I do not think Adorno's homophobia bears no or litttle relation to the rest of _Minima Moralia_ (much as I think it contains interesting fragments). Perhaps his critique of 'identity thinking' is rather limited in _Minima Moralia_ (and elsewhere as well). Adorno seems more dazzled by his own 'dialectical' exercise than anything else, and his dialectical exercise is parasitical upon the categories whose 'identity' his writing leaves untouched (homo/hetero, East/West, worker/intellectual, etc.).
***** _Savages are not more noble_. -- There is to be found in African students of political economy, Siamese at Oxford,...a ready inclination to combine with the assimilation of new material, an inordinate respect for all that is established, accepted, acknowledged. An uncompromising mind is the very opposite of primitivism, neophytism, or the 'non-capitalist world'....It has been observed time and again how those recruited young and innocent to radial groups have defected once they felt the force of tradition. One must have tradition in oneself, to hate it properly [Yoshie: An 'uncompromising' elitism from an 'uncompromising mind'!]....Late-comers and newcomers have an alarming affinity to positivism....It would be poor psychology to assume that exclusion arouses only hate and resentment; it arouses too a possessive, intolerant kind of love, and those whom repressive culture has held at a distance can easily enough become its most diehard defenders. There is even an echo of this in the sententious language of the worker who wants, as a Socialist, to 'learn something', to partake of the so-called heritage....There is some reason to fear that the involvement of non-Western peoples in the conflicts of industrial society, long overdue in itself, will be less to the benefit of the liberated peoples than to that of rationally improved production and communications, and a modestly raised standard of living. Instead of expecting miracles of the pre-capitalist peoples, older nations [sic] should be on their guard against their unimaginative, indolent taste for everything proven, and for the successes of the West. [Yoshie: Adorno's condescension toward workers is intertwined with his racism & orientalism.] (52-3) *****
>Then I guess you can write off Theweleit too then, eh?
>(doh!) (being highly indepted to the FS) (and hell, why not
>Jessica Benjamin's Bonds of Love as well) (bah, dialectical
>poverty) (practically a quote right out of Popper's
>rejoinder to Adorno in the Positivist Dispute!) (curses!
>critial rationality or bust).
Why either Adorno or Popper? There is no reason to assume such limited alternatives. Adorno's 'dialectic' is impoverished because it is divorced from any interest in concrete investigations (be they on sexuality, working-class interest in education, or whatever) that can't be made to fit his 'dialectical' schema. Adorno's 'psychological' aphorisms merely follow the pre-determined 'psycho-logic.' Also, Adorno seems utterly unaware of or indifferent to how he may come across to intellectuals of the working-class and/or 'non-Western' origins; I suppose such peoples are excluded from his rhetorical bounds (and this exclusion, pace Adorno, does not give birth to 'a possessive, intolerant kind of love' of 'diehard defenders').
>> In other words, Adorno, et al contributed a left-wing twist to the
>> repertoire of homophobic discourse on homosexuals: "blame sexism on
>> homos (and of course, 'real men' are not sexist)!"
>
>Of course you happen to be ignoring the highly negative
>formulation of Adorno's dialectics here... Adorno was
>always very careful never to assign blame to individuals...
>despite his damning remarx... he was critical of both
>femininity (as the stamp of patriarchy) and masculinity (as
>militant bullshit).
For the reasons stated above, I do not think that Adorno sustains the 'negative' part of 'negative dialectics' in his writing. With regard to sexuality, what emerges out of his 'dialectical' exercise (if one may attribute so exalted a term to his prejudice) is his 'positive' evaluation of supposedly 'enlightened' sexual thoughts of critical theorists such as himself. Here you may recall Spivak's criticism of Foucault: what remains (after 'critical theory,' after 'deconstruction,' after 'post-structuralism,' etc.) is the Subject of the (Post)Modern Critic. "The Subject Is Dead! Long Live the Subject!" That's the poverty of left-Hegelianism (be it modernist or postmodernist), if you ask me, and smart left-Hegelians (such as Spivak) know as much.
Yoshie