The Frankfurt School Critique from the Perspective of Structuralism

As the two most important theoretical currents of twentieth-century Western Marxism, the Frankfurt School and structuralist Marxism occupy a significant position in the overall theoretical development of Western Marxism. Generally speaking, the Frankfurt School, centered on critical theory, basically carried forward the humanist logic of Marx’s thought that began to be emphasized after the discovery of Marx’s manuscripts in 1932. Facing a series of serious social issues such as the rise of fascism, totalitarianism, and anti-Semitism in European society, as well as the new changes occurring in capitalist society as a whole, it launched a critique in the form of culture and ideology, targeting cultural industry, mass culture, and advanced industrial society. The formation of structuralist Marxism was somewhat more complex. Based on the structuralist currents of Lévi-Strauss, Saussure, and Jakobson, it achieved a synthesis with Marxism in Althusser. Its representative theoretical achievement was Althusser’s use of the “epistemological break” to demarcate Marx’s early and later thought, transforming all important concepts in Marx’s thought, such as “mode of production” and “class,” into structural concepts.

作为20世纪西方马克思主义最重要的两股理论思潮，法兰克福学派和结构主义马克思主义在整个西方马克思主义的理论发展中占据了重要的地位。总体上说，以批判理论为核心的法兰克福学派基本上贯彻了1932年马克思手稿被发现之后开始被重视的马克思思想的人本主义逻辑，面对欧洲社会的法西斯主义、极权主义和反犹主义兴起等一系列严重的社会课题和整个资本主义社会发生的新变化，以文化工业、大众文化和发达工业社会为主要对象，展开文化和意识形态形式上的批判。结构主义的马克思主义的形成过程则稍显复杂，奠基于列维-斯特劳斯、索绪尔和雅各布森等人的结构主义思潮，在阿尔都塞那里完成了与马克思主义的结合，其代表性的理论成果就是阿尔都塞以“认识论断裂”对马克思前后期思想进行划界，并将马克思思想中的“生产方式”“阶级”等重要概念全部转化为结构性概念。

Although both the Frankfurt School and structuralist Marxism have had a tremendous impact on intellectual circles and the entire social and cultural sphere, the two have never engaged in effective communication or dialogue, and there exist deep prejudices among their respective important researchers. For instance, the prominent domestic Frankfurt School researcher Zhao Yong, in his important work on the Frankfurt School, *Inside and Outside the Frankfurt School: Intellectuals and Mass Culture*, borrows the judgments of Zhu Xueqin and Eagleton — “playing in the realm of signs, running wild in the realm of the imaginary” and “post-structuralism cannot smash the state power structure, but they discovered that subverting the linguistic structure is still possible” — to identify the inadequacy of structuralism and post-structuralism. Discussions of the Frankfurt School within structuralism are even rarer. According to Wolin, among all structuralists and post-structuralists, only Foucault’s thought comes closest to the issues the Frankfurt School focused on: “Foucault and the Frankfurt School both believe that the ‘dialectic of spirit’ must submit to the techniques of data analysis. Only in this way can the disguise of spirit as a thing-in-itself be exposed.” However, it is worth noting that although the two share certain theoretical issues (both are situated within what Habermas calls the “philosophical discourse of modernity”), the internal structures, logical methods, and ultimate practical aims of the two theories are vastly different, and genuine internal comparison and discussion between them remain scarce. In fact, the neglect of structuralist currents has deprived the Frankfurt School’s critical theory of an extremely important perspective, and vice versa. Therefore, we will here take the theories of two important representatives of these schools, namely Lacan and Adorno, as examples to consider what entirely new horizons the confrontation and dialogue between the two theories might open up for themselves and for the study of Western Marxism as a whole.

尽管法兰克福学派和结构主义马克思主义这两种思潮在知识界和整个社会文化领域中都产生了巨大影响，但是二者却从未进行过有效的沟通和对话，并且二者的重要研究者彼此之间还存在着很深的偏见。比如国内重要的法兰克福学派研究者赵勇先生，就在其研究法兰克福学派的重要著作《法兰克福学派内外：知识分子与大众文化》中借用朱学勤和伊格尔顿等人的论断——“在符号界游戏、在想象界撒野”“后结构主义无力打碎国家权力结构，但是他们发现，颠覆语言结构还是可能的”——指认结构主义和后结构主义的不堪。而结构主义内部对法兰克福学派的讨论更为寥寥，按照沃林的看法，所有结构主义和后结构主义者中只有福柯的思想最接近法兰克福学派所关注的议题：“福柯和法兰克福学派都认为‘精神辩证法’必须服从资料分析技术。只有通过这个办法，精神扮作自在之物的伪装才能得到揭露。”不过值得注意的是，虽然在一定的理论议题上两者具有一致之处（都处于哈贝马斯所说的“现代性的哲学话语循环之中”，但是两种理论的内部结构、逻辑方法和最终的实践旨趣都大相径庭，两者之间真正内在的比较和讨论仍然匮乏。事实上，对于结构主义思潮的忽视使法兰克福学派的批判理论缺少了一个极为重要的视角，反之亦然。因此，我们这里将以两个学派的重要代表即拉康和阿多诺的理论为例，来思考两种理论的交锋与对话究竟会为它们自己以及整个西方马克思主义研究开辟怎样全新的视野。

I. Adorno’s Distinction

一、阿多诺的区分

As the most important founder of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory, Adorno established its basic objects of critique: the critique of cultural industry and mass culture, as set forth in his co-authored work with Horkheimer, *Dialectic of Enlightenment*, and the negation of previous metaphysical systems with their logic of coercive identity, as articulated in *Negative Dialectics*. These objects of critique, together with Marcuse’s critique of advanced capitalist industrial society, represented by post-WWII American society in the 1960s as established in *One-Dimensional Man*, basically constitute the different facets of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory. Ultimately, all these critiques are built upon the following logic of distinction.

作为法兰克福学派批判理论最重要的奠基者，阿多诺为其确定了基本的批判对象：在他与霍克海默合著的《启蒙辩证法》中确立的对文化工业和大众文化的批判，以及在《否定辩证法》中对具有强制同一性逻辑的以往形而上学体系作出的否定。这些批判对象再加上马尔库塞在《单向度的人》中确立的以二战后60年代美国社会为代表的发达资本主义工业社会批判，基本上构成了法兰克福学派批判理论的不同侧面，而归根结底来说，所有这些批判都建立在如下的区分逻辑之上。

This distinction is first manifested as the distinction between a harmonious, unified Greek natural society and a one-dimensional modern advanced capitalist industrial society. In the overall perspective of the Frankfurt School or Adorno himself, critical theory is first and foremost a social critique — a critique of the ongoing “rationalization” of modern society, as Weber termed it, and a critique of the complete reduction of modern society to a “one-dimensional” society under the domination of purposive rationality, instrumental rationality, and Enlightenment reason. This overall state of modern capitalist society is the basic starting point of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, including Adorno himself. A society completely free of alienation, where humans and nature are harmoniously unified, and a state of substantive individual existence free from the suffering of separation — as Adorno described in *Dialectic of Enlightenment* by borrowing from the ancient Greek myth of the *Odyssey*: “Having undergone several life-threatening dangers, the hero must stand up, thus forging for himself a unity of life and an identity of the individual” — the historical existence of this ideal social picture, and the stark contrast between this picture and the current state of modern capitalist society, where abstract domination governs everything, individuals are completely alienated, and all internal elements are fully reified, allow the modern society criticized by Adorno and others to be completely distinguished. The emergence of this distinction is precisely the internal basis for the systematic unfolding of critique.

这种区分首先表现为和谐统一的希腊式自然社会与单向度的现代发达资本主义工业社会的区分。在法兰克福学派或者阿多诺本人的总体视野中，批判理论首先是一种社会批判，是对现代社会不断实现韦伯所称的“合理化”的批判，是对目的理性、工具理性和启蒙理性宰制下现代社会彻底沦为“单一维度”社会的批判。这种现代资本主义社会的总体现状是法兰克福学派包括阿多诺本人批判理论的基本出发点。一个完全没有被异化的、人与自然和谐统一的社会，一种没有饱受分离之苦的实体性的个体存在状态，就像阿多诺在《启蒙辩证法》中借用古希腊神话《奥德赛》所描述的那样，“经历过若干次的生命危险，英雄都必须挺身过来，这样把自己锤炼出一种生活的统一性和个体的同一性”，这种理想式的社会图景的历史存在，以及这种图景与现代资本主义社会抽象统治一切、个体处于完全异化、一切内在要素的完全物化的现状形成的强烈对比，使得阿多诺等人所批判的现代社会被完全地区分开来，而这种区分的产生也正是批判得以系统展开的内在基础。

Secondly, this distinction is also manifested as the distinction between artistic autonomy and heteronomy, and the resulting hierarchy of artistic forms. The “cultural industry” and “mass culture” of modern capitalist society, which Adorno focuses on critiquing, are the direct embodiment of this distinction. In his view, the direct product of the cultural industry is mass culture, whose typical representative is the mass culture of post-WWII American society. As a thorough “pseudo-culture,” mass culture wraps itself in the ideology of commodity fetishism, shaping culture into standardized, patterned, pseudo-individualized, and deceptive products to directly satisfy the false needs created by consumer society for the masses, thereby causing the broad potential revolutionary groups — the proletariat, which occupies the dominant position in post-war capitalist society — to completely lose their consciousness of struggle and revolution. The dominance of the cultural industry in modern cultural forms corresponds to the complete loss of artistic autonomy. It is precisely through the distinction from autonomous “true art” that the deceptive, abstract, false, and enslaving nature of mass culture is fully exposed.

其次，这一区分还表现为艺术自律与他律的区分及其所带来的艺术形式的高低之分。阿多诺重点展开批判的现代资本主义社会的“文化工业”和“大众文化”是这一区分的直接体现。在他看来，文化工业的直接产物是大众文化，其直接代表是二战后美国社会的大众文化。作为一种彻底的“伪文化”，大众文化包裹着商品拜物教的意识形态，通过把文化塑造为标准化、模式化、伪个性化、欺骗性的产物去直接满足消费社会制造出来的大众的虚假需要，从而使广大的潜在革命群体、在战后资本主义社会占据主体地位的无产阶级彻底丧失斗争意识和革命意识。而文化工业在现代文化形式上的占据主导地位与艺术自主性的完全丧失相对应，正因为与具有自主性的“真艺术”的区分，大众文化的欺骗性、抽象性、虚假性和奴役性才得以充分地暴露出来。

For those with a basic understanding of Kant’s thought, the requirement for artistic autonomy and self-legislation should not be unfamiliar. The category of “autonomy” originates in Kant’s ethical system, referring to the subject establishing universal moral laws for itself through its will without submitting to external authority. Subsequently, this category was brought by Kant into his aesthetic system. In the *Critique of Judgment*, when explaining the particularity of aesthetics, Kant points out that art and aesthetics are purposive without purpose, unrelated to utilitarian, practical, or external ends. In contrast, art produced by the modern cultural industry, possessing commodity attributes, exhibits the attribute of “heteronomy”: it takes purely external things as its criterion, making itself completely subservient to the domination of instrumental rationality, the law of value, and the logic of consumption. As Adorno describes it, “Now, in the most typical products of the cultural industry, the first priority is the pursuit of precisely and thoroughly calculated effectiveness, straightforward and undisguised.” In Adorno’s eyes, “heteronomized” works of art will ultimately become nothing but purely imitative products, because they have lost the principle of “self-negation” of true artworks. At the same time, imitative works of art naturally cannot possess any utopian content or artistic revolutionary power that transcends reality, is critical, or bears the function of aesthetic liberation. It is precisely in the process of completely eradicating the autonomy of art or culture that the cultural industry thoroughly distinguishes its own “heteronomous” logic of dominating art from the autonomous logic of true art, thereby providing Adorno and others with a solid internal foundation for their critique.

如果对康德思想有着基本了解，对艺术的自主性和自律性要求，应该都不会感到陌生。“自律”范畴产生于康德的伦理学体系，指的是主体通过其意志为自己确立道德的普遍法则而不屈从于外部权威的规范；随后，这一范畴被康德带入他的美学体系之中，在《判断力批判》对审美特殊性进行说明时，康德指出艺术与审美是无目的的合目的性，与功利的、实用的、外在的目的无关。与之相对，现代文化工业所生产的具有商品属性的艺术呈现的是“他律”的属性：它以纯粹外在性的事物作为自己的准则，使自己完全臣服于工具理性、价值法则和消费逻辑的支配，就像阿多诺形容的那样，“而现在，在文化工业最典型的产品中，第一要务乃是追求精确而彻头彻尾地计算出来的效力，直截了当，毫不掩饰”。“他律化”的艺术作品，在阿多诺眼中，最终只会成为彻底的模仿性产品，因为它丧失了真正艺术品的“自我否定”原则；同时，模仿性的艺术作品自然也不会具备任何超越现实的、批判性的、承担审美解放功能的乌托邦内涵和艺术革命力量。文化工业也正是在全面铲除艺术或文化自主性的过程中，彻底使自己对艺术进行支配的“他律”逻辑与真正艺术的自律逻辑区别开来，从而使得阿多诺等人在对其展开批判时有了一个内在的坚实基础。

Thirdly, the logic of differentiation is also manifested in Adorno’s study of dialectics and metaphysics, specifically in the differentiation between the coercive identity and totality of dialectics on the one hand, and its negativity and the priority of the object on the other. In *Negative Dialectics*, Adorno explicitly critiques Western traditional philosophy, especially the concept-fetishism inherent in dialectics and the coercive logic of identity directly produced by this concept-fetishism. The principal representative of idealist philosophy characterized by coercive identity is Hegel’s philosophy, which, with its grand system, encompasses all aspects of philosophical cognition, whether these aspects are the whole, the particular, or the mediation between whole and particular. Adorno identifies this mediation as something with content, namely the totality of society; once the social totality, which originally possessed content, is incorporated into the system of identity philosophy, it is naturally formalized and thereby acquires abstract legitimacy. After the social totality acquires abstract legitimacy, all the hidden, coercive laws behind the social phenomena of modern capitalist society also gain legitimacy. For example, the law of commodity exchange is the concrete legitimate social form acquired by the principle of identity. This line of thought actually constitutes Adorno’s logical or metaphysical explanation of a series of issues raised by Max Weber concerning the ongoing “rationalization” of modern capitalist society, as well as issues Adorno himself raised, such as the “culture industry,” “mass culture,” and “the emergence of Auschwitz.” Of course, Weber explained these issues from the perspectives of the Protestant ethic, bureaucracy, and the evolution of social domination, while Adorno also answered questions about the culture industry from the angle of enlightenment reverting to myth and thereby deceiving the masses. We will not elaborate further on this here.

再次，区分的逻辑还体现在阿多诺对于辩证法和形而上学的研究上，具体表现是辩证法的强制同一性、总体性特征与否定性和客体优先性特征的区分。阿多诺在《否定辩证法》一书中明确对西方传统哲学，尤其是辩证法所内含的概念拜物教以及这种概念拜物教所直接产生的强制同一性逻辑作出批判。以强制同一性为主要特征的观念论哲学的最主要代表是黑格尔哲学，它以宏大的体系对哲学认识的一切环节都加以囊括，不管这一环节是整体的、个别的，还是整体与个别的中介。阿多诺把这一中介指认为一种有内容的东西，即社会的总体，而本来具有内容的社会总体在被纳入同一性哲学体系之后，就自然被形式化并因此获得了抽象合法性。在社会总体取得抽象合法性后，所有现代资本主义社会的社会现象背后具有隐匿性、强制性的一切法则也就具有了合法性。比如，商品交换的法则就是同一性原则所获得的具体的合法社会形式。这一思路，实际上构成了阿多诺对马克斯·韦伯所提出的现代资本主义社会不断“合理化”和自己提出的“文化工业”“大众文化”“奥斯维辛的出现”等一系列问题作出的逻辑或形而上层面的说明。当然，对于这些问题韦伯从新教伦理、科层体制、社会支配性权力演进等层面作了说明，阿多诺也从启蒙倒转为神话从而对大众实施欺骗的角度对文化工业等问题作出了回答，这里就不展开过多说明。

To resist the violence of the coercive logic of identity, Adorno emphasizes the negativity of dialectics and the importance of the non-decomposable elements that cannot be accommodated by the dialectical system of concept and identity. In his view, Hegel and his followers’ affirmative understanding of the core principle of the dialectical system, “the negation of the negation,” merely uses contradiction to eliminate contradiction; the consequence of this is only to continuously expand dialectics into a totality, thereby completely eliminating it. In contrast, only by maintaining a negative understanding of the principles of dialectics and constantly emphasizing this negativity can dialectics possess true power, because “the resistance of the other to identity is the very force of dialectics.” The critique of identity is also reflected in Adorno’s emphasis on the “priority of the object” within dialectics. If the emphasis on the negativity of dialectics takes Hegel as its specific target, then the emphasis on the priority of the object directly targets Kant’s epistemological system. In Adorno’s view, Kant’s highly synthetic transcendental epistemological system is an evolutionary system of cognition based on the subject as its foundation and totality; within this system, the object serves only as a medium for the subject’s cognition and as sensory material. Faced with this idealist framework emphasizing the priority of the subject, Adorno launches his rebuttal based on the following logic: (1) Setting aside the process of cognition, the subject is by nature initially an object; “the subject is also an object, this is part of the meaning of subjectivity; but that the object becomes a subject is not part of the meaning of objectivity”; (2) The immediacy of sensory material is not, as traditional epistemology understands it, shaped by the power of the subject; on the contrary, it is a form of resistance by objective things; the actuality of the object is ineliminable; (3) Subjectivity cannot be the ultimate form of cognition; the development of 20th-century natural science, which has broken down subjective a priori categories and intuitions such as space, time, and causality, proves this. The understanding and adherence to the negativity of dialectics and the priority of the object ultimately strictly differentiate Adorno’s understanding of metaphysics from all previous idealist philosophies that emphasized identity and totality.

为了对抗强制同一性逻辑的暴力，阿多诺强调辩证法的否定性以及概念与同一性的辩证体系所不能容纳的不可分解之物的重要性。在他看来，黑格尔及其拥趸对辩证体系的核心原则即“否定之否定”的肯定性理解只是在用矛盾消除矛盾，而这样做的后果只会不断把辩证法扩充成为一个总体从而使其被彻底消除；与之相反，只有对辩证法的原则保持否定性的理解，并不断强调这种否定性，辩证法才能具有真正的力量，因为“他者对同一性的抵制，这才是辩证法的力量所在”。对同一性的批判，还体现在阿多诺对辩证法中“客体优先性”的强调。如果说对辩证法否定性的强调是把黑格尔当作具体的靶子，那么对客体优先性的强调所直接针对的则是康德的认识论体系。在阿多诺看来，在康德那里达到高度综合的先验认识论体系是一个以主体为基础和整体的认识演进体系，在这一体系中客体只充当主体认识的中介和感觉材料。面对这一强调主体优先性的观念论框架，阿多诺基于如下的逻辑展开反驳：（1）抛开认识的环节，主体在天性上一开始是一种客体，“主体也是一种客体，这是主观性的一部分意义；但客体成为主体，却不是客体性的一部分意义”；（2）感觉材料的直接性并不是传统认识论所理解的由主体力量所塑造的，相反，它是客观物抵抗的一种形式，客体的实际性是不可清除的；（3）主观性不可能是认识的终极形式，20世纪自然科学的发展对时空和因果性等主观先验范畴和直觉的破除就证明了这一点。对于辩证法否定性与客体优先性的理解和坚持，最终使阿多诺对形而上学的理解与之前所有强调同一性、总体性的观念论哲学严格地区分开来。

In summary, the differentiation between the “rationalized society” and the “one-dimensional” society on the one hand, and the original harmonious unity and non-alienated society on the other, establishes the overall horizon of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and Adorno himself. The differentiation between the autonomy and heteronomy of art, and the resulting hierarchy of artistic forms, along with the differentiation between the negative understanding and the identity understanding of dialectics, further establish the basis for Adorno’s critique of the culture industry, mass culture, the law of commodity exchange, traditional idealist philosophy, and traditional epistemology. This implies that the social critical theory of Adorno, and indeed the entire Frankfurt School, takes this logic of differentiation as its internal foundation.

概括来说，“合理化社会”“单一维度”社会与原始和谐统一、无异化社会的区分奠定了法兰克福学派和阿多诺本人批判理论的总体视野。艺术自律与他律的区分及其所带来的艺术形式的高低之分，对辩证法的否定性理解和同一性理解的区分，又奠定了阿多诺对文化工业、大众文化、商品交换法则、传统观念论哲学和传统认识论的批判。而这也就意味着，阿多诺乃至整个法兰克福学派的社会批判理论都以这种区分逻辑作为自己的内在基础。

II. Lacan’s Post-Subjective Philosophy

二、拉康的后主体式哲学

As the most important master of psychoanalysis after Freud and Jung, Lacan is also a significant figure in the structuralist current: Dosse listed Lacan as one of the “five sons of structuralism” (the other four being Foucault, Althusser, Lévi-Strauss, and Roland Barthes). [1]1 Perry Anderson, *Considerations on Western Marxism* (London: New Left Books, 1976). Structuralism and post-structuralism, as typical postmodern currents, are characterized by post-subjectivity; this can be seen in the classic propositions of their representatives, such as Foucault’s “death of man” and Althusser’s “history is a process without a subject.” [2]2 The “Red May” events of 1968 refer to a period of widespread civil unrest, including massive student and worker strikes and protests, in France. Structuralist thinkers like Althusser were criticized for their perceived inability to adequately theorize or support this revolutionary upsurge, leading to a crisis and decline in the influence of structuralist Marxism. However, it is noteworthy that Lacan’s confirmation of post-subjective thought differs significantly from other structuralist thinkers: he proceeds from an individual perspective, following both a temporal and a topological line of inquiry to falsify the real existence of the subject. Because the topological line of inquiry involves Lacan’s later, highly complex and difficult theories concerning the Real, which have yet to reach a consensus in domestic and international academia, we will set it aside here and briefly outline the temporal line of inquiry.

拉康作为弗洛伊德和荣格之后最重要的精神分析大师，同样也是结构主义思潮的重要人物：多斯曾把拉康列为结构主义五子之一（另外四位是福柯、阿尔都塞、列维-斯特劳斯和罗兰·巴特）。结构主义和后结构主义作为一种典型的后现代性思潮，后主体性是其主要特征，从其代表人物福柯、阿尔都塞等人的经典命题“人之死”“历史是无主体的过程”就可以看到这一点。但值得注意的是，拉康对后主体性思想的确证与其他结构主义思想家有着显著的不同：他从个体视角出发，按照时间和拓扑学两条线索证伪主体的真实存在。由于拓扑学线索的进路涉及拉康后期颇为复杂难解的实在界的相关理论，中外学界一时难有公论，我们这里且按时间线索对其进行一番简要的梳理。

Although Lacan’s theory is renowned for its complexity, ramification, and obscurity, and is punctuated by startling assertions, if we understand it sequentially in time, we can still basically grasp its overall structure and main themes. In Lacan’s view, the subject is fundamentally a product confirmed within relationships: from the moment an infant recognizes an image of itself in the mirror, to the acquisition of language that continuously constructs its consciousness and unconsciousness, and then to the layers of social relations that continuously capture it into the symbolic order during its growth, the establishment of the subject’s position is always inseparable from the confirmation of the other.

尽管拉康理论以其庞杂枝蔓和晦涩难懂而闻名于世，且时有惊人论断，但如果我们从时间顺序逐一理解，还是可以基本把握其理论的整体结构和主旨的。在拉康看来，主体根本上是一种在关系中得到确证的产物：一个婴儿从它在镜子里辨认出一个关于自我的形象开始，到语言的习得不断建构着他的意识和无意识，再到成长过程中一层层的社会关系不断把他捕捉进象征秩序之中，人的主体地位的确立始终离不开他者的确证。

In Lacan’s view, humans are naturally “premature”; before various bodily functions are fully mature, humans are abruptly thrown into the world, which creates from birth an original sense of “lack” and “frustration.” Subsequently, when the infant grows to between six and eighteen months of age, the first identification process of individual life—the “mirror stage”—begins to take effect. The concept of the “mirror stage” originates from the observation of the French child psychologist and Lacan’s friend, Wallon: a six-month-old infant can recognize its own image in a mirror and becomes fascinated with this image, continuously observing it; while other primates, such as chimpanzees, can also recognize their own image in a mirror, they show no interest in it. Although Wallon had already realized that the infant’s imaginary process regarding the mirror image possesses a creative function for the unity of the subject, there is no doubt that a more profound and creative development of this concept was accomplished by Lacan. Lacan’s most important interpretive text on the theory of the mirror stage is his significant report delivered at the 16th International Psychoanalytic Congress in Zurich, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” (abbreviated as “The Mirror Stage”), later included in various editions of Lacan’s Écrits. Lacan argues that the recognition of one’s own image in the mirror, as the first symbolic scene in the infant’s individual history, produces the first imago of the child’s psyche—the “I”—and further points out: “It is only in the dialectical relationship with the Other that the ‘I’ can be objectified; it is only through the reconstructive function of language that I can universally possess the function of a subject.” The imago of the “I” given to the infant by the mirror exerts a tremendous Gestalt effect on the infant’s bodily formation. The discomfort and uncoordinated movements displayed by the infant in the first few months after birth begin to disappear under the functional effect of the imago of the “I,” and a fragmented body thus becomes whole. This is the infant’s first identification process with itself in temporal order, an identification seduced by the symbolic lure of its own total image, confirmed through the mirror as Other.

在拉康看来，人是一个天然的“早产儿”，在各种身体机能尚未完全成熟的时候，人被猛然地抛入这个世界，这造成了人从出生开始就有一种原初的“匮乏感”和“受挫感”。随后，当婴儿成长到6至18个月大的时候，个体生命的第一个认同过程——“镜像阶段”就开始产生作用了。“镜像阶段”概念来自于法国儿童学家、拉康的朋友瓦隆的观察：六个月大的婴儿就可以在镜子中辨认出自己的形象，并痴迷于这一形象而不断地进行观察；而大猩猩等其他灵长类动物虽然也能辨认出自己在镜子中的形象，却对这一形象毫无兴趣。虽然瓦隆已经意识到婴儿对镜像的想象过程具备了对主体统一性的创造功能，但毫无疑问，对这一概念更为深刻和具有创造性的发挥是在拉康那里完成的。拉康对镜像阶段理论最重要的解释性文本就是他在苏黎世召开的第16届国际精神分析学会所作的重要报告《助成“我”的功能形成的镜像阶段——精神分析经验所揭示的一个阶段》（简称《镜像阶段》），后被收入拉康各个版本的选集之中。拉康认为，对镜子中自己形象的辨认，作为婴儿个体历史中的第一个象征场景，产生了儿童心理的第一个意象——“我”，并进而指出：“只有在与他者的辩证关系中，‘我’才能客体化；只有在语言的重建作用下，我才能普遍地具有主体功能。”镜像给予婴儿的“我”的意象，对于婴儿的躯体成形产生了巨大的格式塔作用。婴儿在出生后最初几个月中表现的不适和行动不协调，在“我”的意象功能作用下开始消失，一个残缺的身体因此变得完整起来。这是婴儿在时间顺序上对自己的第一个认同过程，这一认同受到了对自己整体形象的象征诱惑，通过“镜子”这一他者得到确证。

Although it can be said that “The Mirror Stage,” first published in 1936, represents Lacan’s initial innovation in the field of psychoanalysis, it actually still remains within the identifiable boundaries of established theory and practice. His report delivered at the 17th International Psychoanalytic Congress in 1953, titled “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis” (later renowned as the “Rome Report”), can be regarded as the manifesto of the Lacanian school. From then on, Lacan’s core concern shifted to the linguistic level. According to the psychoanalytic tradition, the subject can only exist within the unconscious; but since the unconscious can only exist in the “scene” elsewhere, the subject can only confirm its own existence through the various scenes located elsewhere where the unconscious is revealed. Freud first discovered this, and at the same time indicated some important scenes where the unconscious is revealed, such as slips of the tongue, dreams, errors in everyday language, and so on. Lacan, utilizing many popular philosophical, linguistic, anthropological, and artistic trends of the 20th century—mainly structuralism, existentialism, Kojeve’s interpretation of Hegel, and the Surrealist movement—completely rewrote psychoanalysis, further pointing out: “The unconscious is structured like a language,” “the subject’s unconscious is the discourse of the Other.” Thus, the dimension of language was added to the traditional psychoanalytic description of the mode of operation of the unconscious.

虽然可以说1936年第一次发表的《镜像阶段》代表着拉康在精神分析领域的首度创新，但它实际上仍然处在既定的理论和实践的可辨识的界限之内。而其在1953年第17届国际精神分析大会上所作的题为《言语与语言在精神分析中的作用和范围》的报告（后以《罗马报告》之名著称于世）则可视为拉康学派的宣言。自此以后，拉康的核心关切则转移到了语言层面。按照精神分析传统，主体只能在无意识之中才能存在，但由于无意识只能在“场景”的彼处存在，因而主体也只能通过处于彼处的显露无意识的各个场景才能确证自己存在。弗洛伊德首先发现了这一点，与此同时还指示了无意识得以显露的一些重要场景，比如口误、梦、日常语言的错误，等等。拉康利用20世纪诸多流行的哲学、语言学、人类学和艺术思潮，主要是结构主义、存在主义、科耶夫所阐释的黑格尔和超现实主义运动对精神分析进行了全面改写，进而指出：“无意识像语言一样被结构”，“主体的无意识即是他人的话语”。传统精神分析对无意识运作模式的描述就这样被加入了语言的维度。

Although the “mirror stage” gives the infant its first experience of identification in the symbolic, the infant at this time is still within the “Imaginary order”; although this stage involves the phenomenon of symbolic identification, its internal cause is directly related to the lure of space and image and narcissism. Language acquisition opens the door to the Symbolic order for the infant; the “Name-of-the-Father” of symbolic meaning breaks the intimate relationship with one of the parents in the Imaginary order under the influence of the “Oedipus complex.” Authority, law, and custom begin to be introduced into its growth process, enabling it to gradually establish its own subject position through adaptation to the confirmation of layered symbolic orders. This identification is a continuous process, which Lacan explains using the structuralist linguistic concept of the “signifying chain”: the reason the Symbolic order can continuously capture the subject is precisely because the signifier gains priority over the signified in the language of everyday life; at the same time, the signifier itself has a lack and vacancy in meaning, causing one signifier to constantly slide towards the next signifier to obtain the elucidation of its own meaning.

“镜像阶段”虽然给予婴儿第一次在象征中认同的体验，但此时的婴儿仍然处在“想象界”之中，虽然这一阶段有了象征认同的现象，但其内在成因却与空间和影像的诱惑以及自恋情结直接相关。语言习得为婴儿打开了象征界的大门，符号意义的“父之名”打破了其在“俄狄浦斯情结”作用下在想象界中与父母双亲一方的亲密关系，权威、法则、习俗开始被导入其成长历程之中，使其在适应层层象征秩序的确证中开始逐渐确立自己的主体身份。这种认同是一个不断持续的过程，拉康利用结构主义语言学的“能指链”概念加以说明：象征秩序之所以可以持续地捕获主体，正是因为能指在日常生活的语言中获得了相对于所指的优先性；与此同时，能指自身又在意义上存在着缺失和空位，导致一个能指只能不断地滑向下一个能指来获得自身意义的阐明。

Lacan calls all orders within the Symbolic order that confirm the subject “the little other” (petit autre), considering it the ruler of the individual. It not only dominates the individual’s daily life, conscious and unconscious activities at this stage, but also what traditional psychological schools, including Freud, regard as the most proper desire is also manifested as the desire of the Other: “Desire is always the desire of the Other.” This judgment by Lacan determines the comprehensive domination of the individual by the little other in the Symbolic order, which directly leads to two consequences: First, the comprehensive establishment of the individual’s subject position. If a person can be captured by more symbolic orders and dominated by more little others, that person is, in secular eyes, more successful and more dazzling. Second, the confirmation of the subject’s identity by the little other directly leads to the comprehensive disappearance of the real and truth in the Symbolic order because they are repressed by layered symbolic orders. The manifestation of the “Real” is only possible in the Real order; the Real order contains an irreducible traumatic kernel, which Lacan later identified as jouissance. On the one hand, this kernel forms a dislocation with the Symbolic order, creating a “parallax” and thus revealing truth (this is an important starting point for Žižek’s later theory); on the other hand, it transforms into an irreducible “big Other” (grand Autre), thereby ensuring the stability of the little other’s rule in the Symbolic order and fundamentally confirming the subject’s “otherness” of existence. It is precisely here that Lacan’s theory exhibits a strong post-subjective character, and this post-subjectivity is accomplished through the scientific falsification of the structuralist method.

拉康把象征界对主体起确认作用的所有秩序都称为“小他者”，认为它是个体的支配者，不仅支配着个体在这一阶段的日常生活、意识和无意识活动，而且被传统心理学流派包括弗洛伊德视为最本己的欲望，也被展现为他者的欲望：“欲望总是他者的欲望。”拉康的这一判定决定了象征界小他者对个体的全面支配，这直接造成了两个后果：一是个体主体地位的全面确立。一个人如果可以被更多的象征秩序所捕获，被更多的小他者所支配，这个人在世俗眼光中也就越成功、越光彩夺目；二是小他者对主体身份的确证直接导致真实和真相因其被层层的象征秩序压抑而在象征界里全面消失。“真实”的展现只有在实在界才是可能的，实在界存在着不可化约的创伤性内核,这一内核后来被拉康指认为原乐。这一内核一方面与象征秩序形成错位构成“视差”从而展现真理（这是后来齐泽克理论的重要出发点），另一方面变身为一个自身不可化约的“大他者”进而确保“小他者”在象征界统治的稳定性并从根本上确证了主体的“他性”存在。正是在这里，拉康理论呈现出极强的后主体性特质，而这种后主体性是通过结构主义方法的科学证伪完成的。

III. The Internal Invalidity of the Logic of Distinction

三、区分逻辑的内在不成立

After the foundational explanation of the respective theoretical logics of Adorno and Lacan, it becomes clear in what sense Lacan’s theory constitutes a refutation of Adorno’s critical theory. That is, the pseudo-subject confirmed by Lacan in the imaginary and symbolic relations with the Other fundamentally negates the internal basis of Adorno’s logic of distinction. It should be pointed out that in the post-Marxist context, many thinkers, in the process of appropriating and splicing various theoretical resources to synthesize their own theoretical creations, have gradually blurred the intellectual boundary between Lacan and Adorno, or between the Frankfurt School and structuralist thought. For example, Žižek psychoanalyzes Adorno’s critique of identity based on real abstraction, understanding it as a “Real” repressed beneath the fantasy of reality. This theoretical synthesis ultimately serves the thinker’s own intellectual creation; Žižek’s psychoanalyzation of Adorno’s “critique of identity” aims to absolutize the moment of “non-identical resistance” in Adorno’s negative dialectics, thereby establishing an absolutely antagonistic relationship between the value form and the subject. This is the core proposition of his own thought, not an objective interpretation of the theories of Adorno and Lacan. Our assertion that Lacan’s theory fundamentally negates the basis of Adorno’s logic of distinction is based on the theoretical cores of the two. Regarding the many divergent viewpoints of their respective school theories, there are certainly possibilities for connection and synthesis, and genuine theoretical creation actually requires such connection and synthesis.

在对阿多诺和拉康各自的理论逻辑展开基础性说明之后，拉康理论在何种意义上对阿多诺的批判理论构成了反驳也就变得清晰起来。那就是，拉康在与他者的想象和象征关系中确证的伪主体从根本上否定了阿多诺区分逻辑的内在基础。需要指出的是，在后马克思主义语境下，许多思想家在挪用、拼接各种理论资源，将之综合为自己的理论创造的过程中，渐渐模糊了拉康与阿多诺或者说法兰克福学派与结构主义思潮之间的思想界限。比如齐泽克就把阿多诺依据现实抽象所展开的同一性批判精神分析化，理解为一种被压抑在现实幻象之下的“真实界”。这种理论的综合最终服务的是理论家自己的思想创造，齐泽克将阿多诺的“同一性批判”精神分析化的目的是将阿多诺否定辩证法中“非同一性抵抗”的环节绝对化，从而确立价值形式与主体之间的绝对对抗性关系，这是他自己思想的核心主张，而并非对阿多诺和拉康理论的客观阐释。我们之所以认定拉康理论从根本上否定了阿多诺的区分逻辑的基础，是依据二者的理论内核来界说的，具体到二者流派理论的许多分叉性的思想观点，当然存在着连接与综合的可能，而真实的理论创造实际上也需要这种连接与综合。

In fact, Adorno’s persistent critique and total negation of the culture industry and mass culture already display a strong arrogance and prejudice, as well as an elitist temperament belonging to the intellectual stratum. This elitist temperament is also closely related to the Frankfurt School’s own fully academicized and institutionalized actual situation. Faced with this pervasive elitism, there has been no lack of criticism in the more than half-century history of the academic reception and critique of critical theory. This criticism adopts the following strategies: First, a relatively direct critique of Adorno’s elitism. For instance, Martin Jay, in his important intellectual history of the Frankfurt School, *The Dialectical Imagination*, pointed out that the fact that almost all the main members of the Frankfurt School came from upper-class bourgeois families created their actual living conditions of directly obtaining wealth and being free from social interference; they could all be described as “sons of the bourgeoisie who were anti-bourgeois,” because such comfortable living conditions inevitably produced loyalty to comparable cultural values and a cultural-aristocratic elitist temperament; the sense of loss, decay, and pessimistic, gloomy tone embodied overall in the works of Frankfurt School members, including Adorno, also originated from this specific social position and self-elitist orientation. Another important member of the Frankfurt School, Benjamin, also identified in his correspondence with Adorno that “Adorno lacks basic empathy for commodities and exchange value.” [1]1 Perry Anderson, *Considerations on Western Marxism* (London: New Left Books, 1976). Second, supplementing Adorno’s and the Frankfurt School’s purely negative understanding of mass culture with other theoretical resources. In this regard, the ideas of Raymond Williams, a cultural materialist in the British Marxist tradition, and Stuart Hall, a representative figure of the “Birmingham School,” are the most frequently utilized theoretical resources. On the one hand, they emphasize the positive role mass culture plays in the formation and subjectivation of the working class; on the other hand, they emphasize that the working class can actively engage in class struggle with the bourgeoisie in the cultural and ideological field to compete for “hegemony.” For example, Hall emphasized the resistant role of “subcultures” popular among British working-class youth against post-war capitalist culture. The third strategy mainly proceeds from the practical impact of the Frankfurt School’s mass culture theory, targeting the “dislocation” that occurs when Adorno et al.’s mass culture theory is introduced into developing countries experiencing rapid economic and social development and gradually enriching material life. In the mid-to-late 1990s, mainland Chinese scholars such as Xu Ben, Tao Dongfeng, and Li Zehou pointed out that mass culture emerging during China’s social transition period played a positive role in dissolving monolithic, authoritarian ideological discourse, promoting political democratization, economic marketization, and cultural diversity; it was progressive and conformed to the trend of history. However, the mass culture theory, based on the highly developed industrial society of Western capitalist countries, actually has a huge dislocation with China’s social reality and cultural production. Faced with this dislocation, we must “re-contextualize” this theory based on our own social reality.

事实上，阿多诺对文化工业和大众文化持之以恒的批判和完全的否定，已经表现出了极强的傲慢与偏见和属于知识阶层的精英气质，这种精英气质也与法兰克福学派自身完全学院化、体制化的现实处境密切相关。面对这种弥散的精英气质，在批判理论半个多世纪的学术接受和批评史中也不乏批判。这种批判有以下几种策略：一是比较直接地批判阿多诺的这种精英主义。比如马丁·杰伊就曾在他研究法兰克福学派的重要思想史著作《辩证的想象》中指出，法兰克福学派主要成员几乎全部出身于资产阶级上等家庭的事实，造成了他们直接获得财富和没有社会干扰的现实生存状况；他们都可以被描述为“反资产阶级的资产阶级之子”，因为在这种舒适的生活条件中一定会产生对可比较文化价值的忠诚和文化贵族般的精英气质；包括阿多诺在内的法兰克福学派成员的著作中整体体现出的失落感、衰败感和悲观沉闷的调子，根源也在于这种特定的社会地位和自我精英化的定位。而法兰克福学派的另一位重要成员本雅明也曾在与阿多诺的通信中指认“阿多诺缺乏对商品和交换价值的基本同理心”。二是以其他的理论资源补充阿多诺及法兰克福学派对于大众文化的单纯否定性理解。在这方面，英国马克思主义传统的文化唯物主义者雷蒙·威廉斯和“伯明翰学派”的代表人物斯图亚特·霍尔等人的思想是最常被利用的理论资源。他们一方面强调大众文化在工人阶级的形成和主体化中起到的积极作用，另一方面强调工人阶级可以在文化和意识形态场域中积极地展开与资产阶级的斗争以争夺“领导权”，比如霍尔就曾强调过英国工人阶级青少年流行的“亚文化”对战后资本主义文化的抵抗作用。第三种策略主要从法兰克福学派大众文化理论的实践影响出发，主要针对的是阿多诺等人的大众文化理论被引入经济社会高速发展、物质生活开始逐渐丰富的发展中国家时产生的“错位”。20世纪90年代中后期中国大陆学者徐贲、陶东风、李泽厚等人就曾指出，中国社会转型期出现的大众文化对于消解一元化、专制化的意识形态话语、推进政治民主化、经济市场化和文化多样性有着积极作用，是进步的、符合历史潮流的，但奠基于西方资本主义社会高度发达的工业社会的大众文化理论与中国的社会现实和文化生产实际上存在着巨大错位，面对这种错位，我们必须基于自己的社会现实对这一理论进行“再语境化”。

However, it must be admitted that although the above several critical strategies towards Adorno’s and the Frankfurt School’s critical theory point out and criticize the elitist tendency of this mass culture critical theory from different aspects, they have not actually refuted it fundamentally. This is because these criticisms do not touch upon the logical foundation of this theory, namely the internal distinction discussed in the first section. [2]2 The “Red May” events of 1968 refer to a period of widespread civil unrest, including massive student and worker strikes and protests, in France. Structuralist thinkers like Althusser were criticized for their perceived inability to adequately theorize or support this revolutionary upsurge, leading to a crisis and decline in the influence of structuralist Marxism. Therefore, we can say that if this internal logic of distinction is not criticized, then all criticisms of Adorno’s critical theory will only remain at the level of value. As long as Adorno et al. continue to insist on the value of things distinguished from the objects of their theory’s critique, then all the aforementioned criticisms will fundamentally fail, at most providing space for supplementary discussion and multi-perspective thinking.

然而，不得不承认的是，以上几种对阿多诺和法兰克福学派批判理论的批判策略，虽然从不同方面指出和批评了这种大众文化批判理论的精英主义倾向，但实际上都并没有在根本上对其构成反驳，这是因为这些批评都没有触及这一理论的逻辑基础，即第一节论述的内在区分。因此我们可以说，如果不对这种内在的区分逻辑展开批判，那么所有对阿多诺批判理论的批判都只会停留在价值层面，而只要阿多诺等人继续坚持与自己理论的批判对象有区分的事物的价值，那么所有上述批判都会在根本上失效，最多只能提供补充讨论的空间和多角度的思考。

Different from the above critical strategies, structuralism, especially the supplementation of Lacanian theory, provides us with the possibility of fundamentally dismantling this internal logic of distinction. This is because all distinctions essentially occur within what Lacan defines as the “Symbolic Order”: between so-called mass culture and high culture, popular music and classical music, autonomous art and heteronomous art, identity dialectics and negative dialectics, there is only a difference in the positional potential of the symbolic order, not an essential difference. Therefore, the distinctions Adorno et al. make between them are fundamentally untenable. At the same time, with reference to Lacanian theory, all things expressed in the form of culture and consciousness—whether highbrow, niche, autonomous, tasteful, or mass, heteronomous, kitsch, popular—are essentially signifying symbols in the form of the *petit autre* [3]3 *Petit autre* (French, “small other”) is a key Lacanian concept referring to the other as a reflection and counterpart of the ego, distinct from the big Other (the symbolic order itself). that dominate the subject within the Symbolic Order. What they ultimately confirm is the subject’s state of existence in the sense of the Other; they are all false. Therefore, neither side can embody the subject’s autonomy, nor are they so-called alienation or degradation. There is only comedy, as Zizek, deeply influenced by Lacan, stipulates and demonstrates: “The comedic space is the space between the noble, dignified symbolic mask and the absurd vulgarity of ordinary life.” “The truly comedic step is not only to tear down the noble mask (or mission or sublime passion) through the intrusion of everyday reality, but also to implement a certain structural short-circuit or simply swap the positions of the two.” Zizek gives an example: a leader walks into a hall to preside over a formal meeting, but steps on a banana peel and falls heavily to the ground. This creates a comedic effect. But the true comedy lies in the fact that after falling, he still maintains his dignity and continues forward. In such a joke, the noble mask is completely torn apart by the intrusion of everyday life, manifesting only as a pitiful quirk and a thoroughly human weakness.

与上述批判策略不同，结构主义尤其是拉康理论的补充为我们提供了从根本上瓦解这种内在的区分逻辑的可能，因为所有的区分本质上都发生在拉康所界定的“象征界”之内：所谓大众文化和高雅文化、流行音乐和古典音乐、自律艺术和他律艺术、同一性辩证法和否定的辩证法之间只存在着象征秩序的位势之差而没有本质的区别，因此阿多诺等人在它们之间所作的区分在根本上是不成立的。同时，在拉康理论的参照下，所有以文化和意识形式表达的事物，不管是高雅的、小众的、自律的、有品位的，还是大众的、他律的、媚俗的、流行的，本质上都是一种以小他者形态在象征界支配主体的能指性符号，它们最终所确证的都是主体在他者意义上的存在状态，都是虚假的，所以两者的任何一方都无法体现主体的自主性，也不是什么所谓的异化和沉沦，有的只是喜剧，正如深受拉康影响的齐泽克所规定和展示的：“喜剧性空间是介于高贵庄严的符号面具和平庸生活的荒唐粗鄙之间的空间”，“真正的喜剧性步骤不仅要通过日常现实的入侵来撕破高贵的面具（或使命或崇高的激情），而且要实施某种结构性短路或干脆使二者互换位置”。齐泽克曾举例说，一个领袖走进会堂，要去主持正式会议，却踩在香蕉皮上，重重摔在地上，这时会产生喜剧效果；但真正的喜剧性在于，摔倒之后，他依然要维持自己的高贵，继续前行。在这样的一个笑话中，高贵的面具彻底被日常生活的入侵撕碎，只显现为可怜的怪癖和十足的人性弱点。

Lacan’s internal distinction of Adorno, at the level of theoretical logic, through critique and negation, completely dissolves the elitist temperament and the occasionally revealed self-righteous and arrogant attitude of Adorno and the entire Frankfurt School. This is, in essence, a comprehensive liquidation of the Frankfurt School’s humanist logic by the scientism of the structuralist movement: all the internal distinctions on which the Frankfurt School’s sharp critique of mass culture and the culture industry are based are fundamentally untenable. Of course, there is a certain degree of controversy within academia as to whether the Frankfurt School adhered to a humanist logic. Professor Zhang Yibing once regarded the total critique of industrial civilization and instrumental rationality in Adorno’s *Negative Dialectics* as a post-humanist discourse that transcends humanism, defining it as a rupture point between Western Marxism, postmodern Marxism, and post-Marxist thought. However, considering the rationalist tendency exhibited by the Frankfurt School as a whole and its exploration of how people can regain freedom and liberation under the logic of late capitalism, it is reasonable to judge it as a school of thought based on humanist logic. Humanist discourse cannot be defined by single criteria such as adherence to industrial civilization or the logic of production. From this perspective, structuralism, through the dismantling and subversion of discourse systems such as “logocentrism,” “foundationalism,” and “essentialism,” and by forming a new discourse system based on entirely new epistemological methods (whose main intellectual sources derive from Canguilhem, Bachelard, and others), truly opens an intellectual distance from traditional humanist discourse. This can also serve as another intellectual basis for distinguishing the Frankfurt School from structuralism. The immense theoretical power of this rebuttal and critique can be clearly seen in Althusser’s systematic reconstruction of his own theory of ideology in his later years. After recognizing the important role of ideology in maintaining the reproduction of labor power and the relations of production, and after accepting the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Lacan, Althusser explicitly defined the subject as the product of ideological “interpellation”: “all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning of the category of the subject.” [1]1 Perry Anderson, *Considerations on Western Marxism* (London: New Left Books, 1976). That is to say, everything expressed in cultural forms is essentially integrated by the bourgeois ideological state apparatuses and, through the individual’s recognition/misrecognition, functions to transform concrete individuals into subjects of capitalist society. Very clearly, what Althusser presents to us through a clear functionalist explanatory path is, in essence, exactly the same as what we see from Lacanian theory.

拉康对阿多诺的内在区分在理论逻辑层面的批判和否定，彻底消解掉了阿多诺和整个法兰克福学派的精英主义气质和不时显露的自以为是和傲慢的态度，这在本质上是结构主义运动的科学主义对法兰克福学派的人本主义逻辑的一次全面清算：所有法兰克福学派对大众文化和文化工业进行尖锐批判所依据的内在区分在根本上都是不成立的。当然，对于法兰克福学派是否坚持人本主义的逻辑，学界存在着一定程度上的争议，张一兵教授就曾把阿多诺的《否定辩证法》中对工业文明和工具理性的总体性批判视为超越人本主义的后人学话语，而将之界定为西方马克思主义和后现代马克思主义以及后马克思思潮的断裂点。但就法兰克福学派整体表现出的理性主义倾向、对人在晚期资本主义逻辑下重新获得自由与解放的探讨来看，它被判定为一种以人本主义逻辑为基础的思想流派是合理的。人本主义话语不能为对工业文明、生产逻辑的坚持与否这些单一标准所界定。从这一点上看，结构主义通过对“逻各斯中心主义”“基础主义”“本质主义”等话语体系的瓦解与颠覆，依据全新的科学认识论方法（主要的思想来源产生于康吉莱姆、巴什拉等人）形成的全新话语体系，才真正地与传统的人本主义话语拉开了思想间距，而这也可以作为区分法兰克福学派和结构主义的又一思想依据。这一反驳和批判的巨大理论力量可以在晚年阿尔都塞对自己意识形态理论的系统性重构中清楚地看到。在意识到意识形态在维系劳动力和生产方式再生产中的重要作用，并接受弗洛伊德和拉康的精神分析理论之后，阿尔都塞明确地将主体界定为意识形态“询唤/唤问”的产物：“所有的意识形态都通过主体这个范畴发挥的功能，把具体的个人唤问为具体的主体。”也就是说，所有以文化形式表达的事物，本质上都被资产阶级意识形态国家机器所整合，并通过个体的承认/误认来发挥把具体的个人改造为资本主义社会的主体的功能。非常明显，阿尔都塞以清晰的功能主义解释路径为我们呈现的东西与我们从拉康理论中所看到的东西在本质上是完全一样的。

Having discussed how the intervention of Lacanian theory renders the internal logic of distinction in Adorno’s cultural critique untenable, we must also make the following two supplementary clarifications: First, this does not mean that structuralism, or Lacanian theory, unilaterally critiques and corrects the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. The relationship between the two is reciprocal. Lacanian and structuralist theory, when viewed in light of the Frankfurt School, also reveals many important problems. For example, structuralism’s comprehensive dismantling of the logic of subjectivity and its total negation of humanist logic cause it to lose its inherent dynamic factors. Consequently, it rapidly degenerated from a vanguard theory characterized by scientificity, revolution, and rupture in the 1960s into a conservative theory that maintained the existing order and structure, making extremely erroneous political judgments during the Red May events of 1968, which led to the rapid dissolution of its own theory. [2]2 The “Red May” events of 1968 refer to a period of widespread civil unrest, including massive student and worker strikes and protests, in France. Structuralist thinkers like Althusser were criticized for their perceived inability to adequately theorize or support this revolutionary upsurge, leading to a crisis and decline in the influence of structuralist Marxism. Furthermore, if we use Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to examine our daily lives, the symbolic domination of the Other might be real in a certain sense. That is, the bourgeois logic of enlightenment and the “authentic,” “non-alienated” life posited by existentialist philosophy are, in essence, an imaginary Other’s fantasy. However, can the true “Real” only be glimpsed, according to Lacan, in the contingent rupture of symbolic relations, in the traumatic encounter of the subject with the structural parallax (constituted by the disjunction of the Symbolic and the Real)? We can imagine that, in Lacan’s view, a pair of lovers in the throes of passion, no matter how intense their emotions, are symbolic and false. The true expression of their relationship would only appear in the parallax of love and betrayal by one of the parties, which would obviously cause permanent, almost incurable trauma to the other party who is still in the love relationship and witnesses this parallax. The problem is not only that this encounter is painful, terrifying, and even unbearable for the subject, but also that, if so, does a real love relationship exist, and how does it exist? Second, although structuralism and the Frankfurt School oppose each other, they still share certain theoretical premises. It is precisely these shared theoretical premises that constitute the theoretical space and foundation for our discussion and comparison of the two. Both take the speculative structure of identity and grand totalizing narratives, along with individualism, relativism, and the increasingly popular positivist trend of thought dominated by instrumental rationality, as their objects of critique. In this process of critique, they develop similar dialectical or speculative characteristics: the dialectical-imaginative style of Adorno’s philosophical writing stems both from a strong aversion to the opposing positivist trend of thought and from the inherent demands of the matter itself: while fiercely criticizing identity and totality, he explicitly identifies relativism and individuality as merely ideological expressions of bourgeois individualism, completing a break with traditional idealism in a speculative rather than empirical or naive experiential manner—that is, using concepts to transcend concepts. Similarly, Lacan holds a clearly rejective attitude toward positivism. Even within the more philosophically oriented school of psychoanalysis, the speculative character of Lacan’s thought is very prominent; and it is precisely because of this character that Lacan, when faced with empirical observations of almost the same level as those encountered by other contemporaneous, more positivist-oriented psychological schools such as ego psychology and comparative psychology, was able to develop his own completely heterogeneous theoretical achievements.

在讨论了拉康理论的介入使阿多诺文化批判理论的内在区分逻辑不再成立之后，我们还必须作出如下两点补充性说明：首先，这并不意味着结构主义或者说拉康的理论单方面地对法兰克福学派的批判理论有批判和纠正的作用。二者的关系是相互的，法兰克福学派参照下的拉康和结构主义理论同样也会暴露出许多重要的问题，比如结构主义对于主体性逻辑的全面瓦解、对人本主义逻辑的全面否定，会使其丧失内在的能动因素，进而使其从一种以科学性、革命性、断裂性为特征的先锋理论在20世纪60年代迅速蜕变为一种对现存秩序和结构持维护态度的保守理论，并在1968年红色五月风暴中作出了极为错误的政治判断，导致了自己理论的迅速解体。进一步说，如果我们用拉康的精神分析理论对我们的日常生活进行透视，那种他者的象征性支配作用在某种意义上可能是真实存在的，即布尔乔亚的启蒙逻辑和存在主义哲学所谓的“本真的”“非异化”的生活在本质上就是一个想象性的他者幻境，然而真正的“真实”是否只能按照拉康的观点在象征关系的偶然断裂中，在主体与（由象征界和实在界的错位而构成的）结构性视差的创伤性遭遇中得以瞥见呢？我们可以设想，在拉康眼中，一对处于热恋之中的爱侣，无论他们的情感多么浓烈，都是象征性的和虚假的，他们的关系的真实表达只会在双方中的一方的爱与背叛的视差中呈现出来，而这显然会对仍处于爱的关系中并目睹了这一视差的另一方造成永久的、几乎不可治愈的创伤。问题不仅在于这种遭遇是疼痛的、可怖的，甚至是主体所不可承受的，而且还在于，如此一来真实的恋爱关系还存在吗，究竟如何存在？其次，结构主义和法兰克福学派虽然相互反对，但还是共享了某些理论前提，而正是这些共享的理论前提构成了我们讨论和比较二者的理论空间和基础。他们都把同一性的思辨结构和宏大的总体性叙事与个人主义、相对主义和日益流行的、被工具理性支配的实证主义思潮作为自己的批判对象，并在这一批判过程中形成了类似的辩证或思辨特质：阿多诺哲学写作的辩证想象风格既出于对与之相对的实证主义思潮的强烈反感，也出于事情本身的内在要求：在激烈批判同一性和总体性的同时明确指认相对主义和个体性只是资产阶级个人主义的意识形态表达，以思辨而非实证或朴素经验论的方式去完成与传统观念论的决裂，也就是说，用概念来完成对概念的超越。同样，拉康也对实证主义持较为明确的拒斥态度，即使在哲学性较强的精神分析学派内部，拉康思想的思辨特质也十分突出；而正是因为这一特质，拉康才在同时代的其他实证主义色彩较强的心理学流派如自我心理学、比较心理学所同样面对的几乎相同水平的经验观察时，发展出了自己完全异质性的理论成果。

IV. Brief Reflections

四、简要的思考

The globalization process dominated by capital and the modern technological revolution centered on information and optoelectronic technology have caused the entire capitalist society to develop at an “accelerated” pace. Theories today easily become “outdated.” The Frankfurt School and Adorno, introduced during the background of ideological enlightenment and the “culture fever” of the 1980s, as well as structuralism and Lacanian theory, which began to be widely discussed in the 1990s, naturally appear somewhat old and outdated. However, when the clamor subsides, time also gives us the opportunity to settle, absorb, and re-examine and reposition them within the process of historical development. Having previously explained the respective internal logics of the two theories and then discussed the possibility of their mutual critique and supplementation, we believe there are four further related issues worthy of consideration.

资本主导的全球化进程和以信息光电技术为核心的现代技术革命使得整个资本主义社会都在“加速”发展，理论在今天变得极易“过时”，在20世纪80年代思想启蒙背景和“文化热”之中被引进的法兰克福学派和阿多诺，以及在20世纪90年代开始被广泛讨论的结构主义和拉康理论，当然显得有些老旧和过时；但当喧嚣过后，时间也给了我们沉淀、吸收并在历史发展进程之中重新审视、定位它们的机会，在前面对两种理论各自的内在逻辑进行了说明，进而讨论其互相批判和补充的可能性之后，我们认为还有以下四个相关问题值得进一步思考。

First, refuting the internal theoretical logic of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory does not mean negating the practical role of critical theory. Especially today, as developing countries and Third World countries represented by China experience rapid economic and social development and an actual improvement in people’s living standards, various symptoms directly targeted by critical theory in its time have already emerged at the cultural and ideological level: the abundance of material life begins to form a comprehensive contrast with the impoverishment of the spiritual world, the expansion of material desires and the atrophy of perception; cultural forms become fully popularized, commercialized, and vulgarized; capital manipulates the media to exert comprehensive control over the cultural life of the masses. The cultural reality of social development and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School no longer exhibit the disjuncture discussed in the 1990s. Therefore, the critical theory of the Frankfurt School can become an important resource for us to directly utilize and will produce a certain positive effect. That is to say, we cannot blindly use structuralist theory to negate this practical role, but the beneficial supplement of structuralist theory can dissolve the sense of elitism and arrogance that arises when applying critical theory, making it more readily accepted by cultural workers and the masses.

一是对法兰克福学派批判理论内在理论逻辑的反驳并不意味着取消批判理论的实践作用。尤其是在今天以中国为代表的发展中国家和第三世界国家随着经济社会的高速发展和人民实际生活水平的提高，已经在文化和意识形态层面出现了当年批判理论所直接针对的种种症状：物质生活的富足开始与精神世界的贫瘠、物欲的膨胀和感受的萎缩形成全面对比，文化形式全面流行化、商业化、媚俗化，资本操纵媒介对大众的文化生活形成全面控制。社会发展的文化现实与法兰克福学派的批判理论已经不再存在20世纪90年代所讨论的错位，因此法兰克福学派的批判理论可以成为我们直接利用的重要资源，并会产生一定的积极作用。也就是说，我们不能盲目使用结构主义理论对这种实践作用加以否定，但是结构主义理论的有益补充可以消解批判理论应用时产生的居高临下的精英感和傲慢感，使其更好地被文化工作者和大众所接受。

Second, in any discussion of structuralism and the Frankfurt School, one must have insight into their ideological essence, must examine them holistically by integrating the positions, viewpoints, and methods of Marxism, and must take classical Marxist theory as a reference. In this sense, in fact, both have deviated from Marx, and have gone quite far: as a kind of cultural and ideological theory, they themselves have detached from the core spirit of Marxism, which, under the guidance of the methodological principle of historical materialism, conducts a scientific political-economic analysis of concrete social reality, combines this scientific theory with practice, effectively organizes positive revolutionary action, and shapes the revolutionary subject in this action. Ideological critique is an important component of Marxism, but when it exists independently without this core spirit as its foundation, its tragic fate of being co-opted by the totalizing power of capitalism becomes inevitable; this so-called critique then becomes a mere posture, possessing only symbolic force and sign value. It is worth noting that this is not a problem unique to structuralism and the Frankfurt School, but a common deficiency among most thinkers in the Western Marxist tradition. On this issue, Anderson’s overall assessment of Western Marxism hits the nail on the head: “Western Marxism deliberately remains silent on the core issues of the classical tradition of historical materialism: such as the detailed study of the economic laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production, the serious analysis of the political machinery of the bourgeois state, and the strategy of class struggle necessary to overthrow this state machinery.” [1]1 Perry Anderson, *Considerations on Western Marxism* (London: New Left Books, 1976).

二是在对结构主义和法兰克福学派的讨论中，一定要对它们的意识形态本质有所洞察，一定要结合马克思主义的立场、观点和方法加以整体性的考察，并以经典马克思主义的理论为参照。从这个意义上说，实际上两者都背离了马克思，而且走得很远：它们作为一种文化和意识形态理论，本身就脱离了马克思主义在唯物史观方法论原则指导下对具体社会现实展开科学的政治经济学分析，并将这种科学理论与实践相结合、有效组织积极的革命行动并在这一行动中塑造革命主体的核心精神。意识形态批判是马克思主义的重要组成部分，但当它没有这一核心精神作基础而单独存在时，它被资本主义的总体性力量所收编的悲剧命运就不可避免，这种所谓的批判也会变成一种姿态，只具有象征力量和符号价值。值得注意的是，这并不是在结构主义和法兰克福学派身上单独存在的问题，而是西方马克思主义流派中大部分思想家所普遍存在的一个缺陷。对于这一问题，安德森对西方马克思主义的一个整体性评论可谓一针见血：“西方马克思主义故意闭口不谈那些历史唯物主义经典传统最核心的问题：如详尽研究资本主义生产方式的经济运动规律，认真分析资产阶级国家的政治机器以及推翻这种国家机器所必需的阶级斗争战略。”

Third, theory must definitely be discussed and developed on the basis of changed actual conditions, social life, and ideological concepts. Although the Frankfurt School, represented by Adorno, by emphasizing philosophy’s negativity, non-identity, the priority of the object, non-totality, and non-continuous homogeneity, fiercely criticized the idealist systems represented by Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger—a practice that conformed to the capitalist social reality of the time and the development trend of modern Western philosophy in the 20th century—and although by emphasizing the self-discipline, elitism, trauma, and critical essence of artistic form, it opposed the popularization, vulgarization, numbing, and non-critical identical characteristics of popular culture—a practice that conformed to the actual situation of the time when the cultural and ideological fields of capitalist society were dominated by a culture industry supported by instrumental rationality and technical rationality, leading to the comprehensive reification of the aesthetic realm and spiritual life of the masses—nevertheless, with the development of the times and the constant changes in actual social conditions, people’s philosophical concepts, philosophical understanding, and cultural life have all undergone tremendous changes: In terms of philosophy, along with contemporary Western philosophy’s shift from rebellion against Hegel to a return to him, people have gradually realized that Hegel’s entire philosophical system is one where deconstruction and construction proceed simultaneously; deconstruction and negation are indispensable links for spirit to realize itself; Hegel’s philosophy is a system and a totality, but it also contains the power to subvert this system and totality. In terms of culture, with the rapid popularization of the mobile internet and empowered by network technology, social networks and converged media have become the main carriers of cultural and spiritual products in the current era; the main venues for cultural and spiritual consumption, and even the entire cultural industry system, have consequently undergone structural changes. Facing this change, although the rule and penetration of commercial capital in the cultural field still exist, new cultural forces characterized by subcultures and shared mutual-aid communities, opposing mainstream commercial popular culture and vulgar art, have already assembled in the cyberspace of the network and have constructed a subtle resistant force that contends with the culture produced by commercial capital, achieving a certain degree of resistance to and dissolution of this culture. In short, all of the above new situations and changes provide a new basis and space for us to discuss and develop the critical theory of the Frankfurt School (and also structuralism) today.

三是一定要在变化了的现实条件、社会生活和思想观念的基础上对理论进行讨论和发展。尽管以阿多诺为代表的法兰克福学派通过强调哲学的否定性、非同一性、客体优先性、非总体性、非连续均质性对以康德、黑格尔和海德格尔为代表的观念论体系大加鞭笞的做法符合当时的资本主义社会现实和整个现代西方哲学在20世纪的发展潮流，通过强调艺术形式的自律感、精英感、创伤感、批判性本质反对流行文化的大众化、庸俗化、麻木化和非批判的同一性特征符合当时资本主义社会文化和意识形态领域被以工具理性、技术理性为支撑的文化工业支配、导致大众社会生活的审美领域和精神生活被全面物化的现实境况。但是随着时代的发展和社会现实条件的不断变化，人们的哲学观念、哲学理解以及文化生活都发生了巨大变化：在哲学方面，伴随着当代西方哲学对黑格尔的态度由叛逆转向回归，人们逐渐意识到黑格尔的整个哲学体系是一个解构与建构同时进行的体系，解构和否定是精神实现自身必不可少的环节，黑格尔的哲学是一个体系和总体但同时也蕴含着颠覆这一体系和总体的力量；在文化方面，随着移动互联网的快速普及，在网络技术的赋能下，社交网络和融媒体成为当今时代文化和精神产品的主要载体，文化和精神消费的主要场所甚至整个文化工业体系也因此发生了结构性的改变。而面对这一变化，商业资本对文化领域的统治与渗透虽然存在，但以亚文化和共享互助社区为特征的、反对主流商业流行文化和通俗艺术的新兴文化力量已经在网络赛博空间集结而成，并构筑起了与商业资本所制造的文化相博弈的、微妙的抵抗性力量，也达到了对这一文化一定程度上的抵抗与消解。总之，以上种种新的形势和变化，为我们今天讨论和发展法兰克福学派的批判理论（也包括结构主义）提供了新的基础和空间。

Fourth, through the large-scale importation of Western theories over the past few decades, combined with the keen observations and independent thinking of a group of outstanding theoretical workers in Third World countries facing the actual changes and problems occurring in their own countries, nations, and societies, we have in fact already produced a large number of outstanding theorists with a Marxist stance, embodying a more distinct and uncompromising Marxist position and a fervent fighting spirit. This is because behind them lies not only the nourishment of Western theory, but also the valuable practical resources provided by the drastic social transformations that have taken place in 20th-century East Asian societies and the entire Third World (a point that Euro-American left-wing intellectuals lack), as well as their adherence to socialist convictions and their firm belief in communism. Therefore, many of their theoretical reflections and propositions are often more authentic and more powerful.

四是通过西方理论在过去几十年的大规模输入，再结合第三世界国家一批优秀的理论工作者面对自己国家、民族、社会实际发生的变化和产生的问题所作出的敏锐观察和独立思考，我们实际上已经产生了大批出色的具有马克思主义立场的理论家，体现了更为鲜明和不妥协的马克思主义立场和激昂的战斗精神。这是由于在他们背后既有西方理论的滋养，也有20世纪东亚社会和整个第三世界发生的剧烈社会转型所提供的宝贵的实践资源（这一点是欧美左翼知识分子所不具备的），同时还有他们对社会主义信念的坚持和对共产主义的坚定信仰，因此他们的许多理论思考和主张往往更为真实，也更有力量。

Taken together, facing these rich theoretical legacies left by China, developed Euro-American countries, and Third World countries, as well as our already changed social reality and ongoing social practice, how to clarify our own theoretical logic on this basis, define their practical functions and impacts, and enable the journey of Western theories in the Eastern lands to truly bear original academic fruits—this is an important epochal task placed before the broad masses of theoretical workers.

综合而言，面对这些来自中国、欧美发达国家和第三世界国家留下的丰厚理论遗产，以及我们已经变化了的社会现实和正在进行的社会实践，如何在此基础上厘清我们自己的理论逻辑，明确它们的实践功能和影响，让西方理论在东方大地上的旅行真正结出原创性的学术硕果，是摆在广大理论工作者面前的重要的时代课题。

Online Editor: Tongxin

网络编辑：同心