The Thanatosis of Enlightenment

Abstract

The article analyzes methodological errors Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, particularly their incorrect use of the concepts of mimicry and mimesis. The author of the article maintains that the leaders of the Frankfurt School made a mistake that threatens to undermine their argument when they juxtaposed mimesis and the attraction to death, which has led philosophers to trace back to mimesis the desire for destruction that is found in a civilization constructed by instrumental reasoning. The author reviews the arguments of the Dialectic of Enlightenment and emphasizes the unsuccessful attempt to fuse Freudian and Hegelian methods, which exposes the instability of opposing scientific reasoning to “living” nature. Some amusing quotations from Roger Caillois, who refused to think of mimesis as something entirely rational, are also brought to bear. As Brassier gradually unfolds Adorno and Horkheimer’s thesis, he indicates the consequences of their mistake, which confined thinkers to the bucolic dungeon of “remembering” the authentic nature that they cannot abandon because they have denied themselves access to both reductionist psychological models and to phenomenological theory as such. Brassier delineates the boundaries of this trap and notes the excessive attachment of the Dialectic of Enlightenment to the human. Brassier goes on to describe the prospects for a civilization of enlightenment: a mimesis of death in both senses (death imitates and is imitated) finds its highest expression in the technological automation of the intellect, which for Adorno and Horkheimer means the final implementation of the self-destructive mind. However, for Brassier it means the rewriting of the history of reason in space. This topological rewriting of history, carried out through an enlightenment, reestablishes the dynamics of horror more than mythical temporality: it will become clear that the human mind appears as the dream of a mimetic insect.