Romantic Phantasms: Benjamin and Adorno on the Subject of Critique

Author(s): Douglas Brent McBride

Source: Monatshefte, Vol. 90, No. 4 (Winter, 1998), pp. 465-487
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
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Romantic Phantasms:
Benjamin and Adorno
on the Subject of Critique
DOUGLAS BRENT MCBRIDE
Indiana University

The political stakes in the modern split between high and low art were
never more clearly articulated than in the debate between Walter Benjamin
and Theodor W. Adorno on popular culture. When Adorno described his
defense of autonomous art and Benjamin's apology for mass entertainment
as torn halves of one freedom, he located their dispute within a speculative
tradition that invests aesthetic experience with emancipatory potential. The
origins of this discourse can be traced to Romanticism and its reflection on
the role of subjectivity in politics and art. Benjamin's dialogue with Adorno
marked an important turning point in this narrative by unmasking its twin
protagonists-the autonomous individual and its collective other-as
phantasms, figments of the Romantic imagination. By analyzing the Ro-
mantic phantasms that haunted Benjamin's dialogue with Adorno, the pres-
ent essay suggests how critical subjectivity might be reconsidered in an age
in which the virtual reality of cyberspace has become second nature for
many individuals.
The debate on popular culture is primarily documented in two es-
says-one each by Benjamin on film and Adorno on jazz-published in
successive issues of the Zeitschriftfiir Sozialforschung in 1936.1Both friends
were living in exile--Benjamin in Paris and Adorno in Oxford-and the
letters they exchanged provide additional clues to the positions they were
elaborating. If the personal hardships of emigration influenced the tenor of
their dispute, then contemporary events almost certainly contributed to its
sense of urgency. Everywhere the new mass media seemed subject to ma-
nipulation: by totalitarian regimes in Italy, Germany, and the USSR, and
monopolizing market forces in the USA. In the 1930s, questions of popular
culture became political problems of the first order.
Adorno's primary contribution to the debate, an essay titled "Ober
Jazz," has a relatively uncomplicated textual history.2 Benjamin's contri-
bution, "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbar-

Monatshefte, Vol. 90, No. 4, 1998 465

0026-9271/98/0004/0465 $01.50/0
c 1998 by The Board of Regents of The University of Wisconsin System
466 McBride

keit," is another story. At Benjamin's request, the essay was published in

the Zeitschrift fiir Sozialforschung in French translation. This translation
was based on a second, revised version of the essay. After the French trans-
lation was published, Benjamin completed a second and more radical re-
vision of the German text, in the express hope that Bertolt Brecht would
have it published in Moscow.3As it turned out, none of the German versions
appeared in print until Adorno and his wife Gretel included the third ver-
sion of the essay in their two-volume edition of Benjamin's selected works,
in 1955. This is the version that served as the basis for Harry Zohn's trans-
lation, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," the
only one available in English at this date. It is also the version that continues
to serve as the basis for most academic discussion of the essay, despite the
fact that both earlier versions have been made available in recent decades.4
The result of all this is that there exists no one authoritative text of
Benjamin's essay, but rather three distinct documents of a work in progress.
The differences that distinguish the three texts provide as much insight into
Benjamin's debate with Adorno as any one variant read in isolation. For
this reason, all three versions will be considered in the discussion that fol-
lows.

I
Adorno first identified the Romantic phantasms haunting his dialogue
with Benjamin in a letter from 18 March 1936, written to critique an un-
published manuscript of Benjamin's essay. In an attempt to mediate be-
tween their divergent views, Adorno observed that autonomous art and
popular film both bear the scars of capitalist exploitation, as well as ele-
ments of change. He did not, however, suggest that high art be privileged
over low. Instead, he insisted that neither be sacrificed to the other, since
this would mean losing the critical potential of both. Only if high and low
art are maintained in an equivalent relation of mutual negation-rather
than being canceled in identity--can the critical power of either be sal-
vaged.
Beide tragendie Wundmaledes Kapitalismus,beide enthaltenElementeder
Veranderung(freilichnie und nimmerdas MittlerezwischenSchonbergund
dem amerikanischenFilm);beide sind die auseinandergerissenenHalftender
ganzen Freiheit,die doch aus ihnen nicht sich zusammenaddierenlagt: eine
der anderenzu opfernware romantisch,entwederals birgerliche Romantik
der Konservierungvon Pers6nlichkeitund all dem Zauber,oder als anar-
chistischeim blindenVertrauenauf die Selbstmachtigkeitdes Proletariatsim
geschichtlichenVorgang-des Proletariats,das doch selber btirgerlichpro-
duziertist.5
Benjamin and Adorno on Critique 467

The twin specters of the bourgeois individual and the proletariat are
evoked here to indicate two notions of subjectivity which inform two con-
trasting models of art. In a rare moment of self-irony, Adorno acknowledges
that the debt his critical method owes to the bourgeois individual as a di-
alectical "Durchgangsinstrument" (Briefwechsel 149) makes him guilty of
the first illusion. The irony of this admission is underlined by a direct ref-
erence to Benjamin's analysis of how the film industry manipulates the cult
of stardom to preserve "personality and its magic spell." According to
Adorno, Benjamin dispenses with the myth of the bourgeois individual only
to fall victim to the spell of its Romantic reverse: the myth of the People
as a collective subject, invested by Nature with the moral authority and
cognitive insight to critique culture. As Adorno points out, this Romantic
illusion mistakes what has been historically determined for natural law and
falsely assumes that the collective subject possesses a privileged vantage
point from which it could critique the social practices that actually produce
its consciousness.
The problem identified here by Adorno recalls the one Friedrich
Schiller attempted to solve in the epistolary treatise "Uber die asthetische
Erziehung des Menschen" (1795).6 Namely, how can theory critique the
social practices that have conditioned its epistemological assumptions? In
attempting to resolve this dilemma, Schiller also confronted the Romantic
tension between liberal bourgeois individuation and democratic social in-
tegration, by reflecting on the nature of subjective agency in art and politics.
Schiller begins his treatise by defining the Beautiful not as an end in itself,
but rather as a means to an end. This end, he claims, is freedom. Thus, from
the outset, Schiller sets himself the task of considering aesthetic subjectivity
in terms of its political utility.7
Schiller's reflection begins with his own historical context, the bloody
aftermath of the French Revolution. On the one hand, he observes, History
seems to be presenting humanity with momentous opportunities for over-
throwing despotic rulers and making freedom the basis for political rela-
tions. On the other hand, the Jacobin terror seems to have demonstrated
that when humans overturn the existing order they only enthrone a new
order more tyrannical than the first. According to Schiller, the fault for this
dilemma lies with the deterministic laws of nature, which deny humans any
experience in the exercise of subjective freedom. This conclusion results
from Schiller's mechanistic view of both nature and society, which invests
social structures with the same opacity as natural objects. As Adorno in-
dicated in his letter to Benjamin, the notion that historically determined
social conditions are somehow "natural" is a Romantic illusion. The solu-
tion Schiller develops for the dilemma presented by his own world view
hinges on the notion of aesthetic autonomy, which he derives from Kant's
grounding of autonomous spheres of experience in subjective faculties.8
468 McBride

In spatial metaphors, Schiller maps the aesthetic as an autonomous

realm of experience beyond state control, free from ideological corruption,9
the only sphere where the laws of nature and social convention do not
inhibit the flight of fiction, where the rules of play are not governed by logic
or ethics. According to Schiller, propaedeutic practice in aesthetic experi-
ence represents the only possibility for cracking the theory/praxis double-
bind in which the theory that critiques praxis is conditioned by the praxis
it critiques. Although his letters are often read as symptomatic of German
nostalgia for the premodern cultural unity of classical Greek antiquity, it
should be emphasized that Schiller's program is entirely dependent upon
the autonomous spheres of value created by functional differentiation. In
other words, Schiller embraces the modern process of rationalization, which
Max Weber later identified as the defining characteristic of modernity, and
attempts to resolve its discursive antinomies from within.10
This reading of Schiller's text indicates obvious affinities for Adorno's
concept of autonomous art. What is often underestimated is Schiller's in-
terest in another aspect of aesthetic subjectivity, which Kant suggested when
he grounded the notion of taste in a kind of sensus communis." By appro-
priating Kant's notion of the aesthetic as a medium of socialization, Schiller
set an important precedent for Benjamin's avant-garde populism. This af-
finity for Benjamin is conditioned by Schiller's account of how subjectivity
emerges through a dialectic of desire and recognition, described in the
twenty-fifth of his Briefe iiber die iisthetische Erziehung. For Schiller, the
mechanical drive of desire can only be harnessed and put to productive use
through sublimation. This process involves the ability of consciousness to
make representations of objects and distinguish itself from unmediated im-
pressions of the sensual world. According to Schiller, the aesthetic medium
of representation enables humans to distinguish self as subject from nature
as object. His ideal of aesthetic experience as a medium of socialization
represents aesthetic culture as a "blessed zone" of reconciliation, reconcil-
iation of self with itself and self with others.12
Schiller's utopian ideals of subjective autonomy and intersubjective
sociability survive to haunt Benjamin's dialogue with Adorno more than a
century later. These twin ideals are the positive reverse of the negative
critique of subjective alienation and false collectivity commonly associated
with the Frankfurt School. Schiller paid a high price for his vision of uni-
versal reconciliation, when he grounded his theory in the Idealist split be-
tween subject and object. As the Frankfurt School would later lament, this
split opened a gaping wound in modern civilization, pitting humanity as
subject against nature as object. Rather than nostalgically longing for a
premodern utopia, Benjamin and Adorno set their hopes in technological
progress as the only viable medium for developing critical subjectivity.
Benjamin and Adorno on Critique 469

II

All three versions of Benjamin's essay on film begin by observing that

technological advances in the reproduction of art have changed the nature
of artistic production. This revolution has transformed art from a work-
based paradigm, in which an artwork'svalue is determined by its singularity,
to a medium-based paradigm, in which individual works are replaced by
the medium itself, as in the case of film. As Benjamin points out, no one
print of a film is more valuable than any other. This revolution in the means
of art (re)production has introduced a qualitative change in its reception,
as well. The new mode of reception is typified by the way film distracts mass
audiences with shock-like, sensory stimulation, in stark contrast to the in-
trospective forms of reception associated with bourgeois subjectivity.
Because film makes simultaneous, mass reception feasible (indeed,
economically necessary), the cinema becomes a privileged site in Benja-
min's narrative. It is here that a mass of subjectively alienated individuals
is able to reflect itself into an apparently self-conscious, social subject. Ac-
cording to Benjamin, the same mass of individuals whose subjective alien-
ation would otherwise foreclose any possibility of exercising critical judg-
ment is raised to new heights of awareness through the spontaneous social
interaction it experiences before the film screen. As this mass of individuals
coalesces, it assumes a progressively oriented faculty of critique, which is
grounded in its social subjectivity.
Im Kino fallen kritischeund geniesende Haltungdes Publikumszusammen.
Und zwar ist der entscheidendeUmstanddabei:nirgendsmehr als im Kino
erweisensich die Reaktionender Einzelnen,derenSummedie massiveReak-
tion des Publikumsausmacht,von vornhereindurchihre unmittelbarbevor-
stehende Massierungbedingt.Und indem sie sich kundgeben,kontrollieren
sie sich. (GS 1.2:497)
The centrality of this passage is evidenced by the fact that Benjamin
never altered its wording in either of his subsequent revisions. It is followed
by a discussion in which Benjamin argues that the physical dimensions of
a gallery or museum only aggravate the subjective alienation of individuals
by inhibiting mass viewing. For this reason, the most progressive works of
art in traditional media (paintings by Picasso, for example) are destined to
provoke reactionary responses from subjectively alienated viewers. Ben-
jamin then claims that if the same individuals were assembled in a mass
audience before a Charlie Chaplin film, the ensuing process of auto-cen-
sorship, in which each individual checks his or her impulse to laugh against
the behavior of others, enables the inchoate mass of self-alienated individ-
uals to constitute a self-reconciled, mass subject. What remains unclear-
at least at this point-is why the critical faculty of the collective subject
should be inherently progressive, as Benjamin insists. In fact, this point
470 McBride

represents one of the major bones of contention separating Benjamin and

Adorno.
An allegorical reading of this scene might interpret it as a narrative
of emancipation, representing the enlightenment and empowerment of pre-
viously disenfranchised individuals through a process of social integration.
In an analysis of Kantian themes in Benjamin's essay, Rodolphe Gasch6
has observed that Benjamin's scenario imputes the mass audience in the
cinema with a kind of subjective autonomy. Gasch6's comments bear closer
examination here because they contain an ironic reference to a Romantic
phantasm he sees haunting Benjamin's narrative. "Free from all domina-
tion, this collective subject, testing against one another the success of each
individual in dealing with shock, reflects itself into a free, independent sub-
ject that gives itself the rule, as it were."'3 The Kantian entity that "gives
itself the rule" is, of course, Genius.
Genius plays a central role in the Kantian universe by freeing aesthetic
judgment from objective criteria such as classical standards, social conven-
tions, and conceptual understanding, and thereby allowing the judgment of
the Beautiful to be redefined as a purely subjective phenomenon.14 The
concept of Genius allows Kant to give the creative subject (as producer or
receiver of art) direct inspiration from Nature without any social mediation.
Unconstrained by society, Genius represented the epitome of subjective
autonomy for the Romantic imagination. In the preface to his essay, Ben-
jamin distances himself from Romantic categories like Genius, which he
considers to be historically outdated and politically reactionary. What Ga-
sch6's gloss suggests is just how much Benjamin remains indebted to the
ghosts of Romanticism, despite his best intentions.
The obvious question Benjamin's scenario raises is whether the pro-
cess of social recognition he portrays is critical, as he contends, or simply
affirmative. It is, in fact, Benjamin's tendency to subordinate individual con-
sciousness to a collective unconscious that Adorno had in mind when he
accused his friend of Romantic anarchism. Adorno had already voiced con-
cerns about this problem in letters discussing an abstract of Benjamin's
Arcades Project (Passagenwerk). Specifically, in a lengthy letter from 2-4
August 1935, Adorno criticized Benjamin's emphatic notion of collective
consciousness for resembling too closely the ideas of C.G. Jung.

Das KollektivbewuBtsein wurde nur erfundenum von der wahrenObjekti-

vitatundihremKorrelat,namlichder entfremdetenSubjektivitatabzulenken.
An uns ist es, dies "Bewuftsein"nachGesellschaftundEinzelnemdialektisch
zu polarisierenund aufzulisen und nicht es als bildlichesKorrelatdes Wa-
rencharakterszu galvanisieren.DaB im traiumendenKollektivkeine Diffe-
renzen ftir die Klassenbleiben, sprichtdeutlichund warnendgenug. (Brief-
wechsel141-42)
Benjamin and Adorno on Critique 471

Adorno's criticisms seem to presume that Benjamin was cooperating

with him in elaborating a method of ideology critique aimed at exposing
false consciousness. As Jtirgen Habermas suggested in an influential essay
of 1972, Adorno was probably deceiving himself in this assumption. In
"Bewultmachende oder rettende Kritik-die Aktualitait Walter Benja-
mins,"5 Habermas attempted to differentiate between divergent critical
methods within the Frankfurt School. He drew a sharp distinction between
Herbert Marcuse's notion of Critical Theory as critique of ideology, at the
one extreme, and Benjamin's notion of redemptive criticism, at the other.
Whereas the former "unsettles the normative structures which keep the
consciousness of the oppressed imprisoned," the latter "commits destruc-
tion only in order to transpose what is worth knowing from the medium of
the beautiful into that of truth-and thereby to redeem it." Habermas con-
cluded by describing Benjamin's mode of redemptive criticism as a "con-
servative-revolutionary hermeneutic." The ambivalence of Habermas's
evaluation hits at the heart of the problem Adorno identified. If Benjamin's
scenario in the cinema is not intended to represent an instance of "con-
sciousness-raising," then what does he mean when he claims that the au-
dience's "critical and appreciative attitudes coincide"?
In the third version of the essay Benjamin expanded an idea that had
only been indicated in the first two versions. This idea concerns the concept
of an "optical unconscious," formulated by analogy to Freud's theory of
unconscious drives. It is this analogy that allows Benjamin to discuss how
the "aesthetic" and "scientific" modes of evaluation meet in the new tech-
nology of film. In the essay's first two versions this section had focused on
the kind of unconscious processes at work in the mass audience viewing
film. It seems reasonable to assume Benjamin revised this section to ap-
pease Adorno, since Adorno often criticized his friend's interest in Jungian
notions of the unconscious and suggested Freudian theory as an antidote.16
The original passage, with its references to Mickey Mouse as the creation
of a collective dream, is more enlightening in terms of understanding Ben-
jamin's emphatic notion of collectivity.
Die amerikanischenGroteskfilmeund die Filme Disneys bewirkeneine the-
rapeutischeSprengungdes UnbewuBten.IhrVorgangerist der Excentrikge-
wesen. In den neuen Spielriumen,die durchden Film entstanden,warer als
ersterzu Hause:ihr Trockenwohner.In diesem Zusammenhanghat Chaplin
als historischeFigurseinen Platz. (GS VII.1:377-78)

Benjamin anticipates this programmatic conclusion with a discussion

of how technology has created "dangerous tensions" among the urban
masses. At critical moments, these tensions begin to resemble the phenom-
enon of mass psychosis. According to Benjamin, the exaggerated portrayal
of sadistic violence-as occurs in an animated cartoon, for example-may
472 McBride

have the effect of vaccinating urban masses against any predisposition they
might exhibit toward sadistic phantasies and masochistic paranoia. "Den
vorzeitigen und heilsamen Ausbruch derartiger Massenpsychosen stellt das
kollektive Gelachter dar" (GS VII.1:377), he concludes.
Adorno took issue with Benjamin's emphatic notion of a collective
unconscious because it evoked the specter of a pre-critical utopia in which
the given is reconciled with itself. It is on this point of debate that Adorno-
the later critic of Enlightenment as myth-defended the Enlightenment
project of critical subjectivity against what he perceived to be nostalgia for
archaic forms of subjectivity. In letters to Benjamin, he defended the prac-
tical necessity of maintaining individual consciousness as a condition for
social critique, despite his reservations about the phantasmatic status of the
individual. As Adorno pointed out in the letter cited above, the social rec-
onciliation promised by a collective unconscious cannot address historically
determined problems, such as economic injustice. On the contrary. Its false
reconciliation erases difference and glosses over social division without
touching the historical factors that determine them.

III
In his essay on jazz, which appeared in the issue of the Zeitschriftfiir
Sozialforschung immediately following Benjamin's essay on film, Adorno
took issue with what he considered to be the misguided tendency of the
interwar Left to view mass culture as an emancipatory phenomenon. For
Adorno, the semblance of sociability in which the new forms of popular
culture are packaged only serves to mask the impossibility of immediacy
that results from commodified production. In particular, the conclusion that
jazz-whose popularity is based on its utility as dance music-enacts the
democratic sublation of art in life is nothing more than ideological delusion.
According to Adorno, the defining characteristics of jazz-vibrato and syn-
copation-give the appearance of breaking free from formal constraints of
harmony and meter while surreptitiously reaffirming the primacy of fixed
tonal patterns and regimented time.17
In his film essay, Benjamin had emphasized how cinematic processes
introduce a measure of collectivity into the production of art. Adorno now
counters that jazz, which appears to require the creative collaboration of
composer, arranger, and improvising musicians, actually depends upon the
divisionof labor.For Adorno,the formalstructureof jazz becomesa cipher
for the false reconciliation of the self-alienated individual with the repres-
sive social order of advanced capitalism. Nowhere are the differences sepa-
rating Benjamin and Adorno more clearly articulated than in their debate
over the social significance of Charlie Chaplin's screen creation, the woe-
fully inept "eccentric."
Benjamin and Adorno on Critique 473

In a note on Chaplin related to the film essay, Benjamin wrote that

the social significance of film's technical character derives from its structural
dialectic of continuity and discontinuity, which creates the illusion of motion
from a sequence of still images. This principle allows film to mimetically
reproduce the continuity of a factory assembly line while simultaneously
exposing complex human actions as nothing more than a series of mechan-
ical gestures. It is in this context that Benjamin saw Chaplin playing an
historic role, by acting out the continuous discontinuity of mechanical re-
lations.

Das ist das Neue an ChaplinsGestus:er zerfailltdie menschlicheAusdrucks-

bewegung in eine Folge kleinster Innervationen.Jede einzelne seiner Be-
wegungensetzt sich aus einer Folge abgehackterBewegungsteilchenzusam-
men. Ob man sich an seinen Gang hfilt,an die Art in der [er]sein Stockchen
handhabtoder seinen Hut liftet-es ist immerdieselbe ruckartigeAbfolge
kleinsterBewegungen,die das Gesetz der filmischenBilderfolgezumGesetze
der menschlichenMotorikerhebt.(GS 1.3:1040)

Whereas Benjamin sees in Chaplin's eccentric a critical instrument

that illuminates the mimetic relation between mechanized (re)production
and human motor activity, Adorno appropriates Chaplin's eccentric to rep-
resent the self-alienated "subject" of jazz. Adorno's allegory, patterned after
Max Weber's model of ideal types, relates the eccentric's modus vivendi to
the jazz principles of syncopation and improvisation. According to Adorno's
interpretation, the jazz subject qua eccentric is an apparent outsider who
proves in the end to be the consummate insider; a misfit who falls out of
bourgeois society only to return to the fold. In Adorno's narrative, the
eccentric's reconciliation with society is anything but a happy ending. On
the contrary; the jazz subject's final subjugation to an oppressive social or-
der is portrayed as a perverse parody of individual masochism and collective
sadism.

Dies Jazzsubjektist ungeschicktund neigt doch zur Improvisation;es steht

als Selbstder abstraktenibergeordnetenInstanzgegeniber undist dochnach
Belieben auszuwechseln;es verleihtihr Ausdruck,ohne sie doch durchAus-
druckzu erweichen.So ist es dialektischerArt. Da3 es selber konventionell
vorgeformtist und bloB scheinbarsich selber gehart, zwingt so gut wie der
musikalischeAusdruckder Hot-Stellen zum Schlul3,dies Subjektsei kein
"freies,"lyrisches,das ins Kollektiverhoben wiirde, sondern unfrei im Ur-
sprung:Opfer des Kollektivs.(ZfS 5.2:253-54)

The allegorical subject of jazz, as Adorno portrays it, is an inverse

caricature of Kantian Genius. Try as it might, the jazz subject is unable to
break free from conventional norms and attain subjective autonomy. Its
ultimate gesture of self-abnegation reaffirms the social mechanism of dis-
474 McBride

cipline, even as it inscribes its identification with the superimposed authority

on its own body, as a subsequent passage indicates.
Aus Angst fallt es herausund opponiert;aber die Opposition,als die eines
vereinzeltenIndividuums,das gerade in seiner Vereinzelungals bloB sozial
determiniertessich darstellt,ist Schein.Aus Angst gibtes die Individualitit-
die Synkope-wieder auf, die selber bloBe Angst ist, opfert eine Individua-
litait,die es nichtbesitzt,fiihltversttimmeltsich eins mit der verstiimmelnden
Machtund iibertragtdiese dergestaltauf sich selber,da3 es meint, zu "k6n-
nen." (ZfS 5.2:256)
As this passage demonstrates, the Romantic phantasm of subjective
autonomy haunts Adorno's dystopian allegory of jazz as a nostalgic ideal
whose absence speaks louder than any presence. Adorno drives home his
point about the "Mechanismus der psychischen Versttimmelung" (ZfS
5.2:239) at work in jazz by casually observing that Igor Stravinsky, a con-
temporary composer who had experimented with jazz principles, once com-
posed a ballet-The Rite of Spring-around the celebration of a human
sacrifice.
In a letter from 28 May 1936, Adorno wrote Benjamin that he had
developed his critique of jazz, with its emphasis on the figure of the eccen-
tric, before reading his friend's essay on film (Briefwechsel 178). Neverthe-
less, Adorno seems to have in mind Benjamin's apology for the therapeutic
effect of laughter among the audience viewing a Disney film, when he con-
demns the notion that the humorous elements in jazz might serve an eman-
cipatory function. In the jazz essay, Adorno insists that the heterogenous
aspects of jazz be seen only in light of their violent subordination to nor-
mative constraints of meter and harmony. According to Adorno's narrative,
the reimposition of order in a jazz performance reflects the ambiguously
bittersweet ending in a Charlie Chaplin film.
Die Ziugedes Komischen,Grotesken, auch Analen, die dem Jazz eignen,
lassen darumvon den sentimentalennie sich trennen. Sie charakterisieren
eine Subjektivitat,die gegen eine Kollektivmachtaufbegehrt,die sie doch
selber "ist";darumerscheintihr Aufbegehrenlicherlich und wird von der
Trommelniedergeschlagenwie die Synkopevon der Zahlzeit.(ZfS 5.2:257)
Adorno complements his analysis of how social processes are mimet-
ically reflected in the musical structure of jazz with a psychoanalytic inter-
pretation of the unconscious processes that determine its reception by a live
audience. According to Adorno, the semblance of emotional immediacy
that characterizes the reception of jazz is just that, an illusion. If, as Adorno
claims, the manifest dream content of jazz is sexual intercourse, then this
surface signification must hide a deeper meaning. That deeper meaning-
the latent dream content of jazz-is the impotency of the individual to
attain subjective agency within the oppressive social order of late capital-
Benjamin and Adorno on Critique 475

ism. As Adorno concludes, the structure of jazz demonstrates "den Primat

der Gesellschaft tiber ein Individuum, das sich doch als MaB des Vorgangs
erftihrt" (ZfS 5.2:253).
Many of the assumptions taken for granted in the jazz essay had been
elaborated by Adorno in an earlier essay, titled "Zur gesellschaftlichen
Lage der Musik," which was published in the premier issue of the Zeitschrift
fiirSozialforschung in 1932.18In this essay Adorno concluded that the com-
modification of cultural production in late capitalism had mediated the re-
lations between mass society and popular culture to such a degree that the
reconciliation of art and society no longer represented a desirable ideal.
Art can only overcome its social alienation, Adorno insisted, by abandoning
its traditional relationship to society-mimetic reflection-and blindly pur-
suing the formal laws unique to its particular form. In other words, art must
attain subjective autonomy through technical progress in order to reconcile
its own social alienation in the only manner possible, within itself. Accord-
ing to Adorno's model, aesthetic autonomy is not related to the originality
of the creative artist (he attributes the element of creativity to unconscious
processes), but rather results from the dialectical mediation of formal laws
and material conditions. Only if it expresses its autonomy from society can
music fulfill its potential for social critique.
Ihr frommtes nicht,in ratlosemEntsetzenauf die Gesellschafthinzustarren:
sie erftilltihre gesellschaftlicheFunktiongenauer,wenn sie in ihremeigenen
Materialund nach ihren eigenen Formgesetzendie gesellschaftlichenPro-
bleme zur Darstellungbringt, welche sie bis in die innersten Zellen ihrer
Technikin sich enthalt.(ZfS 1.1/2:105)

What this early essay illuminates in the later jazz essay is the root
cause of Adorno's suspicion toward any form of popular music. In the ear-
lier essay, Adorno criticizes Stravinsky for appropriating folkloric melodies
and Hanns Eisler for elaborating workers' choruses. What unites the work
of these two composers, who could hardly be farther apart on the political
spectrum, is the fact that they both manipulate populist modalities aimed
at the collective subject of an identity politics. Whether this collective sub-
ject corresponds to the Romantic phantasm of the People, as in Stravinsky's
case, or the Marxist phantasm of the Proletariat, as in Eisler's, is of little
consequence to Adorno. The point is that both kinds of populist appeals
only affirm the collective subject's existing state of consciousness, rather
than elevating it. This is the reason Adorno considers all popular art, which
contributes to socialization, to be reactionary.
After joining other members of the Institute in U.S. exile in 1938,
Adorno continued to elaborate the ideas he had developed in previous
essays, while working on what was intended to be an empirical study of
music broadcasts, financed by the American radio industry.'19 In one article
476 McBride

that resulted from this project, "iDber den Fetischcharakter in der Musik
und die Regression des Hirens" (1938),20Adorno took up Benjamin's ar-
guments in the film essay and agreed that technological advances in the
production and reception of art have transformed aesthetic consciousness
and made the traditional category of taste obsolete. In contrast to Benja-
min, however, Adorno expresses concern that the liquidation of the indi-
vidual as the guarantor of taste endangers the future of critical conscious-
ness. In one of his most piercing insights, Adorno recognizes the aporia in
which his dialogue with Benjamin is ending, as well as the theoretical im-
passe of his own project. After comparing his observations on music with
his friend's analysis of film, he concludes that:

Die kollektivenMichte liquidierenauch in Musikdie unrettbareIndividua-

litat, aber bloB Individuensind fahig, ihnen gegentiber,erkennend,das An-
liegen von Kollektivitatnoch zu vertreten.(ZfS VII.3:355)

This is where Richard Wolin-among others-sees the friends' dis-

pute on popular culture ending in an antinomy "with no immanent pros-
pects for resolution."21Benjamin had voiced a similar opinion in more posi-
tive terms after reading Adorno's jazz essay. In a letter to Adorno from 30
June 1936, he spoke of how the inner relation between his film essay and
his friend's jazz essay evidenced a "penetrating, spontaneous communica-
tion of thought." Benjamin goes on to compare their twin essays to "two
spotlights aimed at one object from opposite sides." The result of this con-
centrated reflection is that the "outlines and dimensions of contemporary
art" are brought into focus "in a totally new and much more productive
way" (Briefwechsel 190). One issue their debate brought into sharper focus
involves the way contrasting models of aesthetic and political subjectivity
determine differing evaluations of popular cultural production.
In Schiller's narrative, the concept of aesthetic autonomy was articu-
lated as a realm of virtual reality in which humans with no real-world ex-
perience in freedom can practice subjective autonomy. This notion of aes-
thetic experience as a laboratory, or exercise field, functionalized aesthetic
culture as an emancipatory medium that empowers humans to assume po-
litical agency in the arena of History. Schiller's political dialectic of individ-
ual liberty and social emancipation was predicated on a dialectical model
of subjectivity: subjective individuation mediated by intersubjective social-
ization. What survived from Schiller's narrative to haunt Benjamin's debate
with Adorno were the ghosts of Romantic subjectivity. Benjamin's film es-
say indicates that he liberated himself from the individual ego, only to em-
brace the mirage of a collective subject. By the same token, Adorno's essays
on music evidence the futility of his attempt to salvage the ghost of bour-
geois individuality as a "dialectical instrument of transition."
Benjamin and Adorno on Critique 477

IV
If the debate on popular culture seems to grind to a halt in the stale-
mate pitting Adorno's fear of manipulation against Benjamin's hope for
emancipation, it also indicates an important point where their theories con-
verge and point beyond the impacted deadlock of an antinomy. The com-
mon ground which suggests a fresh point of departure is the interest Ben-
jamin and Adorno shared in technological progress. Adorno highlighted
this point of convergence in his letter from 18 March 1936, which was writ-
ten to critique Benjamin's film essay. Adorno begins by praising the way his
friend used history to critique myth in articulating the destruction of aura.
He then proceeds to suggest how this critique might be useful in altering
humanity's relationship to technology.
Sie wissen, dab der Gegenstand"Liquidationder Kunst"seit vielen Jahren
hinter meinen iisthetischenVersuchensteht und dab die Emphase,mit der
ich vor allem musikalischden Primatder Technologievertrete,striktin die-
sem Sinne und dem IhrerZweiten Technikzu verstehenist. Und es erstaunt
michnicht,wenn wir hier nun ausdrticklicheine gemeinsameBasisvorfinden
[...]. (Briefwechsel168)
Adorno's cryptic reference to Benjamin's "Second Technology" can-
not be deciphered without consulting the earlier versions of Benjamin's
essay. It involves Benjamin's discussion of the distinction between what he
calls first and second technology, a topic which is briefly mentioned in the
first draft, substantially expanded in the second (which Adorno read), but
deleted altogether in the third. The fact that this passage--which Adorno
singled out for praise-was replaced in the third version by a footnote
quoting Brecht indicates that its deletion was motivated by Benjamin's de-
sire to win Brecht's support for publication of the revised version. What
Adorno praised in the second version is Benjamin's utopian vision of hu-
manity and nature reconciled through second technology.
Benjamin introduces the distinction between first and second tech-
nology immediately after having explicated what he considers to be a "func-
tional transformation" in the character of art. This transformation involves
the shift from art's earliest economic basis in religious ritual to its modern
value as an object of exhibition. Whereas the function of auratic art was
clearly that of a magical device, it is still too early to guess what function
post-auratic art will serve, Benjamin says. Film is playing an historic role in
this functional transformation, he adds, because it is the most technologi-
cally advanced of all art media. At this point, Benjamin relates the func-
tional transformation of art to a larger historical process involving the tran-
sition from first to second technology. Whereas the first technology, which
corresponded to art's ritual function, was labor-intensive, the second tech-
nology, which includes art as an object of exhibition, frees human labor.
478 McBride

Benjamin uses two examples to illustrate this distinction. While the fore-
most achievement of first technology was the human sacrifice, the greatest
achievement of second technology is the remote-control aircraft. His point
is not only that first technology wastefully consumed human life, whereas
second technology emancipates it. As the first draft of Benjamin's essay
indicates, the emancipatory culture of second technology also liberates
technology itself.
Diese Gesellschaft[derenTechniknur erst vollig verschmolzenmit dem Ri-
tual existierte]stellte den Gegenpol zu der heutigendar,deren Technikdie
emanzipiertesteist. Diese emanzipierteTechniksteht nun aber der heutigen
Gesellschaftals eine zweite Naturgegeniber und zwar,wie Wirtschaftskrisen
und Kriegebeweisen,als eine nichtminderelementarewie die der Urgesell-
schaftgegebene es war.Dieser zweiten Naturgegentiberist der Mensch,der
sie zwar erfand aber schon langst nicht mehr meistert,genau so auf einen
Lehrgangangewiesenwie einst vor der ersten. (GS 1.2:444)
In this first draft, Benjamin uses the notion of "second nature" to
describe how humanity has become so alienated from its own social crea-
tions-such as technology-that it begins to perceive what it has created
as "given" by nature.22In essence, Benjamin is describing the same process
of reification that can be used to explain why Schiller viewed the given state
of social relations as being somehow "natural," as opaque and immoveable
as a mountain or sea. In the first draft, Benjamin concludes this brief dis-
cussion by claiming that it is the historic mission of film to provide humans
with a medium to practice technological culture, with the express aim of
accomplishing the "human innervation" of technology (GS 1.2:445). In the
expanded discussion of this topic in the second draft, Benjamin's original
idea of technology as the object of human innervation is transformed into
the definition of revolutions as "innervations of the collective" (GS
VII.1:360).23
In the second draft, Benjamin explains that second technology has its
origin in the historic moment when humanity began distancing itself from
nature through the medium of play (Spiel). Whereas the first technology
aimed at dominating nature, the second actually aims at reconciling hu-
manity and nature in harmonious play. The common prejudice against mod-
ern technology, which falsely maintains that technological culture aims at
dominating nature, results from a misunderstanding of the dialectical re-
lation of the first and second technologies. According to Benjamin, the idea
that modern technology attempts to dominate nature is actually a projection
of the first, or primitive, technology, which truly sought to dominate nature.
Die erste [Technik]hat es wirklichauf Beherrschungder Natur abgesehen;
die zweite viel mehr auf ein Zusammenspielzwischen der Natur und der
Menschheit.Die gesellschaftlichentscheidendeFunktionder heutigenKunst
Benjamin and Adorno on Critique 479

ist Eintibungin dieses Zusammenspiel.Insbesonderegilt das vom Film. (GS

VII.1:359)
Benjamin appropriates another Schillerian theme here, when he op-
poses play (Spiel) as the primary characteristic of post-auratic art to sem-
blance (Schein) as the primary characteristic of auratic art. Schiller did not
oppose the two categories, but rather emphasized the playful aspect of sem-
blance over the illusionary one, which tends to encroach upon the cognitive
category of truth. Like Schiller, Benjamin envisions aesthetic experience as
a kind of propaedeutic that allows humans to exercise and master necessary
life skills which cannot be learned or acquired in other ways.
According to Norbert Bolz, Benjamin's analysis of the film medium
suggests the concrete utopia of a naturalized relationship between humans
and technology. Whereas Marx portrayed human workers as organs of the
capitalist machinery, Benjamin now represents technology as the organ of
human collectivity.24This idea is summed up in a tentative conclusion to
the discussion of second technology which was later stricken from the sec-
ond draft: "Die technische Apparatur unserer Zeit, die fir das Individuum
eine zweite Natur ist, dem Kollektivum zu seiner ersten zu machen, ist die
geschichtliche Aufgabe des Films" (GS VII.2:688). In the final version of
the second draft, this idea is reformulated in the claim that humanity must
assimilate itself to the psychic demands of modern technology if it is to
emancipate itself from its enslavement to machines. This statement is ex-
panded in a lengthy footnote in which Benjamin explicates his definition of
revolution as the innervation of the collective.
In this footnote, Benjamin claims that the collective that learns to
appropriate the second technology will be as different in quality from all
previous forms of collectivity as the second technology is from the first.
Only if collectivity can be brought into harmony with the second technology
can humanity be reconciled with nature through play. "Diese zweite Tech-
nik ist ein System, in welchem die Bewiltigung der gesellschaftlichen Ele-
mentarkrifte die Voraussetzung fiir das Spiel mit den natirlichen darstellt"
(GS VII.1:360). Benjamin's cryptic reference to "elemental social forces"
reappears in the epilog to the essay, where he sketches the grim fate that
awaits humanity if it cannot collectively appropriate the potential of mod-
ern technology. In this passage, which remained unchanged through all
three versions, Benjamin maintains that the destructiveness of modern war-
fare is proof "daB die Gesellschaft nicht reif genug war, sich die Technik zu
ihrem Organ zu machen, daB die Technik nicht ausgebildet genug war, die
gesellschaftlichen Elementarkrifte zu bewliltigen" (GS I.2:507).25The point
here is clear enough. If humanity cannot collectively make second tech-
nology its first nature, and thereby liberate technology as well as humanity,
then the rebellion of enslaved technology will bring about humanity's de-
struction.
480 McBride

The utopian reverse of this ominous statement is presented in the

footnote on revolution as the innervation of the collective. Here the col-
lective that makes second technology its first nature is promised its individ-
uals will attain expanded horizons of play with nature, even as second tech-
nology liberates them from enslavement to mechanical labor. According to
this passage, it is the collective mastery of second technology which facili-
tates the emancipation of individuals. The role of film in this process is
described in the programmatic statement Benjamin used to introduce the
next section in the first and second drafts, before deleting the entire dis-
cussion of second technology from the third: "Unter den gesellschaftlichen
Funktionen des Films ist die wichtigste, das Gleichgewicht zwischen dem
Menschen und der Apparatur herzustellen" (GS VII.1:375, Benjamin's em-
phasis).
In the third version of the essay this statement is reformulated to
emphasize the process of cinematic representation, rather than the relations
of humans to machines. Nevertheless, enough of Benjamin's arguments con-
cerning technology are retained to make it clear he never intended to pro-
mote the reflective formation of collective consciousness. As many recent
commentators-including Rodolphe Gasch6-seem to agree, the social
process Benjamin portrays in the cinema does not represent an instance of
mass enlightenment, but rather mass training in the sensory perception re-
quired of humans by the hardware of modern technology. Gasch6 concludes
that Benjamin represents the cinema as "a sort of exercise and training
ground for acquiring the transformed mode of perception required by mod-
ern life."26This training can only occur among masses, Benjamin explains
in the conclusion to the body of his essay, because individuals are tempted
to avoid such tasks (GS 1.2:505).
This is precisely the point where Benjamin's interpretation of the new
technology becomes political, as Adorno points out in the letter from 18
March 1936. Once again, Adorno sees the Romantic phantasm of the Peo-
ple as collective subject returning to haunt his dialogue with Benjamin.
Und hier freilichschligt die Debatte raschgenugin die politischeum. Denn
wenn Sie die Technisierungund Entfremdungdialektisieren (mit allem
Recht), die Welt der objektiviertenSubjektivitataber nicht ebenso, so heist
das politischnichts anderes,als dem Proletariat(als dem Kinosubjekt)un-
vermittelteine Leistungzutrauen,die es nach Lenins Satz andersgar nicht
zustandebringenkann als durchdie Theorie der Intellektuellenals der di-
alektischenSubjekte,die der von Ihnen in die H611everwiesenenSphire der
Kunstwerkezugeh6ren.(Briefwechsel170)

What Adorno is criticizing here is Benjamin's one-sided concept of

post-auratic art as play and its apparent dependence upon a collective sub-
ject. This concept of art also sacrifices the cognitive possibilities of aesthetic
Benjamin and Adorno on Critique 481

semblance, which Adorno considers to be a decisive element in technically

advanced art. This is why he defends aesthetic semblance as a dialectical
antidote to Benjamin's notion of popular art as mass play. If Adorno is
correct in asserting that his friend's arguments are based on a hypostatized
notion of collectivity, then their dialogue has indeed ended in an irresolv-
able antinomy. But perhaps Adorno's insistence on the substantial character
of Benjamin's collective subject was mistaken. This is precisely what Samuel
Weber's conclusions in a recent reevaluation of Benjamin's cinematic sub-
ject suggest.

V
Weber's analysis27takes as its point of departure the oft-cited conclu-
sion to the body of Benjamin's third draft. As Steve Giles has observed,
this passage was revised along the lines of a Brechtian trope in a manner
that could hardly have been more distasteful for Adorno.28 In the final
version, Benjamin underlines the centrality of distraction as the condition
for a mass audience to appropriate the unique form of critical judgment
grounded in its social status.
Die Rezeptionin der Zerstreuung,die sich mit wachsendemNachdruckauf
allen Gebietender Kunstbemerkbarmachtund das Symptomvon tiefgreifen-
den Veriinderungen derApperzeptionist,hatam Filmihr eigentlichesUbungs-
instrument.In seiner Chockwirkungkommtder Film dieser Rezeptionsform
entgegen. Der Film draingtden Kultwertnicht nur dadurchzurtick,dab er
das Publikumin eine begutachtendeHaltungbringt,sondernauch dadurch,
dab die begutachtendeHaltungim Kino Aufmerksamkeitnicht einschlieBt.
Das Publikumist ein Examinator,doch ein zerstreuter.(GS 1.2:505,Benja-
min'semphasis.)

Benjamin places a premium on the fact that film impedes rather than
promoting contemplative reflection. This is why he praises the montage-
method of film composition, which dissolves any illusion of a fixed stand-
point through jarring sensory shock. Harry Zohn translated the adjective
zerstreut as "absent-minded," but it has since become common practice to
employ the term "distracted." Most commentators point to the influence
Siegfried Kracauer's landmark analysis of the "Kult der Zerstreuung"
(1926)29must have exerted on Benjamin's essay. Weber pursues a different
path, however, based on the way Benjamin employed the oppositional pair
Zerstreuung and Sammlung in his unsuccessful post-doctoral thesis, Ur-
sprung des deutschen Trauerspiels,30which was completed in 1925, although
it was not published until 1928. As Weber points out, Benjamin's use of the
term Zerstreuung implies additional connotations which are not suggested
482 McBride

by the English equivalents 'distracted' or 'absent-minded.' This additional

field of signification evokes the spatial imagery of dispersion.
As Weber explains, this alternative field is emphasized by Benjamin's
tendency to oppose the terms Zerstreuung (distraction/dispersion) and
Sammlung (contemplation/collection) in both the post-doctoral thesis and
the film essay. In the film essay, Benjamin employs a graphic figure to il-
lustrate why he places such a high priority on distraction-as opposed to
contemplation-as a condition for his unique concept of a post-Romantic
notion of critical subjectivity. In contrast to Adorno, Benjamin views bour-
geois modes of concentrated, contemplative reception, which are typically
accomplished in solitary isolation, as promoting ideological identification
rather than critical reflection.

Zerstreuungund Sammlungstehen in einem Gegensatz,der folgende For-

mulierungerlaubt:Der vor dem Kunstwerksich Sammelndeversenkt sich
darein;er geht in dieses Werkein, wie die Legendees von einemchinesischen
Malerbeim Anblickseines vollendetenBildes erzahlt.Dagegen versenktdie
zerstreuteMasse ihrerseitsdas Kunstwerkin sich. (GS 1.2:504)

Benjamin's description of how the consciousness of the contemplative

viewer is completely subordinated to the frame of the viewed work evokes
the hermeneutic ideal of empathy (Einfiihlung). The neo-Romantic ideol-
ogy of empathy attempted to overcome the Idealist split between subject
and object by demanding that the critic surrender his or her subject position
and assume one of identity with the object of contemplation, in order to
grasp its objective truth. This process of identification is characterized by
the phenomenon of immersion (Versenkung) as rapt contemplation; the
surrender of subjective autonomy to enthrallment by the object. As Ben-
jamin explains in a variant reading of this passage in the first draft of the
film essay, empathy and immersion are expressly religious modes of recep-
tion typically induced by auratic works of art (GS 1.3:1044). Hence, his
peculiar use of the oppositional pair Zerstreuung and Sammlung can be
read as critiquing the ideology of empathy and presenting an alternative
strategy for establishing and maintaining critical distance.
What Weber's reading of Benjamin's film essay proposes as a defense
against the Romantic phantasms of the bourgeois individual and the Peo-
ple-each of which is prone to the delusions of 'false' consciousness-is
the dispersion of the subject function across a mass of individuals. Weber's
analysis is supported by Gaschd, who categorically states that Benjamin's
collective subject is devoid of any substantial or formal center. According
to Gasch6, its "heightened presence of mind" does not correspond to tra-
ditional concepts of individual or class consciousness. In fact, this point is
underlined by Benjamin's emphatic use of the term "mass" as opposed to
"class." According to Gaschd, Benjamin conceives of the "mass's state of
Benjamin and Adorno on Critique 483

mind as one which is so permeable that paradoxically it cushions against all

attack." Gasch6 concludes that Benjamin presents the distracted behavior
and decentered focus of the mass subject of cinema as a solution to the
problems of his day.31These problems included the routinization of daily
life, which Benjamin feared was impoverishing the quality of human ex-
perience for masses of urban workers, as well as the attempts of totalitarian
regimes to manipulate psychological processes of identification in order to
create a mass subject, with the help of the new media of reproduction.
According to Weber's reading, it is the dispersion of perspective,
rather than its concentration in consciousness, which subverts the reflective
principle of identity implied in the concepts of empathy and immersion.
This reading precludes the emergence of a collective subject that attains
self-consciousness, as Adorno feared. It also illuminates Benjamin's notion
of film as a tool for developing the psychic mechanisms that inhibit the
localized concentration of thought in consciousness. This is made possible
by film's montage method of juxtaposing shots, which prevents the viewer
from assuming "any one standpoint" (GS 1.2:495). In a similar way, the
audience in the cinema cannot be assigned any fixed perspective. What
Benjamin calls a mass is nothing more than individuals who come together,
coalesce, break up, and disperse, only to be reconfigured in other combi-
nations at later times and places. His alternative distinction between con-
centration and dispersion offers a basis for rethinking critical subjectivity
within a discursive framework that is no longer bound by the individual/
society dualism of Romanticism. In a certain sense, it actually serves to
"polarize and dissolve [... .] 'consciousness' between society and the indi-
vidual," as Adorno demanded, albeit not in the dialectical manner he as-
sumed.

VI

Benjamin did not eradicate the Romantic paradigm of art typified by

the singular work, but he did formulate an alternative framework for ana-
lyzing the mass media as art. The key to this innovation is his emphatic
embrace of technology, which he conceived as a medium of experimental
play, much like Schiller's aesthetic state. Adorno was correct to claim tech-
nological progress as a point of common interest that united the two friends,
but this does not mean their positions on art and technology were identical.
As the previous discussion of their essays has shown, the semantic scope of
the German term Technikallowed the friends to use the same word to speak
about very different things. Whereas Adorno most often intends the term
to mean "technique," in the sense of artistic method, Benjamin almost al-
ways uses the term to refer to "technology," as in the mechanical means of
484 McBride

(re)production. This distinction is important, because it indicates why

Adorno wanted to salvage the singular artwork as "artifice" and defended
aesthetic semblance as "artificiality,"while Benjamin reconceived art as the
media of technological (re)production. Adorno's emphasis on experimen-
tation in formal technique remains consistent with a Romantic paradigm of
art. In contrast, Benjamin's focus on the hardware of technology ultimately
critiques the neo-Romantic tendency to configure aesthetic culture as the
beautiful other of ugly technology. In the film essay, Benjamin not only
conceives technological culture as fundamentally aesthetic; he even em-
ploys the standards of technological practice to evaluate the political char-
acter of aesthetic experience.
To be sure, many issues raised by Benjamin and Adorno have lost
their sense of urgency at the end of the twentieth century. One of the con-
cerns that seems most dated is the conflict between high art and mass cul-
ture, which came to a head in the debate on Modernism that split Western
Marxism in the 1930s. As Andreas Huyssen has remarked, artists have since
learned to live and work in an age in which the "Great Divide" that once
separated high and low art has ceased to be an issue-even if some critics
cling to the distinction.32It should be pointed out that Benjamin's dialogue
with Adorno played a significant role in this process, by exorcising the
ghosts of Romantic subjectivity that haunted contemporary debates on art
and politics. More importantly, the central role technology played in their
dialogue provides a relevant frame for reading the debate today, when ques-
tions of political and aesthetic subjectivity inevitably converge in cyber-
space.
In this context, it should be recalled that Adorno's crusade to salvage
aesthetic semblance was meant to critique the illusion of immediacy pro-
duced by the new mass media. Already in the 1930s, phonograph recording
and radio broadcasting made it possible to bring a "live" concert into the
privacy of one's home, but only as a very mediated kind of virtual reality.
It was not long before technology triumphed over distance in an even more
convincing way, with the invention of television, which, as its name says,
makes it possible to "view at a distance." What television really does-
from the perspective of the viewer-is bring distant events up close. In
other words, it has the opposite effect of auratic art, which Benjamin said
creates an illusion of distance despite the proximity required for the viewing
of traditional works of art. Benjamin's notion of the distracted or dispersed
subject shatters the illusion of immediacy created by the new media and
imposes critical distance by engulfing the virtual reality of motion pictures
within the amorphous body of the distracted mass and thereby dispersing
it. Ultimately, Benjamin's vision of technology as the collective's first nature
questions the distinction that classifies some experiences as real and others
Benjamin and Adorno on Critique 485

as virtuallyreal. At the same time, it places one criticalcondition on the

mode of reception: that it occur in public, en masse.
Seen from the perspective of Benjamin's utopia of technology as first
nature, cyberspace appears at first glance to be a dream come true. As its
proponents claim, the ease of creating and reproducing visual and aural
representations in this medium threatens to erase the distinction separating
producers and receivers, thereby fulfilling an important condition Benjamin
demanded of politically progressive art. The visual metaphor of a "net" or
"web" also evokes an interesting affinity for Benjamin's spatial distinction
between collection and dispersion as an essential aspect of critical subjec-
tivity in media culture. What seems more troubling about this medium is
the way it seems to neutralize the distinction between the public and private
spheres. Benjamin envisioned mass reception of the media in public places
as a necessary condition for dispersing the illusion of immediacy and iden-
tification, while simultaneously establishing critical distance. The question
Benjamin might ask today would concern the social character of the new
media: Does cyberspace constitute a public place? Or, as Adorno might
interject, does the solitary web voyager immerse him or herself in a virtual
reality that only creates the illusion of immediacy?

'By focusing on the problem of popular culture, the present essay considers just one
aspect of Benjamin's dialogue with Adorno. For a concise overview of the historical back-
ground to the debate, see chapter six, "Aesthetic Theory and the Critique of Mass Culture,"
in Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute
of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973) 173-218, or the section on "Wal-
ter Benjamin, the Passagen-Werk, the Institute and Adorno" in Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frank-
furt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance, trans. Michael Robertson (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: MIT, 1994) 191-218. For an extremely concise, yet insightful summary of the
theoretical issues in the debate, see Peter Birger's essay, "Kunstsoziologische Aspekte der
Brecht-Benjamin-Adorno-Debatte der 30er Jahre," in Seminar: Literatur- und Kunstsoziolo-
gie, ed. Peter Btirger (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1978) 11-20.
2Originally published as Hektor Rottweiler, "Uber Jazz," Zeitschrift far Sozialfor-
schung 5 (1936) 2:235-59. Adorno wrote the essay in England but had it published under a
pseudonym because he was one of the few associates of the Institute of Social Research who
was able to travel in and out of Germany at the time. Reprinted in Moments musicaux (1964)
and Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, vol. 17 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982) 74-108.
This and other essays by Adorno are henceforth cited as ZfS, according to their first appear-
ance in the Zeitschrift fir Sozialforschung.
3The editors of Benjamin's collected works provide a wealth of detail on the exiled
author's futile attempts to win Brecht's support for publication of the film essay in the German
emigr6 journal Das Wort. Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann
and Hermann Schweppenhiuser (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1974) 3:1020-28.
4As the editors of Benjamin's collected works explain, only the first and third versions
were available when they included the essay in volume one in 1974. The second version, which
had been presumed lost, was subsequently discovered in the Max Horkheimer Archive in
Frankfurt a. M. and published as an addendum in volume 7 in 1989. All versions of Benjamin's
essay are henceforth cited as GS, in accordance with Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiede-
mann and Hermann Schweppenhiuser, 7 vols. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972-89). First German
version: GS 1.2:431-69; second German version: GS VII.1:350-84; third German version: GS
486 McBride
1.2:471-508. The first published text of the essay, "L'ceuvred'art Al'dpoque de sa reproduction
m6canisbe," Zeitschrift fiir Sozialforschung 5 (1936) 1:40-68, has also been reprinted in GS
1.2:709-39. The only available English translation is "The Work of Art in the Age of Me-
chanical Reproduction," Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, World, 1968) 217-51.
5Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Briefwechsel 1928-1940, ed. Henri Lonitz
(Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1994) 171. This edition is hereafter cited as Briefwechsel.
6Originally published in Schiller's own journal as "jber die asthetische Erziehung des
Menschen in einer Reyhe von Briefen," Die Horen 1 (1795) 1:7-48, 2:51-94, 6:45-124.
7This is clearly the objective Schiller sets for himself at the outset of his treatise. The
text's ambiguous conclusion suggests he may have lost sight of his original objective and ended
by making aesthetic culture an end in itself, rather than a means.
8For more on the concept of autonomy and discursive differentiation in Kant and Schil-
ler see the relevant chapters in Gerhard Plumpe, Asthetische Kommunikation der Moderne,
vol. 1 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1993) 47-150.
9Another associate of the Institute for Social Research, Herbert Marcuse, critiqued
Schiller's notion of aesthetic autonomy for being duplicitous, in a textbook example of Critical
Theory. On the one hand, art's autonomy accuses a social order that is unfree. On the other
hand, this critique is blunted by the compensatory function the semblance of beauty serves in
bourgeois society. Originally published as "Uber den affirmativen Charakter der Kultur,"Zeit-
schrift fiir Sozialforschung 6 (1937) 1:54-94. Reprinted in Schriften, vol. 3 (Frankfurt a.M.:
Suhrkamp, 1979) 186-226.
1OIn "Religious Rejections of the World and their Directions," Weber states that "the
rationalization and the conscious sublimation of man's relations to the various spheres of
values, external and internal, as well as religious and secular, have [...] pressed towards
making conscious the internal and lawful autonomy of the individual spheres; thereby letting
them drift into those tensions which remain hidden to the originally naive relation with the
external world." From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. and trans. H. H. Gerth and C.
Wright Mills (New York: Oxford UP, 1946) 328. JuirgenHabermas described this process of
functional differentiation as the "unfinished project of modernity" in his Adorno Prize Speech
of 1980. Compare "Die Moderne-ein unvollendetes Projekt," Kleine politische Schriften I-
IV (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1981) 444-64.
11Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt a.M.:
Suhrkamp, 1974) 224-31. (s40 "On Taste as a Kind of Sensus Communis," and s41 "On the
Empirical Interest in the Beautiful.")
12Fora more detailed analysis of Schiller's attempt to mediate between individual and
social subjectivity, see Anthony Seville, Aesthetic Reconstructions: The Seminal Writings of
Lessing, Kant, and Schiller (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987).
'3Rodolphe Gasch6, "Objective Diversions: On Some Kantian Themes in Benjamin's
'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'," Walter Benjamin's Philosophy:
Destruction and Experience, ed. Andrew Benjamin and Peter Osborne (New York: Routledge,
1994) 183-204, here 197.
14Kant241ff. (s46 "Beautiful Art is the Art of Genius.")
15Jiirgen Habermas, "Bewul3tmachende oder rettende Kritik-die Aktualittit Walter
Benjamins," Zur Aktualitiit Walter Benjamins, ed. Siegfried Unseld (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhr-
kamp, 1972) 173-223.
16This claim has already been made by Miriam Hansen in "Benjamin, Cinema and
Experience: 'The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology'," New German Critique 40 (Winter
1987):179-224, here 222.
7In a recent attempt to stem a wave of revisionist interventions, Harry Cooper reas-
serted that Adorno's attitudes on jazz music exemplify the "bad faith of the high-cultural
fetishist." Such global denouncements of Adorno's elitism fail to take into account the more
fundamental concerns about aesthetic and political subjectivity that condition his taste in mu-
sic. For recent contributions to the debate on the cultural significance of Adorno's ideas on
music, see Harry Cooper, "On Uber Jazz: Replaying Adorno with the Grain," October 75
(Winter 1996):99-133; Thomas Y. Levin, "For the Record: Adorno on Music," October 55
(Winter 1990):23-47; Jamie Owen Daniel, "Introduction to Adorno's 'On Jazz'," Discourse
Benjamin and Adorno on Critique 487
12 (Fall-Winter 1989-90) 1:39-44; and Robert Hullot-Kentor, "Popular Music and Adorno's
'The Aging of the New Music'," Telos (Fall 1988) 77:79-94.
8 Originally published as Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno, "Zur gesellschaftlichen Lage
der Musik," Zeitschrift ffir Sozialforschung 1 (1932) 1/2:103-24, 3:356-78. Reprinted in Ge-
sammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, vol. 18 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984) 729-77.
9Wiggershaus 236-46.
20Originally published as T.W. Adorno, "jber den Fetischcharakter in der Musik und
die Regression des Hdrens," Zeitschriftfir Sozialforschung 7 (1938) 3:321-56. Adorno revised
the text for Dissonanzen: Musik in der verwalteten Welt (1956). Reprinted in Gesammelte
Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, vol. 14 (1980) 14-50.
21 Richard Wolin, Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: U

of California P, 1994) 197.

22Georg Lukics drew on Marx's analysis of the commodity fetish to develop the concept
of "second nature." According to Lukics, when humanity becomes so alienated from its own
social creations that it sees in them the arbitrary character of natural objects, it projects the
illusion of a "first nature" to serve as an ideal foil for its own self-alienation. The Frankfurt
School embraced this idea and made it a methodological staple of Critical Theory. Compare
the third chapter in Lukics' Die Theorie des Romans (Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1920) and his
discussion of reification in Geschichte und Klassenbewufitsein (Berlin: Malik, 1923).
23 Susan Buck-Morss defines "innervation" in Benjamin's terms as "a mimetic reception
of the external world, one that is empowering, in contrast to a defensive mimetic adaptation
that protects at the price of paralyzing the organism, robbing it of its capacity of imagination
and therefore of active response," in "Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Art-
work Essay Reconsidered," October 62 (Fall 1992):3-41, here 17.
24Norbert Bolz, "Einleitung: Links schreiben," Walter Benjamin: Profane Erleuchtung
und rettende Kritik, ed. Norbert Bolz and Richard Faber, 2nd ed. (Wiurzburg:K6nigshausen
& Neumann, 1985) 9-33, here 24.
25 Eva Geulen analyzes this passage in detail in "Zeit zur Darstellung: Walter Benjamins

Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit," MLN 107 (April 1992)
3:580-605.
26Gasch6 197.
27Samuel Weber, "Mass Mediauras, or: Art, Aura and Media in the Work of Walter
Benjamin," Mass Mediauras: Form, Technics, Media (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996) 76-107.
28 Steve Giles, Bertolt Brecht and Critical Theory: Marxism, Modernity and the Three-

penny Lawsuit (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997) 127. Giles's study contains two chapters that are
especially enlightening about Brecht's influence on the dialogue between Benjamin and
Adorno: "Brecht, Adorno and Benjamin's Revisions to the Kunstwerk Essay" (113-31) and
"Vorsprung durch Technik? Aesthetic Modernity in Der Dreigroschenprozef3 and the Kunst-
werk Essay" (133-66).
29Kracauer'sessay, "Kult der Zerstreuung: Uber die Berliner Lichtspielhauser," origi-
nally appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung 70:167 (first morning edition, March 4, 1926) 1-2.
Reprinted in Das Ornament der Masse: Essays (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1963) 311-17.
30 GS 1.1:203-430.
3Gasch6 198.
32 Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism

(Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986) ix.