To Snob or Not to Snob

[ken <kenneth.mackendrick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

It seems to me that the points scored against European
snobbery in the Frankfurt School comes at the expense of the
theoretical insight which quite openly prohibits such
snobbery.  The real target of criticism in Horkheimer and
Adorno is brutal economic efficiency, in the form of a return to
nature (as myth).  In this respect, H/A are quite aware that
epistemological limitation is the positive condition of radical
contingency.  What is more important for a critical analysis of
culture then, in this respect, is the way in which culture is
reproduced in accord with some Law-like structure (knowledge
for the sake of knowledge alone, progress for the sake of
progress, profit for the sake of profit).  This rather Kantian
imperative (You can because you must!) is, in Freudian terms,
a manifestation of the death drive -  the attempt by cultural
forms, institutions, and subjective ego formations, to realize
themselves through an Other (nature, myth, nation).  The
identification with the Law then, as an fidelity unto death
(mimesis unto death) is a forfeit of subjectivity and a betrayal
of the idealist insights regarding freedom since subjectivity
itself is 'handed over' and placed in the service, as an
instrument, of otherness.

	What H/A are attempting to accomplish then, is a
kind of critical reistance to well greased economic machinery.
 Their thoughts on culture only make sense in this light - as
the attempt to think the imperatives of culture against
themselves.  Theoretically, what is forbidden in H/A then is
precisely the snobbery that is being discussed - a prohibition
of "going all the way."  In other words - what, in theory, a
critical theory seeks to negate is the affirmative moment of
culture (a fidelity to the law).  So relying on 'old-world'
sensibilities, which was often the case, is inconsistent with
their theoretical intention.

ken