Overturning banality requires pushing nuance to objectivity, not abandoning it

Evidence

The conclusion to be drawn from the decay of nuance is not to cling obstinately to forms that have decayed, nor yet to extirpate them altogether, but rather to try to out-nuance them, to push them to the point where from subjective shading they switch to being a pure, specific definition of the object. … In an order which liquidates the modern as backward, this backwardness, once condemned, can be invested with the truth over which the historical process obliviously rolls. Because no other truth can be expressed than that which is able to fill the subject, anachronism becomes the refuge of modernity. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 237

Categorization

• APHORISMS: The closing sentence — ‘anachronism becomes the refuge of modernity’ — is a compressed life-philosophy: the backward position can hold truth the forward current tramples.
• DEEPTHINKING: The dialectic of nuance — that decayed forms are neither retained nor extirpated but out-nuanced into pure objectivity — is a densely worked methodological demand central to Adorno’s whole project.
• XREF: Echoes the negative dialectic and his critique of the jargon of authenticity; also resonates with the opening aphoristic claim that language is history. — connects to: Objectification becomes bourgeois rationalization when objectivity remains unfree. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 267; Authentic cultural criticism requires simultaneous participation and detachment — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 55

Broader Connections

• Objectification becomes bourgeois rationalization when objectivity remains unfree. #expands (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 267
• Authentic cultural criticism requires simultaneous participation and detachment #expands (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 55