Friday, October 19, 2007

From Adorno

From Adorno's "Minima Moralia" - "On Marcel Proust" (To me, seems to be a comment on professionalism though filtered from a totally different context)

"The occupation with things of the mind has by now itself become 'practical,' a business with strict division of labour, departments and restricted entry...The departmentalization of mind is a means of abolishing mind where it is not exercised ex officio, under contract. It performs this task all the moe reliably since anyone who repudiates the division of labour - if only by taking pleasure in this work - makes himself vulnerable by its standars in ways inseparable from elements of his superiority. Thus, is order ensured: some have to play the game because they cannot otherwise live, and those who could live otherwise are kept out because they do not want to play the game. It is as if the class from which independant intellectuals have defected takes its revenge, by pressing its demands home in the very domain where the deserter seeks refuge."

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