Abstract, Concrete, and the Totality

It is useful to consider two kinds of universals: abstract and concrete. First we will take a quick look at the former, then a quick look at the latter, then a longer look at various problems that arise therefrom.

An abstract universal is a universal that excludes what is different about its species, and includes what is similar. For example, “color” includes what is the same about red and blue, but it does not contain what is different about them. It is in this sense that we say we “abstract away” this difference.

A concrete universal is a universal that includes what is different between its species rather than what is the same. The classic example of a concrete universal is Hegel's Becoming, which contains both Being and Not-Being within itself. In Hegel's philosophy, concrete universals are what allow him to deduce his system of categories—you can't deduce the color blue from the idea of color because what makes blue itself and not red is explicitly excluded from the idea of color because it is abstract.

Where it gets more interesting (and relevant) is that Lukács argued for a conception of the totality that was a concrete universal in the manner of Hegel. The totality, as the complex of all social relations (as they are becoming), is clearly a concept that does not expressly exclude the individual moments in their particularity but attempts to include them within itself. Further, as a totality, the totality is a whole, meaning it has no other outside of itself. This is where the problems come in.

Adorno argued that the totality was not actually a concrete universal but rather was abstract. (Actually, as far as I know he expressly argued that Hegel's version was abstract, but the same applies to Lukács as well.) The point for Adorno was that the totality had no other, and hence was simple self-identity, empty and undefined because of it's lack of oppostion. 

 

Is Adorno correct? Does the concept of the totality have meaning or is it simply a vacuous mystification? This is obviously a very important question for theoretical Marxism. While I'm not entirely up-to-date on the literature, I can attempt to venture an answer.

The totality is not a mental construction in the same way that Hegel's Absolute Spirit was. The totality, properly conceived, is simply the largest complex of processes thinkable. Tension and opposition continue to exist inside the concept, unlike in the reconciliation of Hegel. The antagonisms of constituent parts or processes are not done away with at higher levels. Note that the same might be attributed to Hegel, although in that case I would say that it is not true; the Marxist totality is a concept (hopefully) functioning as a model of all the myriad tensions of society. It is not just a philosophical model, but also a sociological and economic one. In other words, the meaning of the totality is not lost as tensions are subsumed within it.

It might be objected here that I am hypostatizing the totality. However, a dogmatically-posited totality is different from a totality that is constantly checked against material conditions, against reality, and constantly re-abstracted and adjusted based on changing conditions. Not for nothing have Marxists historically insisted on “science”, in the sense of being interested in reality. The findings of psychology, sociology, economics, etc. must be scrutinized and analyzed, pieced together into a totality which can then be utilized as a category of mediation for the further analysis of social phenomena. 

 

The totality is real. The fact that we cannot positively picture it is problematic, to be sure, but guesswork and approximations don't magically lose their relevance. Something really existing must be checked, concept against object, to get a legitimate understanding of it. That attempt is an optimism Adorno did not have, and possibly for historical reasons (Auschwitz, WWII, etc.).

Negative Dialectics and Constellations

This is an attempt to offer my miserable understanding of Theodor Adorno's negative dialectic and the concept of “constellations”, as I've read about it in a number of works, primarily Susan Buck-Morss's The Origin of Negative Dialectics and Adorno's own Negative Dialectics.

The movement of negative dialectics is this:

What is, is more than it is. This “more” is not imposed upon it but remains immanent to it, as that which has been pushed out of it. In that sense, the nonidentical would be the thing's own identity against its identifiations (Adorno, Negative Dialectics 161).

A few things:

1. This movement is with concepts and objects, between the universal and the particular
2. This difference is immanent to the object
3. This is the sense in which the identical is false—the “thing's own identity against its identifications”

So, what do we have? We have here an inversion on the Hegelian identity of identity and non-identity. Rather than being subsumed under pure self-identity, there is a continual motion of the elements. Nonidentity is real, the profusion of particulars; reality resists identification. Rather than an all-encompassing whole, as found in thinkers like Lukacs, we get a fragmentary understanding. The passage quoted above is probably the best one I have found so far that explains the concept of negative dialectics and nonidentity.

How do we understand concepts without succumbing to a prima philosophia, simply with the dialectic posited as the “first”? The problem of systematization was solved, supposedly, in Adorno's concept of the “constellation”. Adorno elaborates on it thus:

The model for [the constellation] is the conduct of language. Language offers no mere system of signs for cognitive functions. Where it appears essentially as a language, where it becomes a form of representation, it will not define its concepts. It leads objectivity to them by the relation into which it puts the concepts, centered about a thing” (Adorno 162).

In other words, without defining terms—we don't have to posit a starting point—the dialectic is able to work its critique upon the world immanently. Prior existing concepts are worked on by the dialectic, attempted to be sorted through. The damage inherent in our subject-object relations is pointed out—things are not what they seem. Constellations are important because they are a restructuring of phenomena in a concrete way that attempts to picture the essence of society. In a sequence of phenomena, structures may be erected out of them in specific ways—in the language of the above quote, these concepts are centered around an object, a thing. This is the precarious point, neither positivism nor idealism that Adorno praises in the work of Max Weber.

A further reflection: the specific arrangements that one moves about to form constellations, inherently a subjective arrangement in some sense, can be understood in terms of objectivity:

These are subjectively produced, but they work only where the subjective production is submerged in them. The subjectively created context—the “constellation”—becomes readable as sign of an objectivity: of the spiritual substance (Adorno 165).

To see the relations, the context, in which an object stands, is to understand the object—not to deny quality or the “something” of phenomenological experience. Conceptually speaking, however, an object is its context. Therefore, to understand what arrangement of elements has been made suitably is to better understand the object in question: “Becoming aware of the constellation in which a thing stands is tantamount to deciphering the constellation which, having come to be, it bears within it” (Adorno 163). This is thus a negative, critical moment.

I will continue to read and post my thoughts as I come to think about the topic in more detail, and I will definitely need to fix the numerous errors I'm sure I've already made in this short explanation.

Source: Adorno, Theodor W. Negative Dialectics. Seabury Press, 1973. Print.

The Tendency to Reduce

The tendency to reduce theoretical constructions to what is perceived as their most basic level is deeply embedded in the minds of many. In some cases it is important to think of things in simpler terms, as this may help the understanding to parse difficult theories or statements. In other cases, however, it becomes a vice. This is readily apparent—what is not so apparent is how deep the problem really goes. To give a personal example:

My Asian studies class was discussing the Vietnamese diaspora, and one of my classmates raised a hand and said, totally seriously, “I don't understand, aren't we all just African diaspora?” The confusion continued, with people unable to grasp that a time-period could simply be defined. They kept trying to reduce it further back in time for no reason. The fact that we could go further back in time to define the ancestral homeland did not mean we had to in order to give the concept meaning. In fact, to reduce it further back destroyed the meaning in the context of the discussion.

Why do people consistently attempt to reduce things to basic constituents, to the “first” moment, or other such things? It is surely a product of society, namely and primarily the ubiquitous reduction of things to economic factors. The violence done against phenomena in pressing them into quantitative economic determinations is mirrored in everyday mental processes such as trying to understand concepts like diaspora. It obviously was understood as a concept, as it was immediately applied to Africa; my classmate's definition was correct. However, a cognitive reflex occurred thereafter which attempted to invalidate the concept because it was not “objectively” defined quantitatively. The meaning of alternative, context-sensitive definitions of time-period for use with the concept was rejected.

Reduction destroys the specificity of pronouncements.