Enlightenment thought posits a primal mythic unity that never actually existed

Evidence

In the case of Adorno and Horkheimer, for example, the peculiar originality of their conception of a “dialectic of enlightenment” is that it excludes any beginning or first term and specifically describes “enlightenment” as an “always-already” process whose structure lies very precisely in its generation of the illusion that what preceded it (which was also a form of enlightenment) was that “original” moment of myth, the archaic union with nature, which is the vocation of enlightenment “proper” to annul. If it is a matter of telling a historical story, therefore, we must read Adorno and Horkheimer as positing a narrative without a beginning in which the “fall,” or dissociation, is always there already. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 728

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the ‘dialectic of enlightenment’ as a narrative without a beginning — the mythic origin it announces is itself a retroactive illusion. That place in the reader’s own struggle to explain periodized culture is central.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s purpose of mapping their own cognitive position: the ‘always-already’ structure of enlightenment mirrors how any ‘past’ the historical eye fixes is a projection from a present. — connects to: Myth was the first failed step toward emancipation, preparing self-destructive enlightenment — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1371; All civilization so far is enlightenment trapped within mythic immanence — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1372; The Odyssey excursus chiefly shows enlightenment reverting to myth, not myth being enlightenment — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1377