B CT Berlin Journal of Critical Theory Volume 4, Number 1 (January, 2020) Desensitized genius: The actuality of Dialectic of Enlightenment Vjeran Katunarić Social Practices and the Constitution of Knowledge: Critical Social Theory as a Philosophy of Praxis Craig Browne Notes on Jean Baudrillard and Critical Theory Chris Horrocks Seeking a Xiaokang Society: Deng Xiaoping and the Reinter- pretation of the Confucian Tradition in Chinese Marxism Roland Boer Depression and Political Will Brian Price www.bjct.de enomoi Editors Amirhosein Khandizaji Wolfgang Sohst Editorial Board C. Fred Alford, University of David Held, Durham University. Maryland. Christopher Horrocks, Kingston Amy Allen, Pennsylvania State University London. University. David B. Ingram, Loyola University Andrew Arato, The New School. Chicago. Jay Bernstein, The New School. Martin Jay, University of California, David Berry, University of Sussex. Berkeley. Roland Boer, University of Newcastle. 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Graeme Gilloch, Lancaster University (former member). 3 Contents Desensitized genius: The actuality of Dialectic of Enlightenment 5 Vjeran Katunarić Social Practices and the Constitution of Knowledge: Critical Social Theory as a Philosophy of Praxis 37 Craig Browne Notes on Jean Baudrillard and Critical Theory 157 Chris Horrocks Seeking a Xiaokang Society: Deng Xiaoping and the Reinterpretation of the Confucian Tradition in Chinese Marxism 181 Roland Boer Depression and Political Will 211 Brian Price ISSN: 2567-4048 (print) / 2567-4056 (online) xenomoi Verlag, Heinersdorfer Str. 16, D-12209 Berlin Phone: ~49(30)755 11 712, Email: [email protected] 4 Berlin Journal of Critical Theory | Vol. 4, No. 1 (January, 2020) 5 Desensitized genius: The actuality of Dialectic of Enlightenment Vjeran Katunarić1 Abstract: Some important passages in modern political and cultural theory are given over to monsters – Hobbes to the Leviathan and the Behemoth, Neumann to the Behemoth, and Horkheimer and Adorno to Homer’s Sirens. However, in their Dialectic of Enlightenment the last two authors interpret the Sirens in a dif- ferent, and ultimately diffident, way. This essay re-examines their interpretation in light of the hermeneutic double dead-end of the Sirens’ songs pitted against Odysseus’s instrumentality and in light of the contemporary revival of a totali- tarian, anti-poetic worldview – a new Behemoth – in terms of a global capitalism fueled by a permanent state of war. I seek to revise the Weberian core of Horkheimer and Adorno’s concept of Enlightenment (disenchantment without empathy), but I still concur with their identification of Nazism as the peak of the long shadow of the Enlightenment. The following arguments are offered in support of this reinterpretation of the actuality of the Dialectic of Enlightenment. The first argument establishes the re- lationship between gynophobia and an aversion to peace. The second designates the development of the military Enlightenment as a premise for Nazism. The third argument outlines neo-totalitarian capitalism as the product of the collab- oration between Big Science and the advanced industrialism of a “genially stu- 1 Vjeran Katunarić was Professor of Sociology at the University of Zadar and is now retired as of October 2019. Currently he is guest lecturer at the same institution. From 1978 to 2010 he was assistant, associate and full professor on the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. He was also a visiting professor at various universities in the USA and Sweden, then cultural policy expert, rap- porteur and consultant at the Council of Europe and an expert in intercul- tural dialogue at the European Commission. His titles published in English include the following: The Quest for a Liberal-Socialist Democracy and Devel- opment: Against the Behemoth (2018); Dancing and Calculating: Culturally Sus- tainable Development and Globalization in Light of Two Paradigms of Socio-Cul- tural Development (2014); Beyond ‘Doom and Gloom’ and ‘Saving the World’: On the Relevance of Sociology in the Civic Education (2009); Building Sociological Knowledge within and across Disciplinary Boundaries: Megalomania vs. Modesty? (2009); Toward the New Public Culture (2004); Global Perceptions of Cultural Pol- icy (2000); (ed., with B. Cvjetičanin) Cultural Policy in Croatia (1999); Masters and Servants: Critical Thought and the New Class (1999); and Global Embraces and Local Strongholds (1998). 6 Berlin Journal of Critical Theory | Vol. 4, No. 1 (January, 2020) pid” system, which may be compared to the absurdity of the idea of “intelligent design”. This system consists of the inventive design (of a given product) and a massive idiotizing of (re)productive work. Several examples are given to illus- trate this inherent contradiction. Finally, I reject Adorno’s pessimistic view regarding the possibility of the co- existence of a poetic world after Auschwitz, and propound a possible rehabili- tation of the fundamental value of human (re)productive work as the basis of a new poesis. In combination with the work of the arts, a re-evaluation of work (in terms of Marx’s postulate of “constant capital being man himself”) may provide the material basis for a renewed aesthetic Enlightenment anticipated by voices ranging from the mythical Sirens to Schiller’s Letters, as a universe in which the poetic form provides substance with true meaning. Introduction: Monsters, science, and art ome classic passages in modern political and cultural theory are Sgiven over to monsters. Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan represents characteristics of the modern bureaucratic state, while the Behemoth designates the will to wage permanent war. Franz Neumann took the Behemoth as a metaphor for Nazism. Horkheimer and Adorno, in their Dialectic of Enlightenment, dealt with a marvelous group of monsters, namely the Sirens. However, the authors doubt whether the Sirens are monsters at all and, accordingly, offer another interpretation which is, however, not devoid of ambiguities. On the one hand, they take the Sirens as representatives of the forces of nature, including sex drive, which Odysseus, who represents calculating rationality, deceives in a manner typical of the whole project of the Enlightenment. On the other hand, the authors recognize the aesthetic dimension of the Sirens’ song, due to which the relations between instrumental reason, nature, and the aesthetic reason remain partly inconsistent. This is the main subject of this paper, a point which deserves further discussion. In essence, I agree with the authors’ remark that cold rationality, as incorporated into modern science, constitutes the colonial mind of the Enlightenment. Yet, I disagree with the authors’ view that deceptive reason permeates human mentality and activities right from the beginning. Likewise, it remains unclear what is the proper role of the arts in the formation of human society and culture. Desensitized genius: The actuality of Dialectic of Enlightenment 7 My interpretation essentially maps onto Horkheimer and Adorno’s interpretation: from a hermeneutical understanding of the myth of Od- ysseus and the Sirens in an aesthetic key to their view of Nazism as a contemporary avatar of the archaic instrumental reason. In developing my argument, I will emphasize the role of the military Enlightenment and its merging with Big Science on the way to the present-day mili- tary-industrial complex. This line of argumentation concludes with an outline of the figure of the desensitized genius, as an enormous financial and military power with neo-Nazi predilections. To this extent, I agree with the implication of the authors of Dialectic of Enlightenment that democracy, as a political project of the Enlightenment, cannot develop on the basis of a half-hearted rationality. This is primar- ily so because the latter instigates fears of the liberating voices of peace coming from a feminine culture represented by the Sirens. In essence, I agree with the authors’ view of the Enlightenment as a project of developing a desensitized reason, although they refer to the concept of purposive rationality in terms of Weber’s ideal-type in a re- ductionistic way.2 Otherwise, instrumental rationality exists, indeed, in a reductive form mostly at the core of modern power, and is pitted against nature and humanity and even threatens total annihilation, for the first time in the evolution of life. In view of this outlook, one must revise the historical