Guilt by (Un) Free Association: Adorno on Romance et al.

Abstract

Minima Moralia is a hard book to read all at once, both because it is simply too delicious and at the same time because it is highly repetitious-I, for one, cannot eat chocolate all day-also because it is not quite repetitious enough, but demands a considerable amount of energy to keep alert so as to be able to follow the dialectical pattern of Adorno's sentences to their often startling and unexpected conclusions, thus to admit that his scorn and his despair are not necessarily one's own. Reading this book must be an experience that never spares the reader the constant need to examine his or her specific difference. Identification as a readerly strategy belongs to the New Old Right, which is why we don't have to throw out Adorno because he rejects, for example, jazz: it is only the uncritical desire to seek a Master, thus to be a Slave, that would demand of a great