158 Part II: A Change of Sceneearlier. Adorno once again mapped out the differences between the two
variants of ideology critique, without advancing arguments that might
have led to a productive controversy between the two. Such a discourse
might have suited Horkheimer better than the repetition of disagree-
ments and the division into opposing camps. The sharpness of Adorno’s
critique may have served to cover up the affinities he felt for Mannheim.
These included not only a similar intellectual attitude but also the point
of view of the academic outsider. In his reflections on the role of the
intellectual, Mannheim had expressed the hope that the different group-
ings might move closer together. ‘We who have been scattered all over
the globe are the only international flotsam without solid ground be-
neath our feet: we are the people who write books and read, and who,
when they read and write, are interested only in where the spirit leads
them.’^90 In fact, both men were intellectuals who wrote, using the essay
form for preference. They shared the stylistic freedom it conferred, the
one man more musically expressive, the other more restrained. Both
reacted with a comprehensive critique of modernity, Mannheim with a
critique of consciousness, Adorno with a dialectical critique of society.
At the point when Adorno had finished his ‘Marxist piece’ on
Mannheim’s ‘bourgeois sociologism’,^91 it was no longer appropriate for
the times. Nor, towards the end of the 1930s, did it really fit any more
into the programme of the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung or the insti-
tute, since the émigrés in New York were now trying to establish them-
selves in America and to seek out opportunities to cooperate with
American sociologists. When Horkheimer had read Adorno’s article in
New York, he reacted favourably in a letter to him, but was unwilling to
publish it. Adorno could not understand this ambivalence. He was en-
tirely convinced of the validity of his critique of Mannheim and felt
cheated when Horkheimer explained his reservations about publication
by saying that, as a whole, the article was too positive.^92 Adorno de-
fended himself by return of post, justifying his text-immanent approach
‘of taking the greatest nonsense seriously and forcing oneself to prove
that it really is nonsense... while loading the polemical burden of proof
onto his shoulders,... i.e., making him [i.e., Mannheim] speak and de-
stroying him by quoting him.’ That his criticism had struck the nerve of
Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge could be seen from Mannheim’s
reaction in what Adorno calls
an infuriated, but also helpless letter.... He was unable to answer
a single one of the arguments, and escaped from the situation by
claiming that the mistakes I reproached him with did not affect
the methodology, but only his handling of it. As if that were the
issue; as if anyone but the Heidelbergers could distinguish be-
tween method and substance in that way. No, I truly believe that
the suavis modus shows up the contours of the res severa in a
harsher light.^93