25335 Autodialoog, in the 1974 Hague catalogue New Babylon, pp. 71–72.
36 See “New Babylon na tien jaren,” p. 3: “Het bleek dat mijn maquettes meer verwarring te-
weeg brachten dan begrip kweekten voor mijn streven een wereld te verbeelden die zo
hartgrondig verschilde van de wereld waarin we leven of de werelden waarvan we enige
historische kennis hebben. Tenslotte greep ik weer naar penseel en palet als het meest
doelmatige middel om het onbekende zichtbaar te maken.” (“Apparently my maquettes
have sown confusion, rather than furthering any understanding of my efforts to imagine a
world that differs so profoundly from the world in which we live or from any world of which
we have any historical knowledge. Finally I resorted once more to brush and palette as the
most appropriate means of rendering visible the unknown.”)
37 See Jeroen Onstenk, “In het labyrint. Utopie en verlangen in het werk van Constant,” Kri-
sis, no. 15 (1984), pp. 4–21.
38 Debord, Society of the Spectacle, p. 178.
39 Bart Verschaffel, “‘Architektuur is (als) een gebaar’. Over het ‘echte’ als architecturaal cri-
terium,” in Hilde Heynen, ed., Wonen tussen gemeenplaats en poëzie. Opstellen over
stad en architectuur(Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1993), pp. 67–80.
40 Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 32; translated from Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie(1970;
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973), p. 55: “Zentral unter den gegenwärtigen Antinomien ist, dass
Kunst Utopie sein muss und will und zwar desto entschiedener, je mehr der reale Funk-
tionszusammenhang Utopie verbaut; dass sie aber, um nicht Utopie an Schein und Trost
zu verraten, nicht Utopie sein darf.”
41 I refer to Frederic Jameson’s argument about the topicality of Adorno’s work for present
theory, which I fully agree with. See Jameson, Late Marxism: Adorno, or, The Per-
sistence of the Dialectic (London: Verso, 1990), especially pp. 227–261: “Adorno in the
Postmodern.”
42 Martin Jay, Adorno(London: Fontana Paperbacks, 1984), pp. 11–23.
43 Because he emigrated at an early stage in the Nazi period, the personal consequences of
the Holocaust for Adorno were relatively limited compared to the experiences of those
who had to face the concentration camps. The most decisive factor for him was that the
literally unthinkable really had occurred: this was why the question had to be posed as to
whether philosophy was still possible “after Auschwitz.” See Theodor W. Adorno,Nega-
tive Dialectics (New York: Continuum, 1983), pp. 361–365.
44 This correspondence is perhaps not entirely a coincidence, seeing that during the 1930s
Benjamin was in contact with the circle around Bataille and Klossowski, whose work is
well known to Derrida.
45 Adorno was profoundly influenced by Walter Benjamin. This influence was particularly
powerful with regard to his ideas about language and his analysis of the concept of “mime-
sis,” as we shall see later in this chapter. For a detailed study of the relation between the
two thinkers, see Susan Buck-Morss, The Origins of Negative Dialectics (Brighton: Har-
vester, 1978).
46 Buck-Morss, The Origins of Negative Dialectics, p. 58.
47 See, for instance, Theodor W. Adorno, Notes to Literature, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1991, 1992).
48 See Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. xx: “It [negative dialectics] attempts by means of log-
ical consistency to substitute for the unity principle, and for the paramountcy of the supra-
ordinated concept, the idea of what would be outside of such unity.” Translated from
Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik(1966; Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970), p. 8: “Mit kon-
sequenzlogischen Mitteln trachtet sie [die Negative Dialektik], anstelle des Einheitsprinzip
und des Allherrschaft der übergeordneten Begriffs die Idee dessen zu rücken, was ausser-
halb des Banns solcher Einheit wäre.”
49 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 161 (translation modified); German text: “Was ist, ist mehr
als es ist. Dies Mehr wird ihm nicht oktroyiert, sondern bleibt, als das aus ihm Verdrängte,
ihm immanent. Insofern wäre das Nicht-identische die eigene Identität der Sache, gegen
ihre Identifikationen.” (Negative Dialektik, p. 162.)252