Alexander Garcia Diittmann is Professor of Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University. Arline Lyons, the translator of this volume, holds an MA in Continental Philosophy from the University of Warwick and a BA in Philosophy from Trinity College, Dublin. In Negative Dialectics , Adorno says that language is more than a system of signs at the disposal of cognitive functions. Darstellung is language as constellation or configuration. It is in no way the representation of a sublating movement which reaches a result.
Language designates here the non-negative other of speculation.
In other words, there is no immediate relation to the name for knowledge. The name appears only in a constellation of concepts. Thus, the constellation, language as constellation, is necessary. Thought is unable to name except by placing itself in a constellation, by traveling the path chat separates it from the name. This path is the path of Darstellung .