Naples 1925: Adorno, Benjamin, and the Summer That Made Critical Theory

The volcanic rocks of Naples, Italy, played an unheralded role in the development of critical theory, according to this abstruse debut history. Mittelmeier, an honorary German language and literature professor at the University of Cologne, recounts how on a 1925 visit to Naples, the young German philosopher Theodor Adorno engaged in a “philosophical battle” with fellow German thinker Walter Benjamin, who had recently published an essay contemplating the porousness of the region’s volcanic stone as a “structural principle” for analyzing the world. The piece suggested, in Mittelmeier’s words, that “nothing can be itself, pure and simple; everything is interchangeable and signifies everything else.” Such ideas presaged the tenets of critical theory and would have been transmitted to Adorno during his Naples conversation with Benjamin, Mittelmeier argues. The only problem is that, as Mittelmeier admits, there is no record of what was discussed, only Adorno’s passing mention of the conversation in a letter. As a result, Mittelmeier is forced to deduce what went down by analyzing the philosopher’s subsequent writings. Mittelmeier’s assertion that the Naples conversation provided the “source code” for critical theory rests largely on speculation, plausible though it may be, and the dense prose will alienate lay readers (“Porosity is also a variant of the reification diagnosis, but now in a positive sense”). This comes up short. (Nov.)