German Joys

I Don't Heart Adorno

The New York Sun reviews a new biography of Adorno.  The biography seems to be largely admiring.  The reviewer?  Not so much:

Adorno, who wrote that “even the blossoming tree lies the moment its bloom is seen without the shadow of terror,” would certainly not want to be “hearted.” At best, he would take a grim pleasure in seeing this confirmation of the power of what he named the Culture Industry, which neuters even the most powerful challenges to its domination. And perhaps, it is only fair to add, his vanity would be pleased. For as the wife of Max Horkheimer, his Frankfurt School colleague, once observed, “Teddie is the most monstrous narcissist to be found in either the Old World or the New.”

***

Yet for all the intellectual dexterity Adorno expended in this effort, and all the undoubted insights he gained into history and culture, it is precisely the totalizing nature of his thought that renders it so questionable. With the subtlety of a schoolman, Adorno tried to show how every aspect of 20th-century life was implicated in the same process of alienation, exploitation, and suffering. “Wrong life cannot be lived rightly,” he decreed, and it followed that anyone who believed he was living rightly, or enjoying the “false pleasures” of bourgeois culture, was miserably deluded. Adorno effectively denies the possibility of spontaneity and pluralism, of freedom and new beginnings — in other words, all the human capacities that make genuine humanism possible.

She Blinded Me with Anti-Science

Speaking of brain research, over at Obscene Desserts, The Wife takes issue with a piece by German writer Tanja Dueckers in which Dueckers fulminates against genetic determinism.  Her target is a recent twin study showing that your basic disposition (optimistic, pessimistic) seems to have a significant genetic component.  The mounting scientific evidence in favor of genetic influences on "higher" aspects of being human -- like disposition and personality -- make some people nervous.  The studies are popular targets for commentary by artists and writers, since it (1) allows them to defend "humanity" or "humanism"; (2) while citing all sorts of cool apocalyptic science-fiction (if they get ambitious); and (3) attacking the "engineered futures" being secretly concocted in the dank underground laboratories of the "genetico-capitalist" establishment.  Or, you know, words to that effect.  If you've ever read one of these pieces, you get my drift.  You don't even have to be leftish to endorse these themes; this bandwagon's open to the ultramontane as well.

The Wife points out, though, that Duecker's piece scores 0 points.  I agree, and will now pile on.  First, Dueckers compares contemporary genetic research to 19th-century fads such as phrenology and the study of 'hysteria', and boldly predicts that in 30 or 50 years, "with probability bordering on certainty," we'll have the same attitude toward contemporary brain science.  (I'm not sure how "probability/certainty," a moldy piece of German legalese, crept into Dueckers' column, but will assume charitably that it's been inserted for ironic effect.)  Strange -- 21st century trains, automobiles and computers seem to be more advanced and reliable than their 19th-century counterparts, so I'd cautiously assume the same might just be true of medical research.  Yet Dueckers' only argument for comparing current research to 19th-century quackery is that in each case, the results offend her sensibilities.  Oh wait, that's not an argument!

English Version of Mann's 'Germany and the Germans'?

First, thanks to everybody for the quick answer to the Polish question. Them Kaczynski boys are at it again! Following the wishes of 75% of the Polish electorate, that is.

That aside, I have another bleg for my brilliant, good-looking readers. I'd like to quote portions of Thomas Mann's 1945 address Deutschland und die Deutschen (Germany and the Germans), held in English in the Library of Congress. However, I can only find German versions of this speech, not the English version Mann actually held. The English version is available as a pamphlet from the Library of Congress, but I don't think I'm going to be able to find that in Germany.

Can anyone help me?

Habermas on the Press and the Market

In the Sueddeutsche Zeitung today, Juergen Habermas sounds the alarm (G) about excessive market influence on Germany's quality daily newspapers. In the United States -- once the home of aggressive investigative reporting -- troubling signs have emerged at some of the nation's top newspapers. The Los Angeles Times has been ruthlessly re-organized, and the Boston Globe has closed all of its overseas bureaus. At a time when the U.S. is fighting two wars.

Habermas, whose 1962 Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is considered a classic of modern sociology, warns of a similar process on the horizon in Germany. News and information, he warns, cannot be treated as consumer products.

I note that Habermas does not mention blogs or other online information sources even once during the entire piece. Yes, blogs are still in their infancy and, and their influence is often exaggerated by fans. Still, Habermas' lack of curiosity about this looming transformation is disappointing. That caveat aside, Habermas, as usual, makes interesintg points. Excerpts, translated by yours truly:

TV as “Toaster”

This argument about the special character of the product “education” and “information” reminds one of the slogan that was heard in the USA when television was introduced: This new medium, it was said, was nothing more than a "toaster with pictures." This implied that there was nothing wrong with leaving the production and consumption of television programs exclusively to the marketplace. Since then in the USA, media enterprises create television programs for viewers and sell the attention of their audiences to advertising buyers.

Wherever it has been generally introduced, however, this organizing principle has inflicted political and cultural devastation. Our [German] “dual” television system is an attempt at damage control. The media laws of the various German states, the relevant decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court, and the programming guidelines of the public broadcasting agencies reflect the idea that the electronic mass media should not merely satisfy the consumer’s easily-commercialized need for entertainment and distraction.

Listeners and viewers are not only consumers -- not only market participants – but also citizens with a right to participate in cultural life, observe political events, and contribute to the process of opinion formation. On the basis of this legal framework, programs which secure the population a relevant “basic package” of information cannot be made dependent on advertiser-friendliness and their ability to attract sponsored support.

...

Gustav Seibt on German Iraq Hawks

Gustav Seibt (G) wrote yesterday in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung about people who get very little attention outside of Europe: West Europeans who supported the invastion of Iraq in 2003. In The Disaster of the Hawks (G), Seibt names names, and draws some spot-on conclusions:

The majority of the war's supporters -- with Herfried Muenkler as a prominent exception -- never occupied themselves with Iraq, international law, or the opportunities or risks of a war in the Middle Eastern context at all. The vast majority of the arguments for the war were based on European experiences of the last two or three generations. Thus, people wrote about second-order subjects such as pacifism and anti-Americanism, about appeasement and anti-Semitism, instead of talking about the real topic itself.

They primarily occupied themselves with broad historical analogies: the desirable overthrow of Saddam was compared unthinkingly to the struggle against Hitler, the democratization of Iraq with the democratization of West Germany or Japan after the Second World War. They compared the chance of a democratizing effect on the entire Middle East to the end of the Eastern Bloc and the quick establishment of civilian democracies there afterward. They had plenty to say about many things, with one exception -- the inner situation of present-day Iraq.

***

...The rubble of the Iraq War needs to be cleared away before we can continue an even halfway-credible debate. Nobody should be glad that writers such as Wolf Biermann, Gyoergy Konrad, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht, and Karl-Otto Hondrich, "liberal hawks" like Paul Berman and Michael Ignatieff, and even reasonable observers such as Ralph [sic] Dahrendorf and Herfried Muenkel erred in so many points. One should also credit some authors, such as Konrad and Gumbrecht, for the fact that they have generously conceded their errors in the meantime.