Reading Adorno: Language, Mimesis, and Constellation

1. Why Is Adorno Difficult to Read?

Why would a philosophy concerned with society and its transformation make itself so difficult to read? In a conversation with Herbert Marcuse about the Frankfurt School, Bryan Magee raised the difficulty of Theodor W. Adorno’s writing, observing that some passages seemed extraordinarily dense, sometimes almost unintelligible. Although acknowledging the intellectual stature of the school’s members, Magee wondered why their work should be so much harder to follow than that of philosophers who managed to combine complex ideas with clarity and accessibility.

Marcuse partly accepted the criticism but suggested that the difficulty might have philosophical significance. Ordinary language, he argued, had become permeated by the established social order, expressing its patterns of thought even when speakers were unaware of them. A critical philosophy that simply adopted familiar forms of expression might therefore reproduce some of the conformity it sought to challenge. Marcuse described the need for a “rupture with conformity” through the “syntax,” “grammar,” and “vocabulary” of philosophical expression (Marcuse, 1978, p. 73).

This observation raises a question about the relationship between Adorno’s philosophy and his style. His difficulty may arise partly from an attempt to make conceptual language responsive to what concepts cannot fully capture. If objects are never exhausted by the concepts through which we understand them, philosophical writing must find ways to make their particularity intelligible without reducing it to a fixed definition. Adorno’s account of the double character of language, his understanding of mimesis, and his concept of constellation help explain this undertaking. His style can therefore be understood in relation to his philosophical method, although this does not mean that every instance of difficulty is necessary or justified.

2. Sign and Image: The Division of Language

In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and Adorno trace a historical division between science and poetry that extends to language itself. They evoke forms of symbolic expression, such as hieroglyphic writing, in which the word retained a pictorial function and sign and image could coincide. With the division of intellectual labour, however, these dimensions become increasingly separated. Scientific language treats the word primarily as a sign, organizing it into a system through which nature can be calculated and controlled. Its sensory and pictorial dimensions are assigned to the arts (Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002, pp. 13–14).

The distinction concerns two different ways of relating to the world. As a system of signs, language identifies, distinguishes, and organizes objects so that they can become objects of knowledge and control. To fulfil this function, the sign relinquishes the claim to resemble nature. As image, language is associated with likeness and mimesis, a relation to the world through affinity with what is perceived. Confined to this function, however, the image relinquishes the claim to know nature. In Horkheimer and Adorno’s account, each function loses something when assigned an exclusive role: the sign tends towards calculation, while the image becomes detached from conceptual knowledge.

The distinction therefore concerns more than different kinds of words or an opposition between literal and figurative expression. It describes a historical division between scientific cognition and artistic representation. Horkheimer and Adorno examine the consequences of this division for both sides. Scientific knowledge risks becoming a self-contained system of signs, governed by calculation, while art risks becoming a reproduction of what already exists. Once separated from one another, these tendencies lose the capacities that might otherwise limit their one-sidedness.

This diagnosis leads to a philosophical problem. Horkheimer and Adorno observe that philosophy has understood the gap opened by the separation of sign and image as a problem concerning the relationship between intuition and concept. Philosophy repeatedly attempts to address this gap, although it has generally favoured the conceptual side (Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002, p. 14). The difficulty concerns how thought can make an object intelligible through concepts while remaining responsive to what conceptual determination leaves unresolved.

This problem connects with Adorno’s critique of identity thinking. Concepts are indispensable to thought, yet an object cannot be assumed to consist entirely of the determinations through which it is identified. When those determinations are treated as exhaustive, the particularity that they cannot accommodate risks disappearing from consideration. Adorno’s concept of non-identity names this excess of the object over its conceptual identification.

3. What Classification Leaves Out

Consider two ways of describing grief. The first identifies it as a psychological response to bereavement, associated with sadness, longing, and the disruption of ordinary life. This description is useful because it establishes features shared by many experiences of loss. Yet it tells us relatively little about how grief may transform the experience of the world for a particular person.

A second description might explore how familiar surroundings acquire an unfamiliar quality after the death of a loved one. Ordinary routines continue, but the objects and places involved in them seem strangely altered. Time may appear to pass without movement, while activities that once gave shape to everyday life lose their accustomed significance. Such a description brings into view dimensions of the experience that a general classification leaves unspecified.

Both descriptions rely on concepts and linguistic conventions. The second remains conceptual, and its attention to lived experience does not automatically make it an example of image in Horkheimer and Adorno’s specific sense. The example serves a narrower purpose: it shows how language can identify an experience while remaining attentive to features that a general definition does not adequately express.

Adorno’s critique of identity thinking helps explain why this matters. When an object is treated as adequately understood through the concept under which it is subsumed, whatever does not fit the established determination tends to be overlooked or dismissed as irrelevant. The concept of grief enables us to recognize and discuss the experience, yet it cannot fully determine what grief means in the life of a particular person. The object exceeds the conceptual features through which it becomes intelligible.

This is where mimesis becomes relevant. In this context, it names a receptive relation to the particular: a capacity to respond to an object without immediately reducing it to the categories already available for understanding it. Such responsiveness is more than vivid description or the reproduction of outward appearances. It concerns the way an object can affect and complicate our understanding of it. The grief example illustrates why this capacity matters, though it does not establish that any particular description has fully achieved a mimetic relation to its subject.

For Adorno, the challenge is to preserve conceptual thought while allowing the object to challenge its determinations. His concept of constellation addresses this problem by organizing concepts in a way that makes their relations, and the particularity they help disclose, central to understanding.

4. Constellation: Thinking Through Concepts

Adorno develops the concept of constellation to explain how thought can approach the particularity of its objects without abandoning conceptual thinking. Rather than subsuming an object under an increasingly comprehensive general concept, thought brings several concepts into a configuration that illuminates the object through their relations.

In Negative Dialectics, Adorno writes:

By themselves, constellations represent from without what the concept has cut away within: the “more” which the concept is equally desirous and incapable of being. (Adorno, 1973, p. 162)

The quotation describes how conceptual thought can approach an object without assuming that its determinations will yield a final, all-encompassing definition. What matters is the way the concepts illuminate the object in relation to one another.

Consider again the experience of grief. Loss, memory, habit, absence, and time each illuminate a different dimension of it. Their relations can disclose how the absence of a person becomes present in everyday habits, how memory alters the meaning of familiar surroundings, and how the passage of time acquires a different quality after a loss. Taken together, these concepts make aspects of the experience intelligible that none could adequately express on its own.

A constellation is therefore an arrangement of concepts whose relations help reveal the particularity of an object. It does not guarantee complete understanding; its purpose is to make possible a more differentiated account than an isolated determination can provide. Because the significance of its concepts depends on their configuration, the organization of an argument becomes part of its capacity to illuminate its subject. This connection between conceptual relations and philosophical presentation helps explain why Adorno’s style deserves examination as part of his method.

5. Why This Makes Adorno Difficult to Read

Adorno’s reflections on the essay form provide a basis for connecting constellation with philosophical style. In “The Essay as Form,” he writes that concepts “gain their precision only through their relation to one another” and that “the aspects of the argument interweave as in a carpet” (Adorno, 1984, p. 160). Although these remarks concern the essay, they illuminate a principle relevant to his philosophical writing: a conceptual element may acquire its full significance only through the configuration in which it appears.

An argument organized in this way requires the reader to follow how concepts develop in relation to one another. A qualification may alter the meaning of an earlier formulation, while an unexpected connection may reveal an aspect of the object that was previously difficult to discern. Understanding depends on following the movement of the argument rather than treating its sentences as independent propositions that can simply be assembled into a complete account.

Marcuse’s observation about a rupture with conformity becomes relevant here. If conventional exposition encourages readers to expect fixed definitions followed by a sequence of supporting statements, Adorno’s writing can unsettle that expectation. Its organization may require readers to reconsider familiar distinctions and attend to connections that emerge through the development of the argument. Philosophical presentation can thus participate in the work of thought rather than merely communicating conclusions reached elsewhere.

This interpretation nevertheless has limits. A difficult sentence does not become philosophically valuable simply because it departs from conventional prose, and Adorno’s philosophical commitments cannot justify every obscurity in his writing. The relevant test is whether a passage’s form helps make its subject matter more intelligible. Sometimes the writing may instead make an argument harder to follow without clarifying what is at stake.

Adorno’s style can therefore be understood, in part, as an attempt to make conceptual language responsive to relations and particularities that conventional forms of exposition may overlook. Whether a particular passage succeeds in this undertaking remains a matter for close reading.

6. Conclusion: Understanding the Difficulty

The distinction between sign and image identifies a historical separation between calculating knowledge and mimetic responsiveness. Adorno’s critique of identity thinking explains why objects cannot be exhausted by the concepts through which they are identified, while constellation offers a way to approach their particularity through relations among concepts. Mimesis helps clarify the demand that thought remain receptive to its objects; constellation shows how this demand can inform the organization of conceptual thinking.

These connections make the relationship between Adorno’s philosophy and his style more intelligible. His writing can require readers to follow how concepts acquire significance through their relations, rather than treating each sentence as a self-contained proposition. Yet the philosophical value of this difficulty cannot be assumed in advance. It depends on what the organization of a particular passage makes possible for understanding.

References

Adorno, T. W. (1973). Negative dialectics (E. B. Ashton, Trans.). Seabury Press. (Original work published 1966)

Adorno, T. W. (1984). The essay as form (B. Hullot-Kentor & F. Will, Trans.). New German Critique, (32), 151–171. https://doi.org/10.2307/488160 (Original work published 1958)

Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (2002). Dialectic of enlightenment: Philosophical fragments (E. Jephcott, Trans.; G. Schmid Noerr, Ed.). Stanford University Press.

Magee, B. (1978). Marcuse and the Frankfurt School. In Men of ideas: Some creators of contemporary philosophy (pp. 60–73). British Broadcasting Corporation.