'Only What Does Not Fit in Can Be True'

SPECIAL ARTICLE ‘Only What Does Not Fit In Can Be True’ De-professionalisation and Academia in Relation to Adorno and Tagore Rosinka Chaudhuri This paper explores de-professionalisation—interpreted shall be dealing here with de-professionalisation in the here as the experience of finding that the work one academic sphere in the context of Theodor Adorno and Rabindranath Tagore, who were “writers” above all else, does, does not fit into the demands of the profession— I but also had a relationship with academia: it is their struggle in the context of Theodor Adorno and Rabindranath with the demands of academia that I wish to investigate par- Tagore. While both were writers, they were also part of ticularly. The theme of de-professionalisation, interpreted the academic world and it is their grappling with the here as the experience of fi nding that the work one does, does not fi t into the demands of the profession, seemed to reside at demands of academia that this paper looks into two levels in this context. The fi rst is the inability to fi nd a and elucidates. place for your subject matter within the straitjackets of current academic or publishing imperatives that have been put in place by these professions. The second is a relatively rare condition: to fi nd that that inability may be a direct consequence not just of content, but of the form and style in which the text is writ- ten, which makes it unfi t for inclusion or wider dissemination within the parameters that the profession demands. In the case of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, what Hullot-Kentor calls his “paratactical style” (which I shall come to later) makes his writing there “diffi cult” or “obscure,” making this work “obliquely remote,” at the time, to the national literary spheres of both Germany and the United States (US), where it was not “received” well. “And this remoteness,” the translator says, “is requisite to any plausible value it may have. For as Adorno wrote in constantly varied formulations, only what does not fi t in can be true.”1 Standard biographical entries on Adorno available on the This paper was presented at a symposium on “De-professionalisation” internet, from Wikipedia to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Phi- organised by Amit Chaudhuri and Jon Cook of the University of East losophy, narrate the facts of his return to Europe in tones of Anglia at the India International Centre, Delhi, 7–8 January 2016. The quiet vindication, leaving out any suggestion of failure or dis- concept note for the symposium stated: “The subject of the symposium appointment: “At the end of October 1949,” declares an aston- is ‘de-professionalisation’—the urge, as a creative practitioner, or, indeed, a practitioner of any kind, not to be identifi ed with one genre or ishingly long and detailed Wikipedia entry, “Adorno left Amer- activity, and to be, in general, a critic of specialisation and a champion ica for Europe just as The Authoritarian Personality was being of dabbling. The word ‘dabbling’ is being used here partly ironically, of published. Before his return, Adorno had not only reached an course, but also full on, to convey the force of what a serious writer or agreement with a Tübingen publisher to print an expanded thinker might achieve when they consciously diverge from the genre or version of The Philosophy of New Music, but completed two practice they’re most identifi ed with and even respected for. The idea and act of ‘de-professionalisation’ is really a critique of the construction compositions … etc.” The editors of the Adorno Critical Reader, of the writer, artist, or intellectual today—by publishers, by media, by Nigel Gibson and Andrew Rubin, on the other hand, tell ex- festivals, by writers themselves. It also accommodates the notion of actly the opposite story: “Miffed by an American publisher’s value: for instance, the idea that someone may not be ‘good’ at or trained decision to reject The Philosophy of New Music, Adorno felt that in the skills of a particular project or genre or form they’ve embarked the US did not appreciate the value of his work.”2 Hullot-Kentor upon.” too interprets Adorno’s return to Germany as a failure to fi t in, Rosinka Chaudhuri ([email protected]) is with the Centre for Studies stating that throughout his years in the US, Adorno met with in Social Sciences, Calcutta. the rejection of his works by publishers on many occasions, 46 OCTOBER 22, 2016 vol lI no 43 EPW Economic & Political Weekly SPECIAL ARTICLE who found his writings simply too disorganised. He says: “It decades or so ago, and the publishing history of Aesthetic Theory was obvious to Adorno that what he was pursuing required his points to the pressures of conformity that have governed in return to Germany if only because in the 1950s publishing was academic editorial offi ces for some time now. The fi rst transla- still less commercially united than in the US and permitted tion of this book was by C Lenhardt for Routledge and Kegan writers greater control over their work ...”. He continues: Paul (London and New York 1984), and the history of its publi- One event did, however, fi nally prompt him to leave. When the edi- cation is worth exploring in the context of the demands of pro- torial board at the Psychoanalytic Society of San Francisco fi nished fessionalisation. Fearing that the form of the book would im- with his essay ‘Psychoanalysis Revised,’ he found that [and here he’s pede the book’s consumption (and in line with marketing wis- quoting from Adorno] ‘the entire text was disfi gured beyond recogni- dom that fervently feels that consumption is only geared to the tion, the basic intention could not be discerned.’ As Adorno recounted, homogenised product, thus no doubt vindicating the argu- the head editor explained that the standards to which the essay had 4 been adjusted, which made it look like every other essay in the jour- ment of The Culture Industry ), the publisher, partly against nal, were those of the profession: ‘I would only be standing in my own the wishes of the translator, interfered with the original. While way’—Adorno recalls—‘if I passed up its advantages. I passed them up the fi nal version Adorno left rejected the division of the book nevertheless.’ Adorno moved back to Europe. (p xi) into chapters, the publisher reinserted numbered chapters; De-professionalisation, for Adorno, was of course the norm: where the text had run on in long sentences with subclauses, even a rudimentary acquaintance with his life’s work reveals the publisher inserted headings and subheadings; paragraph he wrote on subjects ranging from musicology to metaphysics indentations were introduced arbitrarily throughout, and a and that his writing span included such things as philosophi- general image was presented of a sequence of sentences fl ow- cal analyses of Hegelian metaphysics, a critical study of the ing in one direction alone that could be followed chronologi- astrology column of the Los Angeles Times, and the music of, cally from the fi rst chapter to the last. To achieve this compul- among others, Beethoven and Schoenberg, not to mention sory unifi cation, a structure was imposed that only managed jazz. “In terms of both style and content, Adorno’s writings to set whole passages adrift. In order to span the now disparate defy convention” seems to be the leitmotif of commentators on sections, phrases such as “as we saw” or “as we said” or “let us his work. In this refusal to fi t into any one sphere of specialisa- remember” were added. The rejection of the work’s form tion, of course, he embodies the notion of “de-professio- entailed its content being conveniently presented as a progres- nalisation”—“the urge, as a creative practitioner, or, indeed, a sive argument, causing it, Hullot-Kentor asserts, “to collapse practitioner of any kind, not to be identifi ed with one genre or internally.” Drawing away from the “movement of thought activity,” but whether one could dare to say he was “in general, that can still be sensed gesturing underneath [gave] the book a critic of specialisation and a champion of dabbling” I do not a disembodied quality, as if it were dubbed rather than trans- know; I would suspect he might have demanded specialisation lated” (p xiii). in dabbling instead.3 The ironical result of all of this manoeuvring was that rath- Adorno’s return to Germany too is presented in Hullot- er than bridge the distance between Adorno and the readers of Kentor’s translator’s introduction in contrast to the popular the book, the work was made even more impregnable. This version (“Upon his return, Adorno helped shape the political happened because there was no argumentative structure in culture of West Germany”) to reiterate, instead, again, the the original text itself, which lacked any homogeneous content theme of not fi tting in: that could be read from start to fi nish; the simulated para- This is not to say that Adorno returned to Germany to fi t in and help graphs therefore only appeared clouded and impenetrable as a restore the nation to what it once was. What he wrote was completely consequence. This was because the coherence of Adorno’s con- unpalatable to the former—Nazi faculty, still in its prime, that con- cepts relied on the subterranean relations made between trolled Frankfurt University after the war. They rejected writings such them, depending, rather, on what is called “its paratactical as Minima Moralia as unscholarly and the whole of Adorno’s work as form,” and here I wish to insert a proposal to relate these essayistic and fragmentary and saw to it that he was not offered a pro- fessorship.

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