THE JEWISH ULYSSES:ADORNO AND JOYCE ON MODERNITY
THE JEWISH ULYSSES:ADORNO AND JOYCE ON MODERNITY

Summary/Abstract: In Dialectic of Enlightenment, the leading achievement and the intellectual highlight of the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, the famous authorial duo, claim that the main civilisational force which created modern culture is escape from mystery. Only by setting himself free from myth, the traditional site of everything mysterious, can man make an exit from the world of nature. To turn away from mystery and live without her hereafter: such is the ideal, or rather, the regulative idea which, according to Horkheimer and Adorno constitutes, if not an essence, than at least a still valid project of humanity. In their specific “Greek-Jewish” idiom, the modern Enlightenment is the continuation of the Biblical project of Exodus as the exit from the domination of Egypt-nature, as well as a transposition of the journey of Ulysses-Odysseus, the first Greek hero who tried to challenge natural elements and was punished for this hubris by the “nomadic curse”. The Frankfurt Ulysses is thus both Greek and Jewish – just like another famous 20th century Ulysses, Leopold Bloom of Joyce’s novel. The aim of the essay is to compare these two versions of Odysseus myth which served both the Frankfurters and Joyce, as a canvas for their respective critiques of modern condition. In both cases, the mythical failures of Ulysses reflect in a paradigmatic way the dangers and pitfalls of the Western Enlightenment.

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