that determine their condition. In Adorno’s opinion one can speak of a Verblen-
dungszusammenhang—people are blinded by the idea that the world is as it is. As a
result, the possibilities for real change that objectively exist do not get through to
their consciousness and therefore have no chance of succeeding. The thesis of the
“totally administered world” postulates that people are imprisoned in a network of
social relations of production and consumption so that they unconsciously allow
themselves to be manipulated, with the result that the system can continue to exist
fundamentally unchanged. In contrast with Tafuri, Adorno does in fact see possibili-
ties of resistance in the face of these developments. He, too, is clear that radical po-
litical change is not something that is going to take place overnight, but he does allow
some margin for criticism, more than Tafuri does. He sees, for instance, possibilities
for genuine criticism in the domain of art and philosophy in particular, however mar-
ginal this may be in terms of society. It is the way in which he explores these possi-
bilities that gives his work its relevance for today.
Some precautions, however, should be formulated. Although Adorno’s work
offers a wealth of stimulating ideas and perceptions, there are also some problem-
atic aspects to it. In terms of this book they can be summed up under two headings:
Adorno’s unilinear notion of history^93 and his pronounced preference for autonomous
art.^94 With regard to the first point it should be stressed that Adorno assumes that
history is characterized by an increasing exacerbation of the process of reification
and an increasing prevalence of identity thinking. As a result, the social system with
its blind logic proliferates, permeating more and more the whole fabric of individual
and collective existence. It is in the context of this evolution that he interprets the
maxim “il faut être absolument moderne”as meaning the obligation of art to use the
most advanced materials and techniques: only in this way will it be able to preserve
its critical content. If, however, one does not share Adorno’s notion of history as a
one-way street, if one is rather inclined to see the evolution of history as a complex
of disparate, uneven, and contradictory developments that are characterized by a
lack of synchronicity and continuity rather than by a strict logic of reification, then one
is no longer obliged to interpret this maxim in such a unilinear fashion. Criticism and
resistance remain in my view an obligation; but these need not be confined to the
most advanced materials and techniques: in a situation where it is not clear precisely
what progress is and what techniques can be called the most advanced, a limitation
like this is no longer relevant.
The second series of objections have to do with Adorno’s obsession with au-
tonomous art, an obsession that means that he has never paid much attention either
in his Aesthetic Theoryor elsewhere to heteronomous forms of art such as archi-
tecture. Adorno’s aesthetic sensibility is most outspoken in the fields of music and
literature—he has never devoted much attention to the visual arts, to dance and the-
ater, or to architecture. His texts sometimes give the impression that the whole
realm of cultural production is by definition split into two domains: autonomous art
(good, critical art) and the products of the culture industry (bad, reified art). The real-
4
Architecture as Critique of Modernity