Both of the above readings treat the term
“poetry” as if it were equivalent to culture and treat “Auschwitz” (to the
extent that they notice it at all) as equivalent to the ultimate
objectification of society, yet the terms are not synonymous. “Poetry” and “Auschwitz” are metonymic terms, linking a particular
thing (event or concept) with a broader concept. Adorno’s claim about the
barbarity of poetry after Auschwitz, then, attempts to move against the
totalization of the status quo (an effect of contemporary society), and
is therefore an attempt to provide the sort of criticism that Adorno claims is
not being made: criticism that is not complicit with society.
In this sense, even as Adorno proclaims the growing uselessness of cultural criticism and impossibility of culture, his own text – to an extent – shows that his claims are exaggerated. Also, “poetry” and “Auschwitz” are not only metonymic. Poetry, as Michael Rothberg points out, is unique (partly) because it is less continuous than other types of text and thus has a unique power to “express...the rifts that realist mimesis represses” (Rothberg 39). In other words, poetry can emphasize particularity (especially a particular moment of time) in a way that is unavailable to other types of text, and so it necessarily works against any attempt by society to totalize history (see also Rothberg 51-3).
Thus, to claim that writing poetry is barbaric is especially problematic because poetry is that for which total objectification contradicts (part of) what makes it poetry in the first place. Said another way, poetry has the unique ability to express particularity, where particularity is (as we saw above [p. 22]) one of the forces opposed to the barbaric objectification of contemporary society; thus, if even poetry is barbaric, then the situation of contemporary culture and society is especially dire for Adorno. This reading of Adorno also makes sense given that Adorno follows the line about poetry's barbarism with a claim that writing poetry is “impossible.” If what is being written has lost its particularity, then it is no longer poetry in an abstract sense, such that poetry in that sense is impossible in a world where poetry has lost its link with particularity.
In this sense, even as Adorno proclaims the growing uselessness of cultural criticism and impossibility of culture, his own text – to an extent – shows that his claims are exaggerated. Also, “poetry” and “Auschwitz” are not only metonymic. Poetry, as Michael Rothberg points out, is unique (partly) because it is less continuous than other types of text and thus has a unique power to “express...the rifts that realist mimesis represses” (Rothberg 39). In other words, poetry can emphasize particularity (especially a particular moment of time) in a way that is unavailable to other types of text, and so it necessarily works against any attempt by society to totalize history (see also Rothberg 51-3).
Thus, to claim that writing poetry is barbaric is especially problematic because poetry is that for which total objectification contradicts (part of) what makes it poetry in the first place. Said another way, poetry has the unique ability to express particularity, where particularity is (as we saw above [p. 22]) one of the forces opposed to the barbaric objectification of contemporary society; thus, if even poetry is barbaric, then the situation of contemporary culture and society is especially dire for Adorno. This reading of Adorno also makes sense given that Adorno follows the line about poetry's barbarism with a claim that writing poetry is “impossible.” If what is being written has lost its particularity, then it is no longer poetry in an abstract sense, such that poetry in that sense is impossible in a world where poetry has lost its link with particularity.
Many critics who argue for a contextual reading of the passage in CCS claim that Adorno is moving mostly (and most importantly) along the line of particularity and totality. Susan Gubar argues that poetry, by looking at particulars, can explore something incomprehensible in its totality, like Auschwitz, and express that incomprehensibility, even as it presents a comprehensible moment within the confusion (Gubar 7-8). Thus, she argues for a “redirect[ion]” of discussions about Adorno's passage away from general prohibitions against culture as a whole to reasons he would specify poetry, even though it has a unique ability to express any part of Auschwitz (13).
Rothberg argues that Adorno is interested in showing the continuity between Auschwitz and the rest of history by arguing that the forces that led to Auschwitz were themselves historical forces and, moreover, that they still exist today (44). Here, particularity takes on an interesting spin; Auschwitz must be incorporated into the totality of history in order for it to gain importance as an individual event, so that we do not extract ourselves from its implications by treating it as an anomaly. The particular, under this conception, though deserving of attention, is only important because it exists as part of a totality. Bernstein argues that the unique horror of Auschwitz, for Adorno, is the proximity of spiritual and physical death, which is itself based on the “rational method and industrial means employed” in Auschwitz (Bernstein 381). In other words, the horror of Auschwitz is two-fold.
Not only were many people physically killed, but these people were mentally killed first by losing their identity, losing even (according to Adorno) the individuality of their death (Adorno ND, 363, qtd in Bernstein 379). Thus, Bernstein agrees with Rothberg regarding the relationship between particularity and universality in Adorno's thought. The ultimate horror of Auschwitz, as a particular event, is both its own totality (that so many people died there) and also the destruction of particularity that took place there. In this way, Bernstein suggests that Adorno argues for the importance of exploring particularity within totality, that both are important, but that totality has been emphasized throughout history in various ways (including Auschwitz itself).
According to each of these scholars, then, particularity and totality play a central role in Adorno's theory. Moreover, although each identifies Western society as overly totalizing, each also identifies the importance of totality for Adorno. The move is not to flip the binary between total and particular, but to emphasize the importance and interdependence of the two.
