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Yale Margellos
The Cecile and Theodore Margellos World Republic of Letters series identifies works of cultural and artistic significance previously overlooked by translators and publishers, as well as important contemporary authors whose work has not yet been translated into English.
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Naples 1925: Adorno, Benjamin, and the Summer That Made Critical Theory, written by Martin Mittelmeier and translated by Shelley Frisch, explores the untold story of how the volcanic landscape surrounding Naples influenced a crucial moment in twentieth-century intellectual history. Here, we speak with the author about Theodor Adorno’s work, the concepts underlying Critical Theory, and his choice to center a philosophical narrative on a city.
For those who are unfamiliar with modern European philosophy, how would you describe the Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno’s work, and Critical Theory?
MM: Critical Theory is a fascinating thing, as it reflects its own way of reflection. As Max Horkheimer puts it: Imagine you’re in an overcrowded prison. Conventional, apparent useful theory would try to describe the best strategies to survive, to get enough food, etc. Critical theory tries to show, that this kind of thinking only helps the owner of the prison. And tries to establish the possibility of breaking out. As the Institute of Social Science (which after WWII is labelled “Frankfurt School”) tries to get the complexity of present society, it works interdisciplinary and so has a lot of different, quite idiosyncratic thinkers and experts (for economy, for psychology, etc.) Adorno is one of them, and he develops a very special way of combining Marxism, musical theory (he is also a composer, student of Alban Berg), a love of the classical German tradition and an aphoristic writing talent.
You center your narrative on a place: Naples. How can location and landscape guide historical analysis, and why did you choose to focus on Naples given that Adorno did not write much or stay long there?
MM: I wasn’t interested at all in Naples at the beginning, I never had been there. My aim was to describe the structure of Adorno’s writings. Therefore I had to figure out when “the Adorno” begins, and I went more and more back in time. Adorno himself talks about a revolution in his style at the end of 1925. And then I remembered that Benjamin’s (and Asja Lacis’) short text on Naples was important for Adorno. It also is from 1925. And then the short wonderful essays on Positano by Kracauer. And then I saw that they met together in Naples, they had what they called an “philosophical battle.” I thought: what if the new style of writing comes from the experience of Naples and the surroundings? The thinkers transformed the character of the landscape, of the building material into a social and cultural figuration: porosity. And this porosity becomes kind of a social utopia—and a structural ideal for their own writing.
Your book is replete with celestial language. What did constellations mean to Adorno and his contemporaries, and how does this relate to the idea of porosity?
MM: Porosity is bound to the place of Naples. If Adorno and the others wanted to make out of porosity a notion that could be useful in thinking about society in general, they would have to transform it into a more abstract notion: constellation. This is an interesting and stretchy word in German. It is mostly used in a quite technical way: various things are in a relation to each other. But it has also the utopian, celestial overtone, which fits into thinking about a better society.
How did the global wars affect Theodor Adorno and the themes that he sought to explore?
MM: After WWI history was open. The play with the utopian concept of porosity and constellation combined with the hope of a social revolution. But with the Nazis coming to power Adorno’s work centered around one question: how was it possible that this hope was usurped by the Nazis and converted to its opposite? I try to follow this development in Adorno’s writings. In 1925 he and his friends saw the porous character of Naples. But Mussolini began his march on Rome. Kracauer offers in his essays on Positano the first premonitions of the fascist fight against porosity.
How may Theodor Adorno and his career be misrepresented in academia or public memory today?
MM: I don’t think that there is a massive misrepresentation. I offer a kind of a shift in the view on Adorno. If you look at the structure of his writings you are able to understand much better what is at work in them. Adorno seems to be enigmatic. And there had been some struggles on what his arguments really are, why he hasn’t been more politically concrete for example. I suggest that his most important, most practical argument is in the practice of his porous essays. And, as if in passing, alongside the magnificently relentless cultural critic, an extremely delicate thinker becomes visible, who devotes himself without restraint to the objects under study. This is also an aspect that is perhaps somewhat underrepresented.
Martin Mittelmeier, an editor and author, is honorary professor at the Institute for German Language and Literature at the University of Cologne. His books include Dada: A Century’s Tale and Freedom and Darkness. He lives in Cologne, Germany.
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