Adorno’s critique of Benjamin charged him with un-Marxist psychologizing

Evidence

Adorno’s criticism of Benjamin rested basically on three complexes of factors: (1) In important matters, Benjamin was too archaic for him, or too involved in myth, or not dialectically transcendent enough, or not thoroughly dialectical enough. (2) With regard to the demystification of art' as a special case of the dialectical self-dissolution of myth, Adorno accused Benjamin of underestimating, on the one hand, the technological rationality of autonomous art and thereby the destruction of its own aura; and, on the other, of underestimating the immanent irrationality of everyday art and the reflexive’ character of its audience, the masses, including the proletariat. (3) In addition, he considered it a fatal error that Benjamin could regard a series of facts as being unrelated to the philosophy of history, as being `collective subjective phenomena’ of some sort. Benjamin was thus, in Adorno’s view, not able to account for the objective power of the commodity fetish, and was carrying out an un-Marxist form of psychologization which was dangerously close to that of C.G. Jung. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 869

Categorization

• XREF: The charge that Benjamin psychologized ‘collective subjective phenomena’ near Jung connects to the wider Frankfurt critique of Jung and to Adorno’s insistence on the objective power of the commodity fetish. — connects to: Adorno judged Benjamin’s Marxism an unwitting productive misreading, not orthodoxy — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 297; Adorno faulted Benjamin for underestimating commodity-fetish power and dialectical mediations — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 869; Adorno dismissed Benjamin’s stance as a psychodynamic defense mechanism. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 1515 (+3 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The threefold anatomy of the Adorno-Benjamin dispute — myth/dialectics, aura/demystification, and the Jungian psychologization charge — captures in compact form a central theoretical rupture of Western Marxism.

Broader Connections

• Adorno dismissed Benjamin’s stance as a psychodynamic defense mechanism. #expands (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 1515
• Adorno faulted Benjamin for underestimating commodity-fetish power and dialectical mediations #expands (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 869
• Adorno judged Benjamin’s Marxism an unwitting productive misreading, not orthodoxy #complicates (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 297
• Adorno judged both Benjamin and Brecht ignorant of core Marxian theory #expands (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 226
• Adorno demanded Benjamin ground his commodity-soul thesis in Marx’s Capital chapter on fetishism. #expands (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 290