Surrender-and-catch and critical theory

pp. 149-166

in: Kurt Wolff, Transformation in the writing, Berlin, Springer, 1995

Abstract

I am beginning to type but don't know what's coming, if anything is coming, or how it is going to go on, whether it will develop, how it is going to end. What an embarrassing confession! But I have to make it, for I am beginning (once more — not only to type). This time I wish to surrender to critical theory; the first thing that comes up is my memory of Max Horkheimer, how he got me to the Institute in Frankfurt, twice, 1952 and 1953, to do some work they wanted done — the first time was the first time I went to Germany, nineteen years after I'd left. I met and got acquainted with Adorno and Pollock and later in the States with Herbert Marcuse, who became my colleague and friend, and with Habermas. None of these critical theorists had or has space for my concern with surrender-and-catch. Horkheimer, even before I went to Frankfurt, when I met and talked with him about it in the States, said something like "old hat": surrender is the initial stage of any investigation, the muddling-through stage — first I couldn't believe he had heard me right but then feared he had, and we had different views; but when at his request in Frankfurt I gave a talk about the present state of sociology and mentioned surrender-and-catch as a corrective alternative (or something of the sort), he or another member of his group denounced me in the public discussion: they had finally managed to overcome Heidegger, and here somebody came from, of all places, America and tried to reimport metaphysics if not worse, perhaps mysticism: that's just what they needed; and I don't think what I said in response cut any ice.