TOTALITIES (from Empire)

generation-online.org · 749 words · saved by 1 readers

When Lukács claimed that only 'the totality is truth' and when Adorno inverted the claim saying that 'all is untrue', it is probable that despite the apparent conflict they were not really very far apart. For Lukács, in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet 1917, truth consisted in the totality of the revolutionary process that transformed everything, because in this process everything could be redeemed. For Adorno, on the other hand, in the great calm that proceeded 1968, totality meant imperialist domination plus its mirror-image of socialist domination. This was a one-dimensional totality that reduced and disempowered humanity - a falsified totality in itself and for itself. Would not Adorno too, however, have accepted totality as a category of philosophical understanding when the totality could be redeemed? Is not his utopian negativity aimed at just such a redemption? In order to avoid these quarrels that do not really have to do with totality but with redemption, a concept permit

TOTALITIES (from Empire) Index Reference Translations Writing Recent Additions Links About/Contact TOTALITIES (from Empire) Hardt and Negri When Lukács claimed that only 'the totality is truth' and when Adorno inverted the claim saying that 'all is untrue', it is probable that despite the apparent conflict they were not really very far apart. For Lukács, in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet 1917, truth consisted in the totality of the revolutionary process that transformed everything, because in this process everything could be redeemed. For Adorno, on the other hand, in the grea

TOTALITIES (from Empire)

related reading