Adorno and Habermas both rested emancipation hopes on marginalized cultural forms

Evidence

There was a desperate hope in the way Adorno counted on the shattering power of a form of art that was constantly, as a result of its aporetic state, being driven further forward and increasingly weakened, and which was being taken less and less seriously in society. But there was no less desperation in Habermas’s hope for an alliance between new forms arising in the political public sphere and the guiding, self-reflective power of science in particular, which was being used by society more and more selectively, and more and more insistently, as a productive force and as an ideology, and whose educative and reflective disciplines or variants were being marginalized into an `autonomous’ and irrelevant role similar to that to which art had long since been assigned. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 688

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Both rivals anchor liberation in spheres society is actively relegating to irrelevance — art for Adorno, reflective science for Habermas — making each program structurally desperate.