“The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Re-Reading 'Dialectic of Enlightenment'." New German Critique 26 (1982): 13-30.

“The dark writers of the bourgeoisie – such as Machiavelli, Hobbes and Mandeville – had always appealed to Horkheimer, who was himself influenced by Schopenhauer. Clearly, from their works there still remained ties to Marx’s social theory. These connections were broken by the really nihilistic dark writers of the bourgeoisie, foremost among them the Marquis de Sade and Nietzsche. It is to them that Horkheimer and Adorno turn in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, their blackest,most nihilistic book, in order to conceptualize the self-destructive process of Enlightenment. Although they no longer placed hope on its liberating power, inspired by Benjamin’s ironic “hope of those without hope,” they nonetheless refused to abandon the now paradoxical labor of analysis. We no longer share this attitude. However, under the sign of a Nietzsche restored by some post-structuralist writer such as Derrida and the recent Foucault, attitudes are being disseminated today which appear as the spitting image of those of Horkheimer and Adorno in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. It is the confusion of the two attitudes that I want to prevent.”

Online:
JSTOR