Institutional approval depended on a work’s defensibility as dialectical materialism.
Evidence
As you know, for me it is a matter of the protohistory of the nineteenth century. 118 Benjamin’s outline, with its accompanying letter, apparently convinced Adorno that the material was not a betrayal of Benjamin’s original project and would nevertheless fit into the Institute’s plan of work. It promised to achieve something in the order of a materialist transformation of theological motifs. A week after receiving the outline, Adorno wrote to Horkheimer on impulse, resolutely supporting Benjamin. He had become convinced that this work will contain nothing which could not be defended from the point of view of dialectical materialism. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 214
Categorization
- XREF: Links to the Frankfurt School chapter’s account of Adorno mediating between Benjamin and the Institute’s research plan. — connects to: The Institute funded Benjamin’s study only after judging it defensible to dialectical materialism. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 181; Dialectical criticism judges a work by how its strengths structurally require its weaknesses — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 682; The work’s autonomy is itself a dialectical, historically variable phenomenon — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 646 (+2 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The Institute funded Benjamin’s study only after judging it defensible to dialectical materialism. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 181; Dialectical criticism judges a work by how its strengths structurally require its weaknesses — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 682; The work’s autonomy is itself a dialectical, historically variable phenomenon — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 646 (+2 more)