Adorno’s concept-object slippage reflects society’s real objective contradictions, not careless theorizing

Evidence

It was precisely this dependency of thought on its own content or object which was responsible for that dialectical “wordplay” or punning glimpsed at work in the preceding section and indeed profoundly characteristic of dialectical thinking in general. Thus the reader of such an essay as Adorno’s “Society” may too rapidly conclude that the writer has unjustifiably mingled two different types of considerations, two wholly different objects of research—that he frequently, and indeed deliberately, confuses social theory or the history of the various concepts of society with sociology or the empirical study of the various existing societies themselves. And it is certainly true that Adorno’s is an incessant shifting of reference back and forth between the two levels: for as we have already seen above, he aims precisely at demonstrating that the difficulties inherent in the concept of society (insofar as it can be thought of neither as a hyperorganism nor an empirical object in the world) result not from imperfect theorization, which greater ingenuity or more accurate data might be expected to rectify, but rather from the objective condition of society itself as a real object, undefinable at any point and yet omnipresent, whose control over individuals is reflected in the very contradictions of the idea itself: “while the notion of society may not be deduced from any individual facts, nor on the other hand be apprehended as an individual fact itself, there is nonetheless no social fact which is not determined by society as a whole.” — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 689

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Jameson explains why Adorno deliberately oscillates between concept and object: the theoretical contraditions of the concept of society are produced by society’s real, contradictory objective structure. A powerful reading of why dialectical ‘wordplay’ is not mere punning.
• XREF: Anchors Jameson’s reading of Adorno’s essay ‘Society’ — a concrete point of contact in the Frankfurt lineage. — connects to: Adorno rejected idealist reconciliation of class antagonism as evading objective social causes — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 236; Adorno read poems as historical records of society’s contradictions — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2221; Adorno by 1968 had given up hope that contemporary society fit any consistent theory — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2646
• DEFINE: Explains what justifies Adorno’s ‘incessant shifting’ between theory-history and empirical sociology.

Broader Connections

• Adorno rejected idealist reconciliation of class antagonism as evading objective social causes #corroborates (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 236
• Adorno read poems as historical records of society’s contradictions #exemplifies (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2221