exaggeration ever is.

That it is at all possible to speak of such a dialectic of enlightenment and of such a circle in which thinking is caught up presupposes that the circle is not closed and that the dialectic does not consummate itself undisturbed. At this point, all that can be said about the openness of the circle is that it cannot result from a justification of exaggeration. How does thinking relate to the exaggeration it is meant to be, and what is it

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that institutes the relation to truth which characterizes the exaggerating thought, if exaggeration cannot be justified and if that which remains unjustified cannot be transformed into a substitute for a justification, a substitute alien to the claims of thought? To put it differently, how does enlightenment relate to myth if myth is not an illusion, which can be recognized and done away with, and if enlightenment is not to be submitted to myth either?

It could be objected to the analogical treatment of these two questions that however enigmatic, the unusual thesis of thinking as exaggeration remains a positive claim, while any claim about the relationship between myth and enlightenment must be a negative or critical claim. But such an objection is acceptable only if one constructs a "causal" link between the two theses by means of which Horkheimer and Adorno summarize the argument of their work in the preface to Dialectic of Enlightenment. In the end, the construction of a "causal" link amounts to an arbitrary separation of myth and enlightenment. Strictly speaking such a "causal" link can only exist between myth and enlightenment as historical forces, not between the two theses. Because myth is already enlightenment, enlightenment must relapse into myth or, to quote verbatim, into "mythology." An interpretation which presupposes a "causal" link between myth and enlightenment and which therefore entails the neces- sity of a critical approach can refer to a passage from the first part of Horkheimer and Adorno's book: "To be sufficiently strong to shatter myths, thinking must do violence to itself."' Enlightenment is capable of shattering myths and hence does not oppose them as something com- pletely heterogeneous and incommensurable. Myth is itself historical, the result of an early process of enlightenment (a fact Horkheimer and Adorno try to establish in their exposition of the concept of enlighten- ment) and contains within itself the possibility of enlightenment (a fact Horkheimer and Adorno try to establish in their excursus on the Hom- eric epic). Enlightenment for its part implies the possibility of the mythi- cal, of a violent reification, and can assert itself against myth only to the extent that it becomes mythical (a fact Horkheimer and Adorno try to establish in their reconstruction of the "prehistory" of anti-Semitism). Thus, the homogeneity and commensurability which link myth and enlightenment to each other can be gauged from a threefold implication.

1. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1972) 4 [trans. modified - AGD].

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Enlightenment steps forth in the figure of myth and from the figure of myth, yet inasmuch as it steps forth from the figure of myth, enlighten- ment also assumes a mythical form. The interpretation of the dialectic of enlightenment which creates a "causal" link between this threefold impli- cation and the relapse of enlightenment into "mythology," cannot but cur- tail the comprehension of the proposition that myth is already enlightenment. Doubtless, this interpretation proceeds from the homoge- neity and commensurability of myth and enlightenment, but only in order to set up an abstract opposition and subordinate the homogeneity and commensurability to a heterogeneity and incommensurability. It ends up playing enlightenment off against myth, and myth against enlightenment. That enlightenment bears mythic traits means that it can never wholly and without residue turn into myth, just as little as myth can never sim- ply turn into enlightenment. The dialectic of enlightenment is not a sche- matic and final conversion of one into the other, it is not a conversion, which ends with a final result. Because enlightenment is inherently entan- gled with myth, because it is determined by a resistance against which the enlightened thought must measure itself, because it is non-identical or at odds with itself, the relapse into "mythology" can only signify a ten- dency and, consequently, an exaggeration - a tendency brought about by the tension which drives myth and enlightenment apart while also relat- ing these two homogeneous and heterogeneous forces to each other.

The dialectic of enlightenment is therefore also misjudged by a criti- cism which denounces its presumed inevitability or ineluctability as a dogmatic totalization or hypostasization, referring to this exaggeration as an occasion for distinguishing between an enlightenment which remains under the spell of myth and an enlightenment which has been purified by communication theory. For even a form of enlightenment purified by communication theory must depend on something mythical, on something which proves to be heterogeneous when compared to a communication guided by reason, at least if the transparency it pursues is not to coincide with the opacity of myth, thereby confirming the denounced schema. An example will clarify this constitutive depen- dency. In the introductory and paraphrasing section of his notes on a philosophical justification of discourse ethics, Habermas speaks of the dialectical force field extending between the acting and observing agents, between the perspective of an individual "who belongs to a life world" and the perspective of a moral philosopher who objectifies this

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world. He thus draws attention to the fact that ethics is kept alive by the impossibility of unifying both perspectives, by the blind spot which for- ever obstructs a radical decontextualization and universalization and in doing so prevents the "moral intuitions of everyday life" from being finally justified on the grounds of universally valid reasons.2 A per- fectly decontextualized and, in this sense, universal community would be sterile and abstract, it would not be a community. The unlimited community of communicating agents must renew its sustaining forces by means of a constant recollection of concrete, contextually bound communities of communicating agents. In his autobiography, Elias Canetti expresses this necessity in a manner which stresses the diver- gence of the different perspectives up the point of paradox: "A 'moral' has to contrast with the way you feel and behave in order to strike you, and it has to remain in you for a long time before it finds its opportu- nity, suddenly braces itself, and strikes."3 The fact that by seizing its opportunity the assailing moral cannot sublate the antithesis and com- prehend it in itself without becoming powerless, the fact that such an opportunity belongs neither to morality nor to an amoral experience and behavior, shows, in terms of Dialectic of Enlightenment, an entangle- ment with myth which is vital for enlightenment.

It is well known that the "positive" concept of enlightenment, for which Horkheimer and Adorno wish to prepare the path,4 presupposes a "self-reflection" [Selbstbesinnung]. What is meant here by "self-reflec- tion" can only amount to an enlightening clarification of the misunder- standing, which consists in identifying the dialectic of enlightenment with an unavoidable and schematic relapse into myth. For the thesis according to which enlightenment relapses into "mythology" does not follow from the thesis according to which myth is already enlighten- ment. Securing the positive concept of enlightenment consists in going beyond a merely negative or critical understanding of the entanglement of myth and enlightenment. It does not consist in replacing a negative concept of enlightenment with a positive one. The positive concept will do nothing but indicate an awareness of the blockage which prevents

2. Jiirgen Habermas, "Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Jus- tification," Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge: Polity, 1990) 47.

3. Elias Canetti, The Tongue Set Free, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Seabury, 1979) 231.

4. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment xvi.

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the two theses of the book from being inscribed in a purely (con)sequential relationship, in a relationship of cause and effect which detaches enlightenment from myth in an abstract fashion. Thus, the analogy between the question of an exaggeration, which is constitutive of thought, and the question of a mythical element, which is constitu- tive of enlightenment, turns out to be justified after all.

In Minima Moralia, Adorno polemically states that the truth of psy- choanalysis lies in its exaggerations alone.5 His pointed remark seems to be directed against a suppressing or negating conformism. One could, of course, interpret it as a specific expression of a more general thought: elsewhere, Adomo claims that truth generally depends on the exaggera- tions of thinking. But this interpretation would play down a remark whose sharpness is inseparable from its specificity. Moreover, it would expose itself to the objection that Adomo's remark cannot be separated from the therapeutic value of the psychoanalytic doctrine, from a value which does not determine every conceptual discourse the way it deter- mines psychoanalysis. It seems plausible, however, to assume that the pragmatic presuppositions of argumentation include the claim to validity of arguments, a claim which anticipates the establishment of a universal consensus, and a striving for dissent. Is thinking in its argumentative and conceptual form not always thwarted and impelled by the irreconcilable conflict between a double claim or striving? If an established consensus is not held open by (virtual) dissent, it becomes petrified. A consensus which could no longer be challenged by dissent because it would coin- cide with what is true and thus radically oppose itself to the arbitrari- ness of dogmatic assertions, would not be a consensus anymore. Hence, to the extent that the claim to validity of a thought is thwarted and impelled by a double striving, by a striving for the establishment of a consensus and by the striving for a provocation through dissent, only thoughts of which exaggerations are constitutive can aim at truth, thoughts which are driven beyond their possible justification.

In the text on the "Essay as Form," written after his return from exile, Adorno underlines the affinity between the essay and "luck and play."6 He regards its form as rejecting a way of thinking which draws on a phi- losophy of the origin: "Its concepts are not derived from what comes

5. Adorno, Minima Moralia, trans. E.F.N. Jephcott (London: New Left, 1974) 49. 6. Adorno, "The Essay as Form," Notes to Literature, vol. 1, trans. Shierry Weber

Nicholsen (New York: New York UP, 1991) 4 [trans. modified - AGD].

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first, nor are they rounded off and transformed into what comes last." The interpretations of the essayist reveal themselves to be fundamentally "over-interpretations." If Adomo's concept of thinking is tied to the insights he gains from his analysis of the essay as form, then his exposi- tion of a thought and his presentation of an idea are determined by the exaggeration which resides in every "over-interpretation." In his essay "Opinion Delusion Society" which was published in the early 1960s, Adorno claims that no thought exhausts itself in its adequation to a given, to facts or data, and that, as a consequence, exaggeration must be consid- ered a constitutive moment of thinking. A thought always shoots beyond its "confirmation by the given facts," yet in this difference lies as much its "potential" for truth as its "potential" for delusion and madness.7 The relation of thought to truth, which is expressly at stake here, is already conspicuous in a question Adomo raises in the introduction to his metac- ritique of epistemology. This question calls to mind the reflections on the essay as form: "For why, indeed, should the playful luck of spirit be diminished by the risk of error?"8 Ten years later, in Negative Dialectics, Adorno writes that a truth which cannot fall into the "abyss" of "mad- ness" is merely "analytical" and nothing but a "potential tautology."9

Only in the movement of exaggeration which withstands justification does thought become thought, is thought capable of aspiring to truth. Thus truth is neither to be conceived of as a relationship of adequacy between a thought and a given nor as a self-referential relationship of thinking. Thinking and truth are not simply thinking and truth. Only when they are carried beyond themselves and exposed to madness and delusion can they become what deserves to be called thinking or truth. An exaggeration which no longer measures itself against something given or presupposed, something to which it could be reduced and which would account for its intelligibility, is neither an indication of truth nor a symptom of madness and delusion; it is neither thinking nor its opposite. Rather it is thinking as gesture.

Why does exaggeration constitute every thought aiming at truth? Why is thinking a gesture? Because with every new and inaugurating thought

7. Adorno, "Opinion Delusion Society," Critical Models: Interventions and Catch- words, trans. Henry W. Pickford (New York: Columbia UP, 1998) 108. Cf. Alexander Garcia Dilttmann, "Das Recht der Kunst," Kunstende. Drei aesthetische Studien (Frank- furt / Main: Suhrkamp, 2001).

8. Adorno, Against Epistemology: A Metacritique, trans. Willis Domingo (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982) 15.

9. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Seabury, 1973) 34.

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the world is experienced differently, and because in opening and dis- closing a world, thinking has already and irrecoverably been driven beyond itself. Only in a previously disclosed world can a thought correspond to what is given in this world, only there can one speak of a "mere" exaggeration and distinguish between a justified and an unjustified exaggeration.10 Yet, does one not justify the exaggeration of thinking if one gives such an answer to the question of its consti- tutive function? No. For an exaggeration is an exposure. There is no thinking without the disclosing practice, which exposes it to both madness and truth. Precisely because it can never be decided whether a thought is in fact a true thought, exaggeration cannot be justified. This impossibility, however, does not trigger a relativistic vacillation. A manifestation of thinking is incompatible with other manifestations of thinking, since it must claim that the world should be viewed and understood according to the way in which it opens it up and discloses it. That the very idea of an opening, that is, a dis- closure, of a world can be deconstructed, changes nothing. As a manifestation of thinking, deconstruction claims that the world should be understood as a world in the process of deconstruction. The incompatible claim of thinking withdraws from its justifica- tion, given that the exaggeration, which allows for a disclosure and makes it possible for a thought to claim something in the first place, cannot be justified. Thinking resembles art if the work of art is con- sidered from the radically antagonistic point of view of Valery

10. In "Social Theory and the Art of Exaggeration," Bert van den Brink reads Dia- lectic ofEnlightenment as a testimony to an "art of exaggeration." The author appeals to a paragraph in which Horkheimer and Adorno maintain that "exaggeration alone is true" (49). Yet he does not manage to clarify the concept of exaggeration. The "art of exaggera- tion" is to be construed as an "uncompromising and for this reason emancipatory" attempt to "escape the attenuating coercion of the given." This attempt is said to be "based on per- sonal experience." It is impossible to "justify" an exaggeration from the standpoint of the "given" or of the "facts" - a standpoint van den Brink must presuppose in order to distin- guish exaggeration from it. Thus exaggeration becomes a "rhetorical device" (59). On the one hand, this rhetorical device serves the purpose of"shaking [someone] out of [his] apa- thy" and of "making [him] sensitive [to something]": it has a psychological, not a logical function. On the other hand, it is meant to allow for the "designation" of "what is essen- tial," and hence proves to have a "'world-disclosing' force" (55). To the extent that exag- geration is a "'world-disclosing' force," it is more than just a "rhetorical device," which has an effect that can be measured against presupposed "facts." Van den Brink does not elucidate the relationship between the (onto)logical and the psychological function of his concept of exaggeration. See "Social Theory and the Art of Exaggeration," Neue Rund- schau, vol. 1 (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1997).

Alexander Garcia Diittmann 151

which Adorno appropriates.11 However, thinking is also a message in a bottle, a "gesture composed of concepts," to quote an expression Adorno uses in a letter to Horkheimer from the forties.12

Thinking is essentially exaggeration, at least to the extent that it opens up and discloses a world. Every thought, which depends on such a dis- closure, must bear the trace of an exaggeration. Yet, does the substanti- ation of these claims indeed justify the far-reaching analogy between myth and exaggeration? While it is asserted that myth is constitutive of thinking in all its manifestations, exaggeration in the sense of the argu- ment presented constitutes only a specific kind of thinking, namely that thinking which can be characterized as philosophical. Therefore, the analogy has only a limited validity. Myth and exaggeration cannot be used as synonyms in this context; the exaggeration of philosophy is only a particular and exceptional case of the mythical. However, one must bear in mind that instrumental reason, or the conceptual identifica- tion effected by the mythically petrified rationality Horkheimer and Adorno describe as the dominant figure of enlightenment, cannot be the only possible form of enlightenment. Rather, it corresponds to one opening and to one disclosure of the world, as the splitting of the con- cept of enlightenment into a positive concept and a negative concept clearly shows. In Negative Dialectics, Adorno admits of the possibility of a prehistoric catastrophe and thus recognizes the irreducibly contin- gent moment of the dialectic of enlightenment.13 Not every opening of a world is performed by a philosopher. But without the exaggeration which must also manifest itself in every new philosophical thought, to open up and to disclose a world would remain unthinkable. This points to the fact that exaggeration cannot be traced back to an exaggerating subjectivity and that its practice is never simply the practice of the phi- losopher as subject.

11. It is well known that Proust's work played a central role in Adorno's "intellec- tual economy." In The Guermantes Way, Proust writes: "And, lo' and behold, the world around us (which was not created once and for all, but is created as often as an original art- ist is born) appears entirely different from the old world, but perfectly clear." Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D. J. Enright (New York : Modem Library, 1993).

12. Cited in Vierzig Jahre Flaschenpost, ed. W. van Reijen and G. Schmidt-Noerr (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1987) 9.

13. Adomo, Negative Dialectics 323. Cf. Alexander Garcia Diittmann, Das Geddichtnis des Denkens. Versuch iiber Heidegger und Adorno (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1991) 123.

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A critique of Dialectic of Enlightenment concerning itself solely with its thetic style and apodictic manner, hence with the claim that Horkhe- imer and Adorno do not examine their ideas with satisfactory scientific rigor, corroborating and confirming them by means of data from anthro- pological, ethnological, historical, sociological, political, and economic research, inevitably misses the argument put forward and developed in their book. Revisions of the chapter on the culture industry, for instance, undertaken in a spirit of either enlightenment or counter- enlightenment, will always be toiling in its wake, no matter how justi- fied and how convincing they may be. Perhaps the thought of a conver- sion of myth into enlightenment and of a relapse of enlightenment into "mythology" is exaggerated and schematic if one seriously attempts to analyze the implications of the thesis that myth is already enlighten- ment. But how would one criticize such an exaggeration without at the same time making light of the "National Socialist terror," which pro- vided the two philosophers with the most terrifying incentive for their book? How would one establish with certainty that the exaggerating trait of thinking, the gesture without which the insight into the dialectic of enlightenment would have remained hidden, does not express itself in this exaggeration?