Deep Thoughts: the practicality of Theory

Here's Adorno defending 'Theory':
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I urge you therefore to exercise a certain patience with respect to the relations between theory and practice. Such a request may be justified because in a situation like the present — one about which I do not entertain the slightest illusion, and nor would I wish to encourage any illusions in you — whether it will be possible ever again to achieve a valid form of practice may well depend on not demanding that every idea should immediately produce its own legitimating document explaining its own practical use. The situation may well demand instead that we resist the call of practicality with all our might in order ruthlessly to follow through an idea and its logical implications so as to see where it may lead. I would even say that this ruthlessness, the power of resistance that is inherent in the idea itself and that prevents it from letting itself be directly manipulated for any instrumental purposes whatsoever, this theoretical ruthlessness contains — if you will allow me this paradox — a practical element within itself."

Here's Charlotte Street commenting:
"‘Theory’ is today a frequent object of polemic. The critics of ‘Theory’ sometimes speak as if it were only a comparatively recent academic trend, an empty category, a camouflage for political saboteurs. It was perhaps timely of Pas Au-Dela, then, to re-discover this Adorno piece, in which the question of Theory is addressed directly and the existence of Theory defended against its critics. The most elementary definition of theoretical thought, A. reminds us, is in contrast to practice and practical thought. Theoretical thinking is an activity not simply subordinate to current practical ends, it is not instrumental. Not ‘how can we sell this commodity’ but ‘what is a commodity’.

Another way of putting this is that theory sullenly refuses the continual command imperatives of the world in which we live, and is prepared, A. again reminds us, to think an idea or concept through to its roots – even if that means uprooting it - rather than asking only how can it be used. Practicality is indeed a kind of ‘call’ - the world solicits us, impatiently, to direct our attention to the reproduction or extension of what is, and frowns on genuine thought as mere dallying. The crude reproach of schoolmates on learning that one is pursuing a philosophy or English degree – ‘But what will you do with that?’ contains the categorical imperative against which theory has to dig in its heels.

For Adorno the very existence of theory, as non-instrumental thought, is, like the very existence of art, utopian in-itself prior to any specific contents. At the same time, the relative autonomy of theory, and of art, is both a symptom and an illusion. Any genuinely Marxist approach cannot really posit that theory is innocent of practical concerns. Indeed, critics like Aijaz Ahmad(In Theory) have convincingly demonstrated some of the ways in which theory can indeed be the instrument of group self-promotion within the academy. Similarly, the retreat of art into its own sphere in the end performs a familiar role within bourgeois society. Both theory and art are both impossible and necessary. They retain, in their name and their concept, the possibility of a freedom which is at once confiscated by the world in which they exist.

And here are some comments on this:
1. Pretty much everyone defends theory who makes theory, although Foucault came close to reversing the decisions of his life, when he started to genuinely question: why think? I don't remember how he answered. I think the instrumental/non-instrumental isn't really that important a binary, more something you have to get over on the way to intellectual independence (of course independence doesn't guarantee anything else.) Imo, the distinction is best revealed in the essence of the binary (not the binary itself) administrative:critical. The essence being: who classifies? You, or an external?
2. I think the instrumental/non-instrumental isn't really that important a binary' Why? And what do you mean by 'intellectual independence' in this particular context?? --Mark Kaplan
3. It's mostly a decision-maker in discourses that belong to the happily-swayed. It can be usefully analayzed as such, but as philosophical bedrock barely registers.
4. Sorry. Have demolished some wine tonight, whilst windows takes hours to update itself. Anyway: by intellectual independence, in this particular case of over-coming the implicit and false commands of instrumentality, I mean freedom from power-envy.