Enlightenment does not eliminate myth but re-enters it as secularized domination

Evidence

In the enlightened world, mythology has entered into the profane. In its blank purity, the reality which has been cleansed of demons and their conceptual descendants assumes the numinous character which the ancient world attributed to demons. Under the title of brute facts, the social injustice from which they proceed is now as assuredly sacred a preserve as the medicine man was sacrosanct by reason of the protection of his gods. It is not merely that domination is paid for by the alienation of men from the objects dominated: with the objectification of spirit, the very relations of men—even those of the individual to himself—were bewitched. The individual is reduced to the nodal point of the conventional responses and modes of operation expected of him. Animism spiritualized the object, whereas industrialism objectifies the spirits of men. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 46

Categorization

• DEFINE: Key critical-theory inversion: enlightenment’s ‘demythologization’ itself becomes mythical, with brute facts taking on the sacred character formerly reserved for demons.
• XREF: Foundational statement of the dialectic-of-enlightenment thesis; directly anchors the culture-industry critique and Burns’s later invocation of Adorno. — connects to: Enlightened thought itself contains the seed of its own reversal into domination — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 21; Enlightenment regresses into the very myth it claimed to escape; Enlightenment reason reshaped religious providence rather than displacing it — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 122 (+21 more)

Broader Connections

• Enlightenment secularization also sacralized profane history and myth in new ways. #expands (0.85)
• Enlightenment serves domination even while attacking priestly falsehood. #corroborates (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 55
• Enlightenment reason reshaped religious providence rather than displacing it #corroborates (0.82) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 122
• Enlightenment reason replicated the tyranny it rebelled against, now over nature #corroborates (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 182
• Totalitarianism expresses rather than repudiates Enlightenment’s inherent dynamic. #expands (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 786
• Modern Orientalism secularized inherited Christian structures rather than gaining objective knowledge #exemplifies (0.78) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 333
• Enlightenment can be redeemed from blind domination by self-critique #expands (0.75)
• The political philosophy of mastery emerged from secularized divine-creation assumptions #exemplifies (0.75)
• Discipline repurposed religious ascetic exercise toward indefinite worldly domination. #exemplifies (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 244
• The Enlightenment’s sacred-profane to imagination-reason shift was no simple hegemonic transfer #complicates (0.75) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 128
• Enlightenment must critique itself rather than merely defend cultural values #expands (0.73) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 24
• Enlightenment rationalism generated new monsters instead of eradicating them #expands (0.72) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 352
• Modernist myth use grounds secular values known to lack foundations #corroborates (0.72)