Theodor W. Adorno and the Critical Theory of Knowledge
3.5. Conclusion
Theodor W. Adorno and the Critical Theory of Knowledge 105
3.4.12. Academic Knowledge
In the academic system, there is, as Machlup (1980) stresses, a difference between knowledge in the natural sciences, the humanities and the social sci-ences. Knowledge of natural sciences is positivist and aims to discover laws that allow mapping and predicting reality. The humanities and cultural sciences (languages, literature, philosophy, religion, ethics, arts) develop critical judge-ments by interpreting and creating texts. The social sciences focus on human action just like the humanities, but are bound up in a conflict between criti-cal and administrative academic knowledge. They take the humanities and/or the natural sciences as models, which results in conflicts and relations between the qualitative/the quantitative, theory/empirical research, a priori/a posteriori knowledge, reason/experience, etc. Habermas (1971, 303) argues that positivist knowledge dissociates normative values from facts and claims that knowledge is value-free. It is an ideological denial of the inherent connection of knowledge and social conflicts.
Academic knowledge is a systematic and coherent creation of knowledge about nature, humans, or society that is based on previous academic knowl-edge and tries to obtain insights about dimensions of reality that are thus far unknown, unexplored, or need further exploration. Artistic knowledge is systematic like academic knowledge, but more practical. It appeals to human imagination, creativity, interpretation, and intuition. It is inherently open for interpretation and for the creation of meaning. Science has more fixed mean-ings, whereas art more directly and as an immanent feature invites judgements of taste on the side of viewers, spectators, audiences, listeners, readers, etc.
individ-ual and the social, society and nature, the economic and the non-economic (knowledge work creates social knowledge that not just has economic dimen-sions, but can play a role in all realms of society), mental and physical work, general social structures and knowledge structures, individual knowledge and social knowledge. Adorno stresses the importance of the dialectic of identity and non-identity in Hegel’s work.
The dialectics just mentioned are all dialectics of identity and non-identity that operate in the constitution, reproduction, and transformation of knowl-edge. Each one of the poles of the dialectics exists only in itself as identity by relating to and grasping over into its other: the one is identical and non-iden-tical with the other. Each one can only be itself by standing in a relation to an other. But the other is not just non-identical with the one because it is itself also a one that is an other for another one and therefore identical with itself and the other.
In modern society, there is a dialectic of general social structures and structures of accumulation. In all class-based societies, we find conflicts of interests that are expressed in general social conflicts that include conflicts between hegem-onic and counter-hegemhegem-onic knowledge. There is a general conflict between ideological/dominative knowledge and emancipatory knowledge. Often domi-nant actors have structural advantages in the definition of social knowledge. In class-based societies, it tends to be much harder to diffuse critical, emancipatory knowledge throughout society than ideological, dominative knowledge.
It is more likely that dominant classes and groups have ideological knowl-edge than emancipatory knowlknowl-edge. There is however no mapping of class position onto forms of knowledge. Marx and Engels themselves came from bourgeois families, but created critical knowledge. There is also no guarantee that being part of a dominated group results in non-ideological knowledge, as the phenomenon of racism among a specific share of the traditional working class shows. Adorno, in his works, doesn’t just foreground the power of ide-ologies, he also stresses the importance that one can learn from Hegel’s anti-positivist, dialectical language and thought how to criticise, deconstruct, and struggle against ideologies.
Adorno’s works give us hope that instrumental knowledge that expresses par-tial interests is not the final word and can be changed by critique, which is the very process of the dialectic and dialectical knowledge. ‘Critique of society is critique of knowledge, and vice versa’ (Adorno 1998, 250).
Notes
1 https://70jahrenachauschwitz.wordpress.com/das-projekt/, accessed on 5 March 2015.
2 Translation from German: ‘Ich bin zwar Journalistin, aber als allererstes war das eigentlich eine sehr persönliche Motivation. Ich hab mich seit meiner
Theodor W. Adorno and the Critical Theory of Knowledge 107
Kindheit eigentlich mit der Frage beschäftigt: Was ist der Holocaust? Wozu sind die Menschen dort fähig gewesen? Aber wie konnten die Menschen auch weiterleben, die diese Greueltaten erleiden mussten?’ (https://soundcloud.
com/mkwprojekt2012/umfrage-unter-den-teilnehmenden-warum-bin-ich-hier, accessed on 5 March 2015).
3 See for example: https://70jahrenachauschwitz.wordpress.com/medien beitrage-2/
4 http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/18cons01.html
5 Translation from German: ‘Stalinschen brutalen Manipulation’.
6 Translation from German: ‘die Stalinsche Ideologie es zustande gebracht hat, den Marxismus selbst zu verdinglichen’.
7 Translation from German: ‘Wichtig ist, daß in allen solchen Fällen Stalin von rein taktischen Erwägungen ausging und die theoretische Analyse der jeweiligen historischen Lage als bloße Propagandamittel für seinen bereits gefällten Beschluß gebrauchte’.
8 See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negermusik
9 Data source: http://www.salzburgerfestspiele.at/subscriptions#SERIES+1, accessed on 20 March 2015.
10 Data source: http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/316345/umfrage/
einnahmen-der-salzburger-festspiele/, accessed on 20 March 2015.
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