For the outsider, the metropolis—a visual, tangible representation of the economic activities that it sites—appears to be endlessly seductive, complicated, and enthralling. And yet, for the urbanites themselves, both the skyline and the economy that it harbors inspire tedium; when will these games terminate, these spectacles that bring us no closer to a utopian community but merely run down the clock prior to the moment of judgment? What appears superficially to be busyness (e.g., business) is in fact a gigantic conspiracy for the wasting of everybody’s time, resources, and cognitive ability. At least, that is the way that it appeared to the revolutionary urban intellectuals of East Asia’s 1930s, both those from Tokyo as well as those from Shanghai; the former group, motivated by a critique of capitalism, would be involved in the creation of much of the built structure of an East Asian modern, while the latter became architects of the Chinese Communist Revolution. The revolutionary impulse of the Japanese progressives in Manchuria was realized as technocracy; however, deeper insecurities about the nature of capitalist modernity haunted the thoughts and work of the men who, while articulating a system of modern infrastructure across the Great Northern Wasteland, simultaneously brooded upon the limited and constricting nature of the society within which they existed.
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Nicholas W. Drummond’s “Immigration and the Therapeutic Managerial Government” appears in Telos 166 (Spring 2014). Read the full version online at the Telos Online website, or purchase a print copy of the issue in our store. Gary Lachman, writing at the Daily Grail, has just posted a new review of Ernst Jünger’s The Forest Passage. Here’s an excerpt. The following paper was presented at the Eighth Annual Telos Conference, held on February 15–16, 2014, in New York City. It develops ideas that the author previously explored in “The Changing Forms of Contracting in a Society of Transnational Networks,” a paper delivered at the 2011 Telos Conference. Can Critical Theory—rooted in the observation and dialectical understanding of the tensions and contradictions within the totality of interactions—bind itself like Odysseus in studying neoliberal social forms, so as to learn from them? And in so doing, discern in a Durkheimian manner emergent practices of self-binding and mutual bonds? Without foundering on neoliberalism’s reefs and rocks of sovereignty? Without falling prey to the collective addictions of the self-destructive financialized manipulations some neoliberal thinking spawns? Giuseppe Tassone’s “Wicked Men, Evil World: Evil between Psychoanalysis and Historical Materialism” appears in Telos 166 (Spring 2014). Read the full version online at the Telos Online website, or purchase a print copy of the issue in our store. As an occasional feature on TELOSscope, we highlight a past Telos article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Aaron Bell looks at Theodor W. Adorno’s “Resignation” from Telos 35 (Spring 1978). |
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Multiculturalism as state policy in the Western World has functioned without serious complications because an unequivocal division existed between the oppressive culture group and the culture groups requiring protection. Recent evidence suggests this distinction may be fading and the consequences are likely to be significant. Managerial governments traditionally accommodating towards diverse cultures are beginning to critically evaluate immigrant communities feared to be afflicted with objectionable pathologies like the tendency of some Islamic groups to promote gender inequality, homophobia, and Sharia law.
Reading “Resignation” today, it is immediately clear that the historical context is necessary to fully grasp the significance of Adorno’s words. Originally delivered as a radio address in 1968, “Resignation” is, among other things, an important entry in the Marxist theory-praxis debate and a primary document in the history of Adorno’s troubled relationship with the radical student movements of postwar Germany. Adorno, responding directly to the Frankfurt School’s critics of the radical left, defends his refusal to translate Critical Theory into a program for political action. Against the charge of apolitical “resignation,” Adorno articulates a defiant vision of critical thought beholden to no master. This vision of critical thought remains vital today, despite the dated trappings of the theory-praxis debate and the limited interest in Adorno’s biography and the politics of postwar Germany. 
