Instrumental Reason and the War on Intervals

Abstract

The noise of the medium is not only an aesthetic or informational problem. In the Frankfurt School, the desire for immediacy, and the drive to eliminate medial noise is a central feature of instrumental reason, and is recognized as the basic cell of the highly rationalized and totally administered society of advanced capitalism. Developing on the ideas of Max Weber and Georg Lukacs, Max Horkheimer, Theodore Adorno and colleagues identified a new kind of reason that is marked by an excessive concern with means. The instrumental reason that we find in capitalism, bureaucracy and technocratic thought suspends discussion of ends and values to devote itself more fully to the perfection of procedures and means. Professors, for example, talk less about ideas and more about the media — grants, computers, conferences — for delivering them. Filmmakers talk about ‘the industry’ more than the composition of images. In a world of instrumental reason, everything becomes ‘a means to its own consumption’, as Fredric Jameson nicely summarizes it.¹ This kind of reason is not tied to any single sphere of activity. It defines our relation to nature, to others and even to our image of mind and reason. For Horkheimer and Adorno, it is responsible for nothing less than the decline of the individual, the rise of fascism, technological rationality, the authoritarian personality and the totally administered society.