1) Exclusion from a tradition, or exclusion of a subordinate group from the tradition (there is only one?) of a dominant group, can motivate (some? intellectual? average?) members of the subordinate group to (excessive? uncritical?) attachment to that tradition.
I am not sure how this rather vague thesis is supported by talk of Indian defenders of Carnap -- Carnap was as avante garde as Adorno's beloved Schoenberg, and saw himself as making a pretty complete break with "tradition" in philosophy of Some examples come to mind. Their significance is, however, obscure.
Lukacs, btw, someone whom for some reason I understand better, maybe because he wrote in arguments with theses supported by reasons, thought that the (hypothetical) recapture by the workers of the particular tradition he liked, 19th century realism, was a good thing. Unlike Adorno, Lukacs was no great fan of the avante garde.
2) There is the observation that one has to know a tradition -- what _is_ a tradition, btw? to hate it, which sort of makes sense; hate, like love, is intensified by knowledge. And this problem does explain why more educated people (--why snobs?) are attracted to by avante-garde movements, they know what the avante garde (when there was one) is rebelling against.
3. Socialism (by which he means what? Marxism? Marxism-Leninism?) among workers (ha! but that was a more naive time) and in the third world runs the risks of becoming one of the traditions (?) that the excluded identify with in this fierce way, somehow to their detriment, maybe because they lack the background in tradition to . . . what? Not be dogmatic Stalinists?
There may be something to this, but what does Adorno want? Does he want workers and "savages" to hate the socialist tradition? Or just regard it critically and intelligently? There may be something to the idea that part of the appeal of socialism, Marxism, and Marxism Leninism in the third world was that they were the latest and greatest from the dominant culture. (Not exactly an issue any more), and that this may have encouraged unhealthy dogmatism.
4. What is is shit about improved communications and a modestly raised standard of living (which, for all its faults, Stalinism _did_ provide, and ins some cases a more than modestly raised standard), not being to the benefit of the newly liberated peoples (The savages?) They should be on guard against this and cling to their won tradition caste systems,suteem foot-binding, female circumcision, And so forth? And how does this point relate to the rest of thsi.
Obviously I am stupid and clueless. Doug, please enlighten this savage.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> Seth Ackerman wrote:
>
> >If you simply conclude that the out-group
> >submitted, you're denying its agency, which is
> >sort of akin to denying its humanity.
>
> Guess they wouldn't like this bit from Adorno's
> Minima Moralia, which I haven't posted in a while.
>
> Doug
>
> ----
>
> 32
>
> Savages are not more noble. - There is to be found
> in African students of
> political economy, Siamese at Oxford, and more
> generally in diligent
> art-historians and musicologists of petty-bourgeois
> origins, 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 presupposes experience, a
> historical memory, a
> fastidious intellect and above all an ample measure
> of satiety. It has been
> observed time and again how those recruited young
> and innocent to radical
> groups have defected once they felt the force of
> tradition. One must have
> tradition in oneself, to hate it properly. That
> snobs show more aptitude
> than proletarians for avant-garde movements in art
> throws light on politics
> too. Late-comers and newcomers have an alarming
> affinity to positivism,
> from Carnap-worshippers in India to the stalwart
> defenders of the German
> masters Matthias Grünewald and Heinrich Schütz. 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, and the philistinism of the Bebels ties
> less in their
> incomprehension of culture than in the alacrity with
> which they accept it
> at face value, identify with it and in so doing, of
> course, reverse its
> meaning. Socialism is in general no more secure
> against this transformation
> than against lapsing theoretically into positivism.
> It can happen easily
> enough that in the Far East Marx is put in the place
> vacated by Driesch and
> Rickert. 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 should be on their guard
> against their
> unimaginative, indolent taste for everything proven,
> and for the successes
> of the West.
>
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