No abstract

A recurring issue in analyzing the work of the critical theorist Theodor W. Adorno (d. 1969) is how to understand his professed adherence to the biblical commandment that prohibits the manufacture of images of the divine-referred to as the "image ban" or Bilderverbot (Exod 20:4-5). Adorno writes, "I see no other possibility than that of extreme asceticism toward any faith in revelation, and extreme allegiance to the Bilderverbot." 1 Some readers' interest in the significance of Adorno's allegiance to the Bilderverbot is primarily theological; they focus on whether this allegiance is tantamount to a "negative theology." 2 1 Theodor W. Adorno, "Vernunft und Offenbarung," Gesammelte Schriften (20 vols.; Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970-1993 10:616. See also Gesammelte Schriften 6:207, 293-94; idem, Negative Dialectics (trans. E. B. Ashton; New York: Continuum, 1994) 207, 298-99. Gesammelte Schriften 3:40; idem and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (trans. John Cumming; New York: Continuum, 1994). Adorno also prohibits pronunciation of the divine name; see Gesammelte Schriften 6:394; Negative Dialectics, 402.2 The Bilderverbot and negative theology are often associated in both Adorno scholarship and theological scholarship insofar as they are read as attempts to communicate divine transcendence by prohibiting its depiction. The term Bilderverbot refers to the biblical commandment: "You shall not make yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything in heaven or on earth beneath or in the waters under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them" (Exod 20:4-5). This commandment obviously forbids the making and worshipping of images. These activities are forbidden, so the text reads, because YHWH is a jealous god. Negative theology refers to those traditions, predominantly Neoplatonic and Christian (although it is also associated with Philo and Maimonides), which advocate the use of negative attributes or the systematic denial of all attributes in order to convey the idea that the divine is utterly transcendent or ineffable, i.e., beyond the confines of discursive reason. Whereas sources of negative theology declare that the divine, qua divine, is unknowable, the Bilderverbot, per se, does not include this declaration. It should be noted, HTR 95:3 (2002) 291-318 292 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEWOthers' interest, particularly that of his successors in critical theory, is primarily political. In their estimation, Adorno's allegiance to the Bilderverbot undermines any contribution he might make to contemporary formulations of an emancipatory praxis.Jürgen Habermas, for instance, recognizes that, for Adorno, the "prohibition upon graven images" requires that reconciliation of human antagonisms, much then, that to see a connection between the Bilderverbot and negative theology is to insist that the "message" of the Bilderverbot is that of divine transcendence, i.e., that the divine, per se, does not admit of description. It need not, of course, be read this way. Nevertheless, a number of Adorno's read...

No abstract

No abstract

Applying Michael Warner’s definition of a public as an organized body capable of being addressed in discourse, this essay argues that the mission and associated practices of Taizé pilgrimage are a public formation. The argument draws from visits to the Taizé community in France, to a Taizé youth group in Rotterdam, interviews with pilgrims, writings by community leaders and members, as well as numerous addresses to the European pilgrimages on the part of religious and political leaders. The aims of this argument are to bring pilgrimage research into broader conversations with other strata of cultural theory and to challenge prevailing understandings of the ‘public’ and the relationship between publicness and religion.