Abstract

Two critical yet comic elements, beyond the more obvious narrative of persecution, reveal themselves in Adorno's recorded nightmare. The first is comic because it so aptly displays his relentless critical impulse despite himself, the way in which theory invades the private sphere of his dreams: even in sleep, Adorno finds himself at once reading phenomena and on guard against a false transcendence from which they could, in the last instance, be deciphered.¹ The second is more patently absurd, yet perhaps more difficult to assess: that he should gain permission to interrupt an unspeakably cruel and final punishment, an essentially hopeless…