Childhood experience and the image of utopia The broken promise of Adorno’s Proustian sublimations

Matt F. Connell

At least since Aristotle, various conceptions of culture adjustment, amounting to an uncritical internalization have valorized its pacifying role as an outlet for dan- of the reality which insists that the infant must only gerous impulses and tensions. Sigmund Freud belongs enjoy that which is socially sanctioned. Children must to this culture-as-catharsis tradition, and accordingly progressively give up earlier forms of happiness and radical intellectuals and artists have often been uneasy pleasure, which demand everything in an unsustainable with his concept of sublimation, nervous lest their blurring of the boundaries between subject and object, work be reduced to the drives channelled into it, and infant and adult, and male and female. Polymorphous worried that the domestication of explosive impulses pleasure gives way to reality, and, broken, we must renders art conformist. For this reason, Joel Whitebook learn to love it. Any remnants are disparaged as a suggests, ʻAdorno is led to reject the notion of sublim- perverse wrong turn, and the dashing of the promise ation.ʼ1 Certainly, Adorno does not mince his words: of a more universal happiness is dressed up as normal ʻArtists do not sublimate.… Rather, artists display maturation. Gratification is not only deferred and violent instincts, free-floating and yet colliding with altered, it is distorted and denied, for under advanced reality, marked by neurosis.ʼ2 As in the later Aesthetic capitalism aim-inhibition becomes total, and ʻthe diner Theory,3 Adorno prefers here the concept of expression must be satisfied with the menuʼ.6 to that of sublimation. But Whitebook casts Adornoʼs Psychoanalysis reduces pleasure to a mere trick of rejection of the concept of sublimation as polemic, for the species deployed for its own reproduction, allow- Adorno still uses it, providing an eloquent aphoristic ing the adjustment of the client to enjoy whatever is version: ʻEvery work of art is an uncommitted crime.ʼ4 deemed compatible with the reproduction of a given Perhaps every work of Adornoʼs is an unthrown Molo- society. The adjustment orientation of conformist tov cocktail, for he tries to turn righteous anger into psychoanalysis is supposedly dedicated to producing the thought of what it would take to escape it: ʻWho- ʻ[t]he regular guyʼ and ʻthe popular girlʼ,7 who purge ever thinks is without anger in all criticism: thinking their socially provoked tensions with sport, weepies sublimates anger. Because the thinking person does and a healthy sex life.8 Adorno instead puritanically not have to inflict anger on himself, he furthermore insists that has no desire to inflict it upon others.ʼ5 So, Adorno does sublimate, channelling the painful a cathartic method with a standard other than suc- cessful adaptation and economic success would emotion which is the mark of genuine psychological have to aim at bringing people to a consciousness openness in the direction of socially critical thought. of unhappiness both general and – inseparable from Looking for something to blame instead of the victim, it – personal, and at depriving them of the illusory Adorno turns Freudʼs critique of the neurotic self gratifications by which the abominable order keeps into a critique of society. Adornoʼs rather carica- a second hold on life inside them, as if it did not tured early image of a repressive Freud has it that already have them firmly enough in its power from outside.9 psychoanalysis champions a pseudo-rational logic of

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 19 Adornoʼs concern with these repressed, negative cuseʼs, Adornoʼs immanent critique of psychoanalysis erotics of existence is a distinctive feature of his refines Freudʼs shaky division between repression work. He even goes so far as to allow fleetingly a and sublimation. According to Freudʼs remarks on positive extrapolation from them, hinting that some- the topic, repression problematically dams up uncivi- thing about pleasure could transcend its ʻsubservi- lized impulses, leading to their return in the form of ence to natureʼ,10 which, in a reality replete with a symptoms, whereas sublimation supposedly puts those socially sedimented second nature, is always in fact impulses into the service of civilization through their subservience to society: ʻHe alone who could situate aim-inhibited discharge in art and science. Adorno has utopia in blind somatic pleasure, which, satisfying it that Freud merely ʻvacillates, devoid of theory and the ultimate intention, is intentionless, has a stable swaying with prejudice, between negating the renunci- and valid idea of truth.ʼ11 This materialistic theory of ation of instinct as repression contrary to reality, and 19 truth consciously sublimates yearnings unknowingly applauding it as sublimation beneficial to cultureʼ. repressed in the austere forms of philosophy which Adorno theorizes the two concepts in a manner seek to purify thought from its infantile and somatic befitting our sexually saturated age, discussing the roots. The derivation of theoretical impulses from different attitudes towards sexuality of autonomous art, infantile demands for total satisfaction does not have which sublimates, and of the culture industry, which to be a wholly regressive phenomenon. The perverse represses: ʻWorks of art are ascetic and unashamed; the culture industry is pornographic and prudish.ʼ20 search for a pleasure beyond that currently available Direct representations of sexuality usually defuse the could be a source of resistance to existing society: deeper meanings of desire, and reflection on Marcel ʻWhatever qualities at present genuinely anticipate a Proustʼs restrained yet explicit account of the dark more human existence are always simultaneously, in decay of love leads Adorno to conclude that ʻde- the eyes of the existing order, damaged rather than inhibited sex is itself de-sexualizedʼ.21 harmonious things.ʼ12 Against both normative prescriptions for a healthy Although the pull is there, Adornoʼs condemnation sex life (or the sublimated aesthetic equivalent in of socially functional gratifications should not therefore pleasantly sensual art) and their naked reversal lead to the direct celebration of more subterranean (unreflectively Satanic modernism), Adorno suggests yearnings, for ʻwhat slips through the net is filtered that Proustʼs literary sublimation does not ameliorate by the netʼ.13 Adornoʼs exaggerated critique of psycho- our childish desire for something other to the social technics tries to avoid the celebration of a perverse norm; it actually heightens the pain of renunciation, resistance to cultural norms as a true other to repressive without forgoing it.22 Proustʼs expressive power both reason: ʻIn adjusting to the mad whole the cured patient endorses a Freudian interest in the uncanny echoes of becomes really sick – which is not to imply that the infantile desires which can decentre adult conscious- 14 uncured are any healthier.ʼ Normality may be awful, ness, and acts as a critique of Freudʼs reification of the but perversity and neurosis are not in themselves the childhood experiences he so doggedly uncovered. promised land. All three are distorted adult organiza- Freudʼs neglect of vital nuances of experience tions of repressed infantile material. Adorno resists the emerges whenever he betrays his respect for the par- course of championing the flowers of evil which may ticularities of the different modalities of childhood spring from the adult persistence of infantile impulse: perception, which he overeagerly converts into a norm- ʻSo much is true in psycho-analysis that the ontology of ative developmental theory. The hasty condemnation of Baudelairian modernity, like all those that followed it, vestiges of infancy as either regressions or perversions 15 answers the description of infantile partial-instincts.ʼ sometimes works against Freudʼs goal of using those Baudelaire tries to capture the potential energy of these vestiges to criticize adult repressions. Theoretically drives, and is crucial in the history of modernism, but conserving the alien character of early experiences his addiction to the ʻintoxicationʼ16 produced by his of pleasure and disappointment through nonconform- violent images bears witness to the danger of attempt- ist sublimation is therefore an important project for ing a direct appropriation of the seemingly unsocialized Adorno. force of dark sexual impulses.17 Rather than becoming a substitute gratification, such sublimation reminds the ego what it has lost in Regression, perversion and utopia gaining itself. This concern is crucial in Adornoʼs In Herbert Marcuseʼs terms: de-repression is not critical theory. Grown-ups promise children that the the good negation of bad sublimation.18 Like Mar- painful sacrifices demanded by socialization will be

20 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) redeemed by their initiation into the mysteries of rather than fighting wars of colonization. Mental health adulthood; mysteries they long to share, but which would then be a psychological togetherness through seldom yield the hoped-for satisfaction. We do not diversity, rather than a hierarchical system with the understand when we grow up. The failures of matu- ego dominating the id. rity, glimpsed by Adorno in the childlike content Freud does fleetingly concede the theoretical pos- of Proustʼs regressive utopias,23 are one concern of sibility of such a utopia, and is closer to Adornoʼs aesthetic comportment. position than Adorno allows. According to Freud, the This painful individual ontogenesis recapitulates ego is, after all, an outgrowth of the id, an attempt the phylogenetic experience of Enlightenment. The to achieve the idʼs wishes through a realistic grasp of enlightened control of instinct promises a reconciled the world outside it.27 Freud is well aware that defence life of reason which it has yet to deliver. For Adorno, mechanisms may become pathogenic processes, pro- ʻFreudʼs unenlightened enlightenment plays into the tecting the psyche from irrational demands which hands of bourgeois disillusionʼ,24 capitulating to the force the defences to imprison the ego they are trying present. Disappointment forces instinctual longing to defend. Freud recognizes the problems of rigid deep underground, institutionalizing its rejection as egoism, stating that ʻthere is no natural opposition unconscious irrationality. Adornoʼs theory seeks enlight- between ego and id; they belong together, and under enment, but speaks for this disparaged unconscious, healthy conditions cannot in practice be distinguished not just against it, showing its scars to be a product of from each other.ʼ28 the social constraint of consciousness. Freudʼs suppos- Moreover, Freudʼs work makes it clear enough that edly primal id is actually the form inner nature takes this unity is currently only an unobtainable ideal. For when distorted by the action of social contradictions; reasons varying from family secrets to a clientʼs class Adorno takes it as both a symptom and a promise position, psychoanalysis may have little chance of of something else. C. Fred Alford explains: ʻThe not achieving even its modest aim of converting neurotic easily satisfied libido becomes, in a sense, the locus misery into everyday unhappiness.29 In other words, of the promise of critical theory itself, the promise of ʻhealthy conditionsʼ do not exist, and psychoanalysis happiness.ʼ25 The danger of this formulation, as Alford exposes the repressive impact of this lack on children. suggests, is that the isolation of the libido becomes the Freud even provides a forthright condemnation of only guardian of its critical capacity. Its invocation is class exploitation, and essentially concurs with Marxʼs therefore utopian in the pejorative sense. But conform- predictions of revolution: ʻIt goes without saying that ist sublimation is worse. It levels out the disruptive a civilization which leaves so large a number of its power of instinct by forcing its capitulation to existing participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt cultural norms. Adornoʼs expressive radicalization of neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting the concept of sublimation therefore has to include existence.ʼ30 much that the traditional one rejects, refusing the task Adorno, however, actually attacks Freud just at of ameliorating renunciation, without simply abandon- the point at which historically and materially deter- ing the psychoanalytic critique of the id. mined revolt is invoked. Freud, like Marx, recom- One problem is that sublimation is normally mends looking reality in the eye and shrugging off unconscious, a screen for the discontent which drives the drug-like phantasies of religion. He thinks men it. Any conscious sublimation, for example, any artistic have little to gain from imagining ʻwide acres in the or theoretical expression, will therefore be disturbing, moon, whose harvest no one has ever yet seenʼ, and changing it from a brake to a spur. Although the ego that if they concentrated on this life, is meant to be the agent of conscious rationality, they will probably succeed in achieving a state of adaptation to the reality principle involves submission things in which life will become tolerable for every- to irrational social conditions, and the ego has to one and civilization no longer oppressive to anyone. deploy unconscious defences, such as sublimation, to Then, with one of our fellow-unbelievers [Heine], square the circle.26 The strict division of id and ego they will be able to say without regret: ʻWe leave Heaven to the angels and the sparrows.ʼ31 is only a result of the reality which forces the use of the defences. If adaptation to reality really was a For all its atheism, Adornoʼs heterodox Marxism does rational route to satisfying the needs of the id, the not want to give up on heaven32 or the imagination unconscious defences would not be needed. Under so easily, and he detects in this passage an allegedly unimaginably transformed conditions, a sublation of authoritarian antipathy towards pleasure and noncon- the division could yield a psychic order in which dif- formity which contaminates psychoanalysis (and, one fering impulses could grant each other independence could add, puritanical currents within Marxism). If

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 21 one is going to generate speculative ideals, that is, to its identical aetiology as a derivation from the then utopia should surely be more than tolerable. infantile sexual stages (an oral, rather than an anal or Otherwise, even the revolutionary imagination finds Oedipal fixation).38 Freud keeps the audience on his itself duplicating the standards of this world.33 Because side by suggesting that in fact, as long as the perverse psychoanalysis shows how the intense needs of child- adult remnants of the infantile instincts are put into hood are transmuted into utopian conceptions of the service of genital acts, they can be considered fulfilment and heaven, distorted remnants of hope, as normal. Although Freud defends the theory that we find Adorno defending certain elements of both infantile sexuality has to be organized under the sign hedonism and theology against Freudʼs ideal of the of reproduction, as well as repressed and sublimated to pragmatically well-adjusted individual: cement the wider ties of civilized life, he still criticizes the rigid prohibitions which insist ʻthat there shall be The place in the Future of an Illusion where, with a single kind of sexual life for everyoneʼ and which the worthless wisdom of a hard-boiled old gentle- 39 man, [Freud] quotes the commercial-travellerʼs therefore become ʻthe source of serious injusticeʼ. dictum about leaving heaven to the angels and Freudʼs therapeutic tolerance is admittedly often the sparrows, should be set beside the passage in only pragmatic (as his frequent use of the concept of the Lectures where he damns in pious horror the ʻnormal peopleʼ40 and associated preference for latent perverse practises of pleasure-loving society. Those homosexuality reveals), and this conservatism is in who feel equal revulsion for pleasure and paradise are indeed best suited to serve as objects: the empty, the end ambivalently reproduced by Adorno, even as 41 mechanized quality observable in so many who he robustly speaks up for the rights of homosexuals. have undergone successful analysis is to be entered Freud radically defended the cultural contribution of to the account not only of their illness but also of homosexuality, whilst still preferring to be organ- 34 their cure, which dislocates what it liberates. ized under heterosexual genitality. Similarly, Adorno As Adorno suggests, one can certainly find a condem- appreciates the spiciness of the partial instincts, nation of perversion in the introductory lectures, where deploring a merely empty genitality, but would see the Freud talks of ʻthese crazy, eccentric and horrible latter flavoured by the former, not overwhelmed by it. thingsʼ35 and provides his perhaps nervous audience Adornoʼs clever dialectic of health and sickness would with expressions of his own strictly scientific interest have it both ways. On the one hand Adorno would see in these matters. He also maintains a clearly normative Freudʼs ʻrepressiveʼ pragmatism as a selling out of the attitude, with firm ideas about the importance of a deeper possibilities of the infantile impulses. In a less mature genital sexuality. repressive world some of these impulses could be the But, in the same lectures, the scientific judgement basis for a more open and sensually material relation- as to what is perverse or normal is qualified by the ship, both between subjects and between subject and observation that the social classification of sexuality object. At the same time, however, Adornoʼs ascetic varies across history and culture. Careful phrases such theoretical respect for the potentiality of that which cur- as ʻwhat is described as normal sexualityʼ36 alert us rently seems perverse leads him into a few repressive to the fact that Freud always rejected the easy classifi- gestures of his own. Despite, for example, his liberal cation of ʻus and themʼ that was, and to a large extent attack on the German laws on homosexuality, in the still is, the medical norm. Freud says that when dis- same paper Adorno retains a pejorative use of Freudʼs cussing the various forms of sexuality ʻ[i]ndignation, already compromised conception of homosexuality as an expression of our personal repugnance and an an infantile fixation, linking the modern infantilization assurance that we ourselves do not share these lusts of ʻthe erotic idealʼ with ʻan unconscious homosexu- will obviously be of no help.ʼ37 A strict application alization of societyʼ.42 of psychoanalytic logic would classify kissing as per- It is perhaps possible – if precarious – to imagine verse, alongside coprophilia and masturbation, due a justifiable critical version of Adornoʼs pejorative

22 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) usage of the concept of homosexuality, which he from motherly loveʼ,47 rather than simply feeding the turns on psychoanalysis itself, in a clever version of bonds of existing society. the old accusation that Freud reduces everything to Freud should know that those utopian ʻwide acres sex. In a precursor to Luce Irigarayʼs attack on the in the moonʼ invoked by the theological, hedonistic homosexuality of patriarchal psychoanalysis, but using and perverse imaginations, and which seek for more more problematic terms, Adorno suggests that while than pragmatic toleration, cannot be mere phantoms. revolving around it, psychoanalysis misses the true It is Freud who teaches us that the uncanny (which import of sexual difference: certainly includes the affect-charged cultural associ- ations of moon-gazing: the mother, madness, ecstasy) That large sensitivity to difference which is the is always the primally familiar.48 Despite his monu- hallmark of the truly humane develops out of the mental achievement in drawing our attention to the most powerful experience of difference, that of the importance of such things, Freudʼs efforts to translate sexes. In reducing everything it calls unconscious, and ultimately all individuality, to the same thing, this material into the language of consciousness are too psychoanalysis seems to be the victim of a familiar strenuous, and something is lost in the process. homosexual mechanism, the inability to perceive differences. Homosexuals exhibit a certain experi- Through the eyes of a child ential colour-blindness, an incapacity to apprehend Adorno looks to literary models to supply the dimen- individuality: women are, in the double sense, ʻall sion missing from orthodox psychoanalysis. Freud the sameʼ to them.43 actually often did the same thing himself, sensing the limits both of his young science and his own sensi- The sensitivity to sexual difference is crucial for criti- bilities. When discussing dreams, Freud tells us: cal theory, but Adorno here breaks the promise of his own critique of a greedy, orally incorporative reason. creative writers are valuable allies and their evi- Most of his work condemns instrumental reason as dence is to be prized highly, for they are apt to the dinerʼs gaze on the roast,44 but here he casually know a whole host of things between heaven and earth of which our philosophy has not yet let us implies that only the sexually interested man can dream. In their knowledge of the mind they are far understand what a woman is, as well as providing in advance of us everyday people, for they draw a more obvious slight to the cognitive and affective upon sources which we have not yet opened up for capacities of homosexual men.45 science.49 However, without underestimating the problems of 50 these formulations, certain of Freudʼs remarks keep Following Walter Benjamin, who was one of the first open the possibility that Adornoʼs real target here is to translate Proust into German, Adorno thinks that not homosexuality per se, but the exclusion of women the perceptions of children may be a model for a less from the centre of civilization, which Freud celebrates diminished theoretical capacity, capable of engaging as a sort of male club: ʻThe work of civilization has in a freer association with the objects of cognition become increasingly the business of men, it confronts than normal adult consciousness. This receptivity them with ever more difficult tasks and compels them inevitably succumbs to the wave of repression that to carry out instinctual sublimations of which women institutes infantile amnesia, for its most primal objects are little capable.ʼ46 According to Freud, the devo- are hedged about with social taboos. Freud suggests tion of male energy to these tasks leads to a neglect that the intellect is retarded when socialization forces of women that provokes their resentments, making children to tame their sexual curiosity: them embittered opponents of civilization. In Minima It is hardly to be believed what goes on in a child Moralia Adorno does not necessarily dispute this, and of four or five years old. Children are very active- provides horribly cutting criticisms of actually existing minded at that age; their early sexual period is also femininity, but also proposes a more positive reading a period of intellectual flowering. I have an impres- sion that with the onset of the latency period they of the situation Freud simply describes. He allows the become mentally inhibited as well, stupider.51 possibility of reframing what appears to well-adjusted men like Freud a perverse female antipathy to civil- Having opened this door on infantile intelligence, ization as a valid resistance to patriarchal hegemony, Freud closes it again with his overly dry focus on sexu- not least in its positive effects on children. Adorno ality. Inhibited by the explosive nature of the material suggests that the memory of primary ties with the he was uncovering, Freudʼs struggle to achieve an mother might then indicate the possibility of a non- unimpeachably scientific clarity ends up affronting the repressive order, ʻthe Utopia that once drew sustenance memory of childhood. The same tension is also visible

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 23 in those very accusations of sexual impropriety that outside it. This enacts the constellational dialectic of Freud was trying to avoid. Because reality demands the sociology and psychology to which Adorno aspires, same renunciation of the subtle erotics of childhood seeking ʻa reality which no view oriented toward that Freud carries out, the disgusted protests of his mere psychological or sociological data for the sake readers can serve two mental currents at once, like of isolating them can graspʼ.56 all symptomatic compromise formations. The urge Although Freudʼs famous case histories are some- to repress gains satisfaction through the moralistic times disparaged for having literary qualities, their judgements, but the urge to rescue Eros is itself reg- related importance is that they force a similar consider- istered in the unease prompted by Freudʼs scientistic ation of a constellated totality of inner life and social reductions. Adorno refines Freudʼs recognition of the reality. The links between the levels of analysis emerge importance of infantile sexuality by conserving its like the analysandʼs chain of associations. Adorno otherness, which is abusively overlaid in Freudʼs haste may criticize the kind of medically mechanical free to deploy an adult perspective: association that disables the critical faculty only to replace it with the ready-made formulations of the His magnificent discovery of infantile sexuality will 57 cease to do violence only when we learn to under- analyst, but he still hints at the constellational com- stand the infinitely subtle and yet utterly sexual im- ponent of Freudʼs early theories of free association pulses of children. In their perceptive world, poles and the dream work when discussing the difficulties apart from that of the grown-ups, a fleeting smell or of reading Proust: ʻProust should be read with the a gesture take on dimensions that the analyst, faith- idea of … dwelling on the concrete without grasping ful to adult criteria, would like to attribute solely to prematurely at something that yields itself not directly their observations of their parentsʼ coitus.52 but only through its thousand facets.ʼ58 Adorno holds out hope that the theoretical recovery In the Freudian and Proustian accounts of memory, of this perceptive world could provide a critical lens the possibility of a radical critique of the contents of through which to examine the adult one. Thus Proust, the mind relies on a disabling of the merely reflex for example, ʻlooks at even adult life with such alien self-criticism born of resistance. The link between and wondering eyes that under his immersed gaze psychoanalysis, the form of Adornoʼs aesthetics and the present is virtually transformed into prehistory, Proustʼs artistic sublimations becomes clearer when into childhoodʼ.53 A recollection of the supercharged Freud quotes at length from Friedrich Schiller to eyes of the child can produce in the adult an embar- illustrate the idea: rassed recognition of what they have lost in gaining It seems a bad thing and detrimental to the crea- themselves: tive work of the mind if Reason makes too close an examination of the ideas as they come pouring [Proust] handles things every individual once knew, in .… Looked at in isolation, a thought may seem in childhood, and then repressed, things that now very trivial or very fantastic; but it may be made return to him with the force of the familiar. What important by another thought which comes after it, seems so extremely individuated in Proust is not and, in conjunction with other thoughts that may inherently individuated; it seems so only because seem equally absurd, it may turn out to form a most we no longer dare to react in this way, or are no effective link. Reason cannot form any opinion upon longer capable of doing so. Actually, Proust restores all this unless it retains the thought long enough to the promise of the universality we were cheated of. look at it in connection with the others.59 In his texts it makes us blush, like the mention of a name carefully kept secret.54 Proust deploys such a conjunction of thoughts, linking place, time and memory in multifaceted recollections This account of the uncanny force of Proustʼs texts of sensations which evoke particular modes of experi- develops Freudʼs particular clinical suggestion that ence or relationship. In a passage on Proust in Negative the memory underlying the uncanny be used as a Dialectics, Adorno suggests that it is not only in their critique of rigid adult experience. In this, Proustʼs art phantasies that things whisper promises to receptive has a scientific rigour of its own. Marcelʼs painful children: attempt to recall his own life as a process, rather than To the child it is self-evident that what delights as the adventures of a rigid subject, ʻestablished the 55 him in his favourite village is found only there, precariousness of all ego-identityʼ. Identity-thinking there alone and nowhere else. He is mistaken; but is undermined through a psychology that reaches the his mistake creates the model of experience, of a social through its immersion in the phenomenology concept that will end up as the concept of the thing of individual experience, rather than by trying to get itself, not as a poor projection from things.60

24 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) But this open receptivity cannot make it through child- That the memories rising from the depths are often of hood. It can only be retrieved with a mature conceptual women is significant, since we have seen how Adorno style which still dares to yearn for something beyond takes sexual difference as the exemplary model for itself, without deluding itself that it can get there. all relations with an alien other. The complications of This non-repressive literary-theoretical refinement of the unhappy boyʼs relations with his parents and other the concept of sublimation is meant to champion the adults shows the poignantly utopian nature of Proustʼs drive it channels. The goal is not aim-inhibition, but carefully controlled regressions. the conscious development of the drive backwards, One of Proustʼs recollections captures the impor- towards the utopian moment at the origin of its aim. tance of Oedipal themes more convincingly than At present such sublimation can do no more than Freudʼs Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, highlight the lack of any real reconciliation of the ego showing that when trying to communicate the central and the id.61 This highlighting is still a sublimation, importance of early experience, understated style may but cannot unify what remains split apart, remind- be more important than explicit scientific content. ing us that Adornoʼs excursus to Proust does not Proust recalls the way the smell of varnish on the undialectically counter Freudʼs rationalist account of staircase of his childhood home invasively encapsu- childhood with a purely romantic evocation of it: ʻThe lated the nexus of emotions which dogged his going secret of aesthetic sublimation is its representation of to bed:64 the bottomless depth of his desire to remain fulfillment as a broken promise.ʼ62 Proustʼs effort to with his mother overnight, and the concomitant depth recall the promise is described like a process of free of his partly projective fear of the father who threatens association, complete with resistance to what rises the childish wish. Proust recounts a pivotal bedtime from the depths of the mind. Freud himself could not drama which ensues one night when the presence of have bettered it: visitors prevents his mother from saying goodnight to him properly. Marcel disobediently waits up instead I feel something start within me, something that of going to sleep, and later ambushes his mother on leaves its resting place and attempts to rise, some- thing that has been embedded like an anchor at a her way to bed. She tries to shoo him away before his great depth; I do not know yet what it is, but I can father catches sight of him: feel it mounting slowly; I can measure the resist- ance, I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed.63 But I begged her again to ʻCome and say good night to me!ʼ terrified as I saw the light from my fa- therʼs candle already creeping up the wall, but also making use of his approach as a means of black- mail, in the hope that my mother, not wishing him to find me there, as find me he must if she contin- ued to hold out, would give in to me, and say: ʻGo back to your room. I will come.ʼ Too late: my father was upon us. Instinctively I murmured, though no one heard me, ʻI am done for!ʼ65

In fact the fear is unrealized, and the boy is uniquely indulged. His mother stays up with him, reading out loud from a novel by George Sand, and sleeps in his room. But the promise of this situation is broken for both the mother and the child. The mother symbolic- ally introduces a mystery to the heart of sex by editing out the love scenes as she reads, and the boy knows that in forcing her to give in to his demands he has somehow betrayed her hopes for him. That night is also the first night that his parents classify him as a nervous case, rather than blaming him for his unhappiness. He also knows that the intimacy of the undisturbed hours alone with his mother are an exception, since paternal jealousy may regard the motherʼs desire to share her affections with the chil- dren as promiscuity:

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 25 I knew that such a night could not be repeated; When a guest comes to stay with his parents, a that the strongest desire I had in the world, namely, childʼs heart beats with more fervent expectation to keep my mother in my room through the sad than it ever did before Christmas. It is not presents hours of darkness, ran too much counter to general that are the cause, but transformed existence. The requirements and to the wishes of others for such a perfume that the lady visitor puts down on the concession as had been granted me this evening to chest of drawers while he is allowed to watch her be anything but a rare and casual exception.66 unpacking, has a scent that resembles memory even though he breathes it for the first time.… The more permanent redemption of the potential of The yearning to plunge into unformed joy, into exceptional childhood moments has to wait for another the pool of salamanders and storks that the child has learned painfully to subdue and block with the reality, and the price of Proustʼs perverse refusal to frightful image of the black man, the demon who renounce the childhood claim to total happiness is the wants to take him away – here he finds it again, loss of happiness in the present: ʻProust is a martyr without fear.70 to happiness.ʼ67 Adorno shares in this melancholy martyrdom. The broken promise stalks happiness as Having identified the repetition of desire for the an uncanny spectre. Refusal to renounce the demands mother and fear of the father alluded to in the fairy- of that ghost can only manifest itself as a scar on tale and childishly racist symbolism of the last passage, the individuals who cannot bear to adjust themselves it would be possible to psychoanalyse it to death. fully. Max Horkheimer suggests that social demands Baldly stated, the process at the heart of the piece is a on the family condition the harsh division between boyʼs rediscovery of the dashed utopia of unrestricted maternal and paternal authority which underpins the contact with his mother, through an early extra-familial Oedipal situation. One consequence is that ʻthe sup- love object – the lady visitor. With the regaining of the pressed inclination towards the mother reappears as a possibility of complete love, kindled by the indulgent fanciful and sentimental susceptibility to all symbols attention the visitor bestows, the boy remembers what of the dark, maternal, and protective powers.ʼ68 There true pleasure was. The visitor reawakens the erotism are grounds for seeing Proust, along with the whole Oedipally repressed in the home, and with it the Frankfurt School, as sharing this inclination, to both keen perceptive intelligence whose first model was the benefit and the detriment of critical theory. sexual curiosity. The resurrection of the intensity of Adorno included in Minima Moralia a fragment, the boyʼs sense of smell by the womanʼs perfume is a 69 presumably autobiographical, entitled ʻHeliotropeʼ. testament to this reawakening of the erotic sensibility, This can be taken as a later development of the for the human capacity for the repression of sexuality Proustian family scene, showing how the infantile is founded in the atrophy of the sense of smell: desires persist, and how distant memories of them can be rendered close through the medium of other Freud expressed the facts of the matter with genius when he said that loathing [of the body] first arose exceptional moments which fleetingly re-fulfil them. when men began to walk upright and were at a Such a rendering spurs on the will to make a better distance from the ground, so that the sense of smell world. The fragment clarifies the contribution that which drew the male animal to the female in heat infantile erotism makes to later attempts to judge just was relegated to a secondary position among the what real pleasure in a relation with the alien might senses.71 be. Childhood bliss at the energizing of the once In ʻHeliotropeʼ, none of this is imprisoned in dead familiar by the presence of the new is the primal psychoanalytic jargon, which would kill everything source of Adornoʼs notion of a transformation in our Adorno manages to suggest with his deployment of relations with otherness. ʻHeliotropeʼ dives into the a Proustian – rather than Freudian – conception of heart of this notion through Adornoʼs recollection of what seems to have been a visit made to his infantile erotics. The mode of expression is through a childhood home by an exotic lady visitor. The title utopian regression. It is the lyricism of Adornoʼs prose (loosely, ʻsun-seekerʼ; both a general plant tropism that generates its uncanny affect, as Adorno prompts and a genus of flower) makes it beautifully clear that recollections of our own memories-of-memories of the subject of the fragment is the life drive, Eros. bliss and the echo of sorrow at its passing, all so easily Understood psychoanalytically, Adornoʼs theoretical lost in the bustle of civilized adult life. memoir sublimates several Oedipal dynamics, but not The lady visitor treats Theodor as parents cannot, always successfully. Artistically, Proust and Benjamin and that she exists keeps alive the hope of a love free are Adornoʼs tutors: of Marcelʼs feeling that his father is coming up the

26 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) stairs. We could say, even, that with the visitor, for is clear – but only if read through the earlier formu- the first time the scent of woman is not marked with lation. Following this chain of associations, it seems the smell of his fatherʼs cigar. The visitor does not reasonable to assert that Negative Dialectics yearns sleep with him, in a classically perverse transgression for what we might psychoanalytically interpret as an of generational boundaries, but her presence still char- anaclitic theoretical relationship with objects, in oppo- ges the stale routine, providing a psychological hint sition to the narcissistic type of object choice based on of satisfactions to come: ʻWith the order of the day a projection outwards of an image of the self.75 – perhaps tomorrow he will be allowed to miss school Adornoʼs anaclitic theory tries to resist the philo- – the boundaries between the generations too are sus- sophical narcissism which annexes the alien character- pended, and he who at eleven oʼclock has still not been istics of otherness by modelling it on the self. This sent to bed has an inkling of true promiscuity.ʼ72 component of the conceptual utopia which glimmers Like Proustʼs memory of the night spent with his behind the negativity of Adornoʼs dialectical sub- mother, what Adorno describes has the status of an limations can be used to counter the Habermasian exception. The recollected exception proves the rule charge that Adornoʼs only norm is an aesthetic theory 76 that usually denies it; its evocation, therefore, is mel- offering scant basis for a critical theory of society. ancholic. Just as potentially satisfying parent–child The aesthetic is important as a psychoanalytic reminder relations are distorted by the capricious rule of the of lost potentials that really existed in childhood, father, the possibilities for a free society are scuppered at least in a fragmented form. This dimension of by the unpredictable laws of paternalistic capitalism Adornoʼs critical theory reveals the infantile and which reify the possibility of rational exchange. The bodily roots of the uncanny hope for an undistorted promise which briefly glimmered during the night communication with otherness, something from which 77 with mother or the ladyʼs visit is broken. But the the linguistic turn in Habermas abstracts too much. glimmering exception becomes the model of hope for The basis for social critique which Habermas requires a permanently reciprocal exchange. could be in part provided by a critical consideration of the questions and answers prompted by Proustʼs Conceptual utopianism utopian regressions and Adornoʼs ʻHeliotropeʼ. By producing critical sublimations of broken promises All this becomes in ʻHeliotropeʼ a meditation on and exceptional moments, these writers explain why Benjaminʼs Proust-inspired auratic childhood dialectics it takes so much to open us to the lost memory of of near and far: ʻFrom the joy of greatest proximity utopian wishes. And the question they raise – why she removes the curse by wedding it to utmost dis- adults still have to wait for the redemption of what was tance. For this the childʼs whole being is waiting, and best in childhood – invites a political answer despite so too, later, must he be able to wait who does not being prompted by aesthetic reflection. As Marcuse 73 forget what is best in childhood.ʼ The boyʼs passion explains in a play on Proust and Adorno at the close for the exotically distant woman who at last takes him of his own book on aesthetics: seriously, who evokes the repressed early yearning for Forgetting past suffering and past joy alleviates an unattainable maternal proximity, is one prototype life under a repressive reality principle. In contrast, for the theoretical drive of Negative Dialectics, written remembrance spurs the drive for the conquest of some twenty years after Minima Moralia. In the later suffering and the permanence of joy. But the force book, Adorno famously speculates on what a differ- of remembrance is frustrated: joy itself is over- entiated reconciliation could be: shadowed by pain. Inexorably so? The horizon of history is still open. If the remembrance of things The reconciled condition would not be the philo- past would become a motive power in the strug- sophical imperialism of annexing the alien. Instead, gle for changing the world, the struggle would be its happiness would lie in the fact that the alien, in waged for a revolution hitherto suppressed in the the proximity it is granted, remains what is distant previous historical revolutions.78 and different, beyond the heterogeneous and beyond that which is oneʼs own.74 That the theoretical and political limitations of Adornoʼs consciously problematic sublimations break This mature philosopheme of Adornoʼs further their own revolutionary promise conforms to his sublimates the dialectic of proximity and distance negative logic. His anaclitic focus on sexual differ- first worked out through the Proustian-psychoanalytic ence invites considerations of homophobia, and only recollection of sexual difference. The link between partially defends him against charges of philosophical Negative Dialectics and Freudian theories of sexuality narcissism79 and sexism, for it on occasion proceeds

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 27 from a self-centred perspective, rendering woman 13. Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. more object than subject. Adornoʼs manly psychoana- Ashton, Routledge, London, 1973, p. 85. 14. ʻSociology and Psychology, Part Oneʼ, p. 78. lytic orthodoxy, which persists behind his critique of 15. Minima Moralia, p. 236. Freud, retains some of the best of Freud, but some of 16. Ibid., p. 237. the worst, too. The trick now must be to sublimate 17. Whitebookʼs Perversion and Utopia skilfully plays the our disappointment into immanent critique, not angry moralistic condemnation of perversion off against its celebration, critically following the Frankfurt School abstract negation, as Adorno has already tried to do lead as a guide to the maze of contradictory approaches with his equivocal critiques of Freud, Baudelaire and in contemporary psychoanalytic theory. Proust. He is drawn by the dark side of modernism, 18. Marcuse is so influenced by Adorno that he states ʻ[m]y debt to the aesthetic theory of Theodor W. Adorno the flipside of the infantile utopia of motherly love, does not require any specific acknowledgementʼ (The but tries to render it critical. In the terms of Dialectic Aesthetic Dimension: Towards a Critique of Marxist of Enlightenment, we could say that as well as being Aesthetics, Macmillan, London, 1979, p. vii). Adorno one of the most penetrating interpreters of the dark actually felt that Marcuse was borrowing his ideas in a display of ʻone-sided solidarityʼ (cited in Rolf Wigger- writings of the bourgeoisie, Adorno is also touched shaus, The Frankfurt School, trans. Michael Robertson, by their shadow. The blind spots of his openly self- Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994, p. 497). Judging from analytical and socially reflective critical sublimations Wiggershausʼs account, and Marcuseʼs many references could be turned into a case study on the spiritual to Adorno, the one-sided solidarity actually came from the jealous Adorno. The two men certainly make similar, situation of our age. but not identical, uses of Freud. In Eros and Civilisa- tion (Ark, London, 1987) and One-Dimensional Man Notes (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1964), Marcuse produces detailed concepts of basic and surplus repres- Thanks are due to Sean Homer, Shierry Weber Nicholsen sion, repressive de-sublimation, conformist sublimation and Alison Martin. and the perverse imagination. These have admittedly 1. Joel Whitebook, Perversion and Utopia: A Study in influenced my account of Adorno here, but fully detail- Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory, MIT Press, Cam- ing the differences between the two thinkers would take bridge MA, 1995, p. 261. Where Whitebook thinks another paper. Important points would be that Marcuse Adorno overdoes the critique of sublimation, Thomas makes direct use of psychoanalytic terms where Adorno Huhn accuses Adorno of not being critical enough. See sometimes only hints, and that Marcuse is more inclined Huhn, ʻThe Sublimation of Culture in Adornoʼs Aesthet- to champion the immediate deployment of the perverse; icsʼ, in Ronald Roblin, ed., The Aesthetics of the Criti- for example, his appreciation of Baudelaire and surreal- cal Theorists: Studies on Benjamin, Adorno, Marcuse ism seems less restrained than Adornoʼs. and Habermas, Edwin Mellen, Lewiston NY, 1990, pp. 19. Minima Moralia, p. 60. 291–307. 20. Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 140. 2. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from 21. Minima Moralia, p. 169. However, Proustʼs ontology Damaged Life, trans. E.F.N. Jephcott, Verso, London, of modernity certainly followed Baudelaireʼs; perhaps 1978, pp. 212–13. more of Adornoʼs critique of Baudelaire should be ap- 3. Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert plied to Proust than I here allow. Hullot-Kentor, Athlone, London, 1997. See pp. 4–13 22. Discussions of Proust, promises and the broken good, for discussions of sublimation. together with an indication of forthcoming work on the 4. Minima Moralia, p. 111. promise in Adorno and Derrida, are provided in J.M. 5. Theodor W. Adorno, ʻResignationʼ, in The Culture In- Bernstein, ʻWhy Rescue Semblance? Metaphysical dustry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, Routledge, Experience and the Possibility of Ethicsʼ, in Tom Huhn London, 1991, p. 175. and Lambert Zuidervaart, eds, The Semblance of Sub- 6. Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of jectivity: Essays in Adornoʼs Aesthetic Theory, MIT, Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming, Verso, London, Cambridge MA, 1997, pp. 177–212. 1979, p. 139. 23. Theodor W. Adorno, ʻShort Commentaries on Proustʼ, in 7. Minima Moralia, p. 58. Notes to Literature, Volume One, trans. Shierry Weber 8. See Theodor W. Adorno, ʻSexual Taboos and Law Nicholsen, Columbia University Press, New York, 1991, Todayʼ, in Critical Models: Interventions and Catch- p. 180. In Perversion and Utopia, Whitebook discusses words, trans. Henry W. Pickford, Columbia University ʻThe Progressive Uses of Regressionʼ (pp. 207–15). Press, New York, 1998, p. 72. 24. Minima Moralia, p. 60. 9. Minima Moralia, p. 62. 25. C. Fred Alford, ʻNature and Narcissism: The Frankfurt 10. Ibid., p. 61. Schoolʼ, New German Critique, no. 36, Fall 1985, p. 11. Ibid. Martin Jay cites this and says ʻAdorno viewed 191. psychology as the best guarantor of the individualʼs right 26. Gillian Rose discusses these thoughts on metapsych- to genuine corporeal gratificationʼ (Adorno, Fontana, ology in her The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to London, 1984, p. 88). the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno, Macmillan, London, 12. Theodor W. Adorno, ʻSociology and Psychologyʼ, trans. 1978, pp. 91–5. The key Adorno source is ʻSociology Irving Wohlfarth, published in two parts in New Left and Psychologyʼ. See also Jessica Benjamin, ʻThe End Review, no. 46, November–December 1967, pp. 63–80; of Internalization: Adornoʼs Social Psychologyʼ, Telos, no. 47, January–February 1968, pp. 79–97, p. 84. no. 32, 1977, p. 43.

28 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 27. Sigmund Freud (1923), ʻThe Ego and the Idʼ, Pelican 51. Freud, ʻThe Question of Lay Analysisʼ, p. 315. For a Freud Library, Harmondsworth, 1990–93 (hereafter model discussion of this theory as presented in Freudʼs PFL), vol. 11, pp. 362–7. study of Leonardo, see Whitebook, Perversion and 28. Sigmund Freud (1926), ʻThe Question of Lay Analysisʼ, Utopia, pp. 226–30. PFL 15, p. 301. 52. ʻSociology and Psychology, Part Twoʼ, p. 90. 29. Sigmund Freud (1915–17), Introductory Lectures on 53. Theodor W. Adorno, ʻOn Proustʼ, in Notes to Literature, Psychoanalysis, PFL 1, pp. 512–15. Volume Two, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, Columbia 30. Sigmund Freud (1927), ʻThe Future of an Illusionʼ, PFL University Press, New York, 1992, p. 315. 12, p. 192. 54. Ibid., p. 316. 31. Ibid., pp. 233–4. 55. ʻSociology and Psychology, Part Twoʼ, p. 87. 32. See my ʻThrough the Eyes of an Artificial Angel: Secu- 56. Theodor W. Adorno, ʻShort Commentaries on Proustʼ, lar Theology in Theodor W. Adornoʼs Freudo-Marxist in Notes to Literature, Volume One, p. 177. Reading of Franz Kafka and Walter Benjaminʼ, in Philip 57. Minima Moralia, pp. 68–9. Leonard, ed., Trajectories of Mysticism in Theory and 58. ʻShort Commentaries on Proustʼ, p. 175. Literature, Macmillan, London, 1999, pp. 198–218. 59. Schiller (letter of 1 December 1788 to Körner), quoted 33. Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 41. in Sigmund Freud (1900), The Interpretation of Dreams, 34. Minima Moralia, p. 61. PFL 4, p. 177. 35. Freud, Introductory Lectures, p. 347. Part of the problem 60. Negative Dialectics, p. 373. is that everything from murderous necrophilia to homo- 61. Whitebook, critical of Adornoʼs refusal of synthesis, sexuality are perversely, in Little Hansʼs terminology, wants a concept of sublimation which can show the ʻlumfedʼ together. role of culture in working through the demands of the 36. Ibid., p. 348. id, finding an autonomous but non-repressive channel 37. Ibid. for the drives. See Perversion and Utopia, p. 118. 38. Ibid., p. 364. 62. Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 140. 39. Sigmund Freud (1930), ʻCivilization and its Discontentsʼ, 63. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, Volume PFL 12, p. 294. One: Swannʼs Way, Part 1, trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff, 40. Sigmund Freud (1920), ʻThe Psychogenesis of a Case Chatto & Windus, London, 1976, p. 60. of Homosexuality in a Womanʼ, PFL 9, p. 399. 64. Ibid., p. 35. Walter Benjamin provides exemplary re- 41. ʻSexual Taboosʼ, pp. 79–80. marks on memory and scent in Proust and Baudelaire, 42. Ibid., p. 81. Having criticized this infantilization, Adorno which surely influenced Adorno. See ʻThe Image of then to my mind comes perilously close to endorsing it Proustʼ and ʻOn Some Motifs in Baudelaireʼ, in Illumin- with a critique of the laws surrounding minors, which ations, trans. Harry Zohn, Fontana, London, 1992. underestimates the dangers adult sexuality may pose to 65. Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, p. 46. In Lacanian children. The furore surrounding Freudʼs abandonment terms, this recalls the symbolic intrusion of the phallic law (the fatherʼs candle) into the world of the infantile of the seduction theory could productively rock Adornoʼs imaginary (union of boy and mother). critical theory too, especially if pursued through the 66. Ibid., pp. 55–6. work of Jean Laplanche as well as Jeffrey Masson. 67. ʻOn Proustʼ, p. 317. 43. ʻSociology and Psychology, Part Twoʼ, p. 96. 68. Max Horkheimer, ʻAuthority and the Familyʼ, in Critical 44. Negative Dialectics, p. 30. Theory: Selected Essays, trans. Matthew J. OʼConnell et 45. On debates surrounding homophobia and sexism in al., Continuum, New York, 1982, p. 121. Adorno, see Sabine Wilke and Heidi Schlipphacke, ʻCon- 69. Minima Moralia, pp. 177–8. The piece does not use the struction of a Gendered Subject: A Feminist Reading of ʻIʼ; it talks of ʻthe childʼ. But it has the detailed patina Adornoʼs Aesthetic Theoryʼ, in Huhn and Zuidervaart, of memory, and Minima Moralia characteristically com- The Semblance of Subjectivity , pp. 287–308; and Mag- bines private and theoretical reflection. gie OʼNeill, ed., Adorno, Culture and Feminism, Sage, 70. Minima Moralia, pp. 177–8. London, 1999; together with my review of these works 71. Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 233. (ʻImagining Adorno: Critical Theory Under Reviewʼ, 72. Minima Moralia, p. 178. On boundaries, see Janine Theory, Culture and Society, forthcoming). See also An- Chasseguet-Smirgel, Creativity and Perversion, Free As- drew Edgar, ʻAdorno and the Question of Schubertʼs sociation Books, London, 1985. For discussions of her Sexualityʼ, New Formations, no. 38, September 1999. work in relation to the Frankfurt School, see Whitebook, It is worth mentioning that Adorno may have had some Perversion and Utopia. The transgressive lure of blurred sort of early affair with Siegfried Kracauer, and that his boundaries here pulls at Adorno, just as it becomes a critiques of homosexuality are influenced by Proustʼs at disturbing force in Proustʼs novel. Their work is perhaps times savage account of it. an attempt to keep the transgression uncommitted. This 46. Freud, ʻCivilization and its Discontentsʼ, p. 293. could be related to some of Adornoʼs potentially dubious 47. Minima Moralia, p. 23. remarks in ʻSexual Taboosʼ. 48. Sigmund Freud (1919), ʻThe “Uncanny”ʼ, PFL 14, pp. 73. Minima Moralia, p. 178. 335–76. 74. Negative Dialectics, p. 191. 49. Sigmund Freud (1907), ʻDelusions and Dreams in 75. Sigmund Freud (1914), ʻOn Narcissism: An Intro- Jensenʼs “Gradiva”ʼ, PFL 14, p. 34. ductionʼ, PFL 11, pp. 59–97. In this, I oppose Alfordʼs 50. See essays on childhood in Walter Benjamin, Selected contention that Adornoʼs utopian constellation of dis- Writings, Volume One: 1913–1926, Harvard University tance and proximity is ʻan almost pure expression of the Press, Cambridge MA, 1997; and also ʻA Berlin Child- narcissistic idealʼ (Alford, ʻNature and Narcissismʼ, p. hood ca. 1900ʼ, forthcoming in Selected Writings, Vol- 187). Pure narcissism would collapse the distance into ume Three. proximity.

Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000) 29 76. See Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A 78. Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension, p. 73. Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory, Columbia 79. Lawrence E. Cahoone, The Dilemma of Modernity: Phil- University Press, New York 1986, esp. pp. 222–3. osophy, Culture and Anti-Culture, SUNY Press, Albany 77. See Whitebook, Perversion and Utopia, pp. 83–4, 166–7, NY, 1988. 257; also Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, pp. 580– 82. - Society for European Philosophy E P third annual conference 6-8 September 2000 SOCIETY PHILOSO Tottenham Campus, Middlesex University, London

CALL FOR PANELS... Committee: Proposals are invited for panels for the Third Annual Conference of the Lilian Alweiss Society for European Philosophy. Panel sessions are one and a quarter Andrew Benjamin hours in duration and may be made up of two or three presentations Andrew Bowie Helen Chapman of 20-25 minutes each. Proposals should take the form of a panel title, Simon Critchley indicative of its theme, the names of the participants, and brief (one para- Mick Dillon graph) abstracts of each presentation. Proposals are invited for topics in Joanna Hodge any area of European Philosophy. Stewart Martin John Mullarkey Deadline for proposals: 31 March 2000 Peter Osborne Send to Dr. Stella Sandford (SEP), Jonathan Rée Philip Rothfield Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Alessandra Tanesini School of Humanities and Cultural Studies, James Williams Middlesex University, White Hart Lane, London N17 8HR

WPR 22 SPECIAL ISSUE ON HEGEL AND FEMINISM Kimberly Hutchings on Hegel and Feminist Epistemology

Alison Stone on Hegelʼs Philosophy of Nature and Sex Difference

Elizabeth Brake on Love and Hegelʼs Philosophy of the Family

Jeffrey A. Gauthier on Kant, Hegel, Ethics and Feminism

Forthcoming: WPR 21 includes interview with Adri- WPR 23 ana Cavarero includes interview with Naomi Scheman

Alessandra Tanesini on Femi- Irene Gedalof on Foucault and Feminsim nism and the Philosophy of Language INDIVIDUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS: 3 issues: £20 single issue: £6.95 Full details: Alessandra Tanesini, Philosophy Section, and over 50 pages of book University of Cardiff, PO Box 94, Cardiff CF1 3XB reviews E-mail: [email protected]

30 Radical Philosophy 99 (January/February 2000)