Spellbound and Hellbound? Adorno, Nationalism and Domination through Administration

Daniel Rogers, CUNY Graduate Center

Nationalism has often been seen as the rock on which the ship of Marxism crashes. It introduces complexity to the comparatively clean theory of class struggle, progress and revolution that Marxism seems to offer. Though nationalism once seen as universalizing, or at least compatible with universalism, it is now seen to promote particularity at the expense of universalism. There is still no consensus as to the extent to which it is either in tension with, or ultimately reconcilable to Marxism. Theodor Adorno's view of nationalism did not achieve systematicity. It can thus be said to mirror its object. Nevertheless, we can extract a coherent and generative teaching. In fact, a good deal of his signature ideas are relevant for the study of nationalism, whether implicitly or explicitly. “Identity thinking,” reification, hypostatization, and fetishism all relate to the combined objective and subjective tendency to dominate humanity through categorization. Rather than protect the complex constellation of particular cultures, the nation-state and the “administered world” it produces steamrolls particularity and glorifies a totality which is only pernicious for Adorno, despite his remaining universalist politically. The “culture industry” famously reviled by Adorno helps to produce and at the same time repress national subjects through binding them to the "spell" of nationalism. Through elucidating connections between Adorno's more abstract conceptualizations of our world in general, and his more concrete characterizations of nationalism, I will seek to extract a reasonably coherent teaching from an anti-systematic thinker.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 219. Domination through Administration