forces have almost wholly triumphed. Almost—for these heirs of Marx still
harbor hope for a way out through the demystifying practice of radical
critique. For Nietzsche, too, unmasking was a key strategy in theWght with
modernity, a modernity that he identiWed with Christian and scientiWc
asceticism. Nietzsche’s practice of ‘‘genealogy,’’ like ideology-critique,
sought to uncover the violent, cruel, or simply contradictory elements
within conventional ideals and concepts, including those constitutive of
the modern self (e.g. moral responsibility, guilt, and conscience) (Nietzsche
1987 , 1989 )
Horkheimer and Adorno evinced a particularly strong faith in the power of
ideology-critique, in, that is, the ability of human reason to expose the truth.
Unlike Nietzsche, for whom reason required the supplement of aesthetic
motivation, Horkheimer and Adorno imagine this truth as morallycompel-
ling, as capable ofenacting itself. They reveal for us the extent to which the
modern temper includes a belief in the eYcacy of debunking, in the idea that
insight into injustice carries with it its own impetus for undoing wrong and
enacting right.
In invoking an independent and eYcacious realm of critical reXection,
Horkheimer and Adorno interrupt their own, more dominant, image of cap-
italist modernity as anall-powerfulsystem of exploitation. In so doing, they
display something of Gilles Deleuze’s ( 1925 – 95 ) and Felix Guattari’s ( 1930 – 92 )
sense that ‘‘there is always something thatXows orXees, that escapes... the
overcoding machine,’’ that although ‘‘capitalists may be the master of surplus
value and its distribution,... they do not dominate theXows from which
surplus value derives’’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986 , 216 , 226 ).
4Nature
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
Marx and the historical materialists indebted to him identify modernity
with the exploitation of human labor and human sensibility. As in Weber’s
account, the abuse of nonhumannature receives less attention. But asso-
ciated with every cultural narrative of modernity is a particular image of
nature. In general, the modern assumption is that nature is basically law-
governed and predictable, ‘‘in principle’’ susceptible to rationalization.
220 jane bennett