I agree with you on this one. Adorno said: 'In psychoanalysis nothing is true except the exaggerations.' Evidently, he took his own aphorism seriously.
>> Why either Adorno or Popper?
>
>Other than B. Russell, I couldn't think of a more
>non-dialectical thinker to join in the ritual chant: "the
>poverty of dialectics."
The poverty of _peft-Hegelian_ dialectics, esp. in the Frankfurt School, post-structuralism, etc., if you missed it. I happen to think that there ought to be a way of employing dialectical thought other than being committed to Diamat or left-Hegelianism. How about taking hints from _The Poverty of Philosophy_, "Theses on Feuerbach," _The German Ideology_, etc.? Admittedly a difficult task (that sent Althusser off to a futile search for an 'epistemological break' and that also risks an opposite evil of empiricism, etc.), but nonetheless it's worth keeping those hints in mind always.
Then again, perhaps that's not the part of Marx you like, since you say:
>Look, Adorno and Horkheimer returned to Germany after the
>War. They were *the* leading thinkers in post-War
>(leading enough to be accussed of being the "architects of
>fascism" by Willie Brandt) (A&H being a key inspiration
>for the student movements of the 60's in Germany). There
>was a vacuum, an emptiness - esp. following the "fall" of
>Heidegger. Hegel, Kant, Marx, Nietzcshe, Schelling,
>Goethe... had all been banned or demolished. Adorno
>brought them back, pretty much single handedly. He was
>able to return German Idealism to the universities.
German Idealism isn't my cup of tea (neither is British empiricism). BTW, A&H's relation to the student movements was a tortured one (unlike Marcuse's). I suppose you can chalk it up to the cunning of negative dialectical reason or something like that.
>Spivak also tacitly endorses everything Zizek has written
>(in a footnote in her most recent book). Zizek, along with
>Jameson, acknowledge that negative dialectics is *the* most
>sustained critical philosophical paradigm to date... so, is
>this not a tremendous tribute to a crusty high conservative.
This crusty high conservative (a neat epithet there!) wrote many delightful musings on art, philosophy, etc. That's my tribute to Adorno -- the same tribute I'd give to any writer I like. More than that, I don't think he deserves, pace Zizek, Spivak, or any other Adorno fan.
Yoshie