Gretel Adorno, the Typewriter: Sacrificial Lambs and Critical Theory’s ‘Risk of Formulation’

ABSTRACT The extensive ‘secretarial’ labour that Gretel Karplus Adorno performed for the Frankfurt School is often overlooked in critical accounts. This article examines the Adornos' division of textual labour, and Karplus' ‘vulture-like’ stenography, distinguishing it from the dominant modernist views of secretarial labour, such as T. S. Eliot's automaton typist, and Henry James's typist-as-medium. The Adornos' stenographical method hinges upon a dialectical division of labour, which can be read through Theodor Adorno's aphorism ‘Sacrificial Lamb’. Adorno's writer elides the ‘risk of formulation’ necessary to commit to unformed ideas, by engaging his ‘troublesome helper’ typist in a dialectical struggle over textual authority. Whilst the dictator dominates his aide, the text still bears the imprint of its invisible contributor. Indeed, as Karplus shoulders Adorno's own divested ‘risk of formulation’ after they wed in 1937, he develops his critique of the capitalist mode of production, which lures women to the workforce under the promise of emancipation, and instead exploits and devalorizes their mental and physical labour. Simultaneously, Adorno cultivates a philosophical style that supports his modernist aesthetics, characterised by fragmentation, parataxis, and verbal improvisation, abetted by Karplus and their mutual investment in the risks of writing.