Page 55 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

44 Chapter One

(instrumental reason) freed people from superstition, common people soon
became enslaved by applications of instrumental knowledge. A further impli-
cation, and irony, for both writers is the collapse of meaning in an age of
space-binding knowledge, commodification, mechanization, and instrumen-
tal reason. For Innis, mathematical formula and the mechanization of knowl-
edge were even a cause of war: “The large-scale mechanization of knowledge
[creates] monopolies in language which prevent understanding and hasten ap-
peals to force.” 214
Innis distinguished between scholarly knowledge and popular culture,
whereas Adorno’s distinctions were among science (instrumental knowl-
edge), high culture, and low (popular) culture. Both writers saw intellectuals
as too often working at the behest of elite interests, and in that way support-
ing the indoctrination accomplished by popular culture. Both agreed that elite
interests endeavor to control knowledge and cultural production of all types,
and are generally successful in doing this. Whereas for Innis, during times of
transition from one medium to another creative artists and scholars may be-
come free for a time to pursue truth, and for Adorno high culture in the past
was somewhat free to do this, both were skeptical regarding the autonomy of
arts and sciences in our day.
Both Innis and Adorno were reflexive thinkers. Innis wrote: “We must all
be aware of the extraordinary, perhaps insuperable, difficulty of assessing the
quality of a culture of which we are a part.” 215 Adorno’s self-reflexivity as a
scholar is manifest in his self-identification as a critical theorist, as opposed
to an “Enlightenment” thinker. Adorno insisted that it is impossible for schol-
ars to be value free. Rather than feigning objectivity or detachment, as do the
“positivists,” Adorno was up-front about his agenda to transform society. By
making that agenda transparent, he may be understood as being much more
reflexive than ostensibly objective scientific researchers. Adorno and
Horkheimer went still further, insisting the Enlightenment (i.e., scientific or
instrumental reason) had all but abolished reflexivity. They stated, “Enlight-
enment has put aside the classic requirement of thinking about thought. . . .
Mathematical procedure became, so to speak, the ritual of thinking.” 216
In response to their critique of the Enlightenment, however, neither Innis
nor Adorno recommended a poststructuralist path that would deny truth, de-
authenticate grand theories, detach language from material conditions, and
take flight into the realm of linguistic interpretation. 217 Rather, both drew
upon classicism, particularly the reinstitution of dialectical thinking, as an an-
tidote to what Innis termed present-mindedness and the mechanization of
knowledge, and what Adorno saw as the totalitarian implications of the En-
lightenment. For Innis, scientific, instrumental reason ought always to be
counterbalanced by time-binding, moral knowledge; that would entail, for ex-