The dialectics just mentioned are all dialectics of identity and non-identity that operate in the constitution, reproduction, and transformation of knowledge. Each one of the poles of the dialectics exists only in itself as identity by relating to and grasping over into its other: the one is identical and non-identical with the other. Each one can only be itself by standing in a relation to an other. But the other is not just non-identical with the one because it is itself also a one that is an other for another one and therefore identical with itself and the other.
In modern society, there is a dialectic of general social structures and structures of accumulation. In all class-based societies, we find conflicts of interests that are expressed in general social conflicts that include conflicts between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic knowledge. There is a general conflict between ideological/dominative knowledge and emancipatory knowledge. Often dominant actors have structural advantages in the definition of social knowledge. In class-based societies, it tends to be much harder to difuse critical, emancipatory knowledge throughout society than ideological, dominative knowledge.
It is more likely that dominant classes and groups have ideological knowledge than emancipatory knowledge. There is however no mapping of class position onto forms of knowledge. Marx and Engels themselves came from bourgeois families, but created critical knowledge. There is also no guarantee that being part of a dominated group results in non-ideological knowledge, as the phenomenon of racism among a specific share of the traditional working class shows. Adorno, in his works, doesn’t just foreground the power of ideologies, he also stresses the importance that one can learn from Hegel’s antipositivist, dialectical language and thought how to criticise, deconstruct, and struggle against ideologies.
Adorno’s works give us hope that instrumental knowledge that expresses partial interests is not the final word and can be changed by critique, which is the very process of the dialectic and dialectical knowledge. ‘Critique of society is critique of knowledge, and vice versa’ (Adorno 1998, 250).
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Critical Theory of Communication