This thesis engages in analysis and interpretation of certain ideas within the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno. These analyses are placed into a constellational relationship with some filmic works of Andrei Tarkovsky and Michael Haneke. In doing so, I aim to highlight the ongoing relevance and validity of at least some core elements of Adornian theory in a contemporary context. The thesis consists of four substantive chapters. The first chapter functions as an extended introduction to and justification for the (...) thesis as a whole, and it provides the theoretical background to the project before explicating the idea of a constellational method. The second chapter explores the notion of mimesis in Adorno’s thought and Tarkovsky’s films as a crucial rejoinder to the prevailing ‘communicative’ paradigm instituted in large part by Jürgen Habermas’ work. The third chapter considers the importance of marginality to the task of social critique by analyzing Adorno’s theoretical reflections on the matter and how these can be related to and supported by Haneke’s filmic work. The fourth and final chapter examines the relationship between humanity and nature within two preeminent ecological discourses, in contrast to Adorno’s critical theory and some of Tarkovsky’s films, with the intention of showing how the latter offer a more nuanced and dialectical understanding of this relation. Throughout the analyses herein, I defend and demonstrate the fertility and pertinence of Adornian theory, for both the interpretation of film and robust criticism of extant social and political conditions. The thesis shows that by constellating Adorno’s critical theory with film one may bring out important insights that enhance and enable people’s capacity to critically respond to the woefully inadequate status quo. (shrink)

The starting point of Demirovic's text is Adorno’s idea that concepts as forms of thinking are constellations of power. Differently from many interpretations of Adorno as resigned, Demirovic shows that this assumption enables Adorno to give his own theory the character of interventions in the ideological consensus of everyday life with regard to emancipation.O ponto de partida do presente artigo é a idéia adorniana de que os conceitos como formas de pensamento são constelações de poder. Diferentemente de muitas interpretações que (...) vêem em Adorno um resignado, Demirovic mostra que essa idéia permite que o filósofo dê à sua própria teoria o caráter de intervenção no consenso ideológico da vida quotidiana no tocante à emancipação. (shrink)

This article aims to read feminist new materialisms (Barad), together with ‘postulated’ linguistic or cultural primacy of Queer Theory (Butler), to show how both are engaged in similar critical-ethical endeavours. The central argument is that the criticism of Barad and new materialisms misses Butler’s materialistic insights due to a narrow interpretation of Butler's alleged social-constructivist position. There is, therefore, a specific focus on where they both make similar ethical appeals. Moreover, the article relies on Adorno's negative dialectic to highlight an (...) interpretation of Barad and Butler as being part of the same dialectical movement, in which materialism and idealism fluctuate in their mutual criticisms, thus continuing the procession towards 'new knowledge' and emancipation, or freedom, through their motions back and forth. (shrink)

It seems hard to imagine a concept more significant to modern thought than critique. Critique involved distancing oneself from religious explanations and theological argumentation and came to represent the essence of secular consciousness's potential to deliver modernity's promise of human progress through rational inquiry and scientific development. Critiques of Theology debunks this common understanding. Based on a novel reading of previously less-discussed writings by Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Hannah Arendt, the book shows how the practice of critique (...) emerged out of religious traditions and can, in many ways, be traced back to them. This study points to a persistent misreading of critique and demonstrates that it does not come from outside of religion to build a new world of ideas; on the contrary, it redeploys those already present within its theological constellations. (shrink)

As genealogy has gained greater disciplinary recognition over the last two decades, it has become increasingly common to call any historically oriented philosophy, such as Theodor W. Adorno’s, “genealogy.” In this article, I show that Adorno’s philosophy indeed performs genealogy’s defining functions of “problematization” and “possibilization.” Moreover, it does so in unique ways that constitute a significant contribution to genealogical practice. Adorno’s method, here called “tragic genealogy,” is particularly well-suited to the genealogical analysis of traditional philosophical problems and to the (...) critical reanimation of declining, but ethically significant, values. Nevertheless, I also argue that Adorno’s philosophy cannot be assimilated into genealogical practice without rejecting or revising some of its Hegelian influences, particularly its philosophy of history and its modal metaphysics. (shrink)

This essay considers the catastrophe of anthropogenic climate change in relation to two possible critical-theoretic dispositions. The first, represented by an emblematic passage from Adorno, retains the hope for the realization of a “rational society.” The second, represented by a complementary passage from Foucault, enjoins critical theory to abandon any ambition toward criticizing or transforming society at a totalizing level. We argue that the unfolding climate catastrophe demands a conception of critical theory more in line with the first disposition, and (...) that the relevance of the skeptical disposition is likewise seriously undermined if climate change is taken into account. (shrink)

La ficción narrativa tiene el poder de alterar nuestras más arraigadas intuiciones y expectativas acerca de lo que significa seguir una vida éticamente buena, así como del tipo de sociedad que facilitaría tal situación. A veces su poder disruptivo es develador, lo cual lleva a un cambio éticamente significativo en la percepción. Sostengo que los poderes disruptivos y develadores de una ficción narrativa constituyen un potencial para el conocimiento ético. Interpreto este conocimiento como un proceso de aprendizaje, orientado por una (...) preocupación acerca de la verdad, que involucra la acción racional y el compromiso afectivo de un sujeto humano encarnado. Con el fin de mostrar esto, me enfrento de manera crítica a la lectura de Kafka realizada por Adorno, usando la historia de Kafka titulada “En la colonia penitenciaria” para desafiar tal análisis. (shrink)

This paper examines some of the work of Walter Benjamin in the philosophy of history. It suggests that his work, including the famous ?Theses on the Philosophy of History? contains important insights of interest to those engaged in reflections on history. Benjamin was concerned to argue against what he saw as the distorting effect of certain views in the philosophy of history and a belief in progress which he saw as having damaging practical effects. In this he was quite right. (...) However, the importance of his work lay primarily not in philosophy of history in an analytical sense of the term, but in the substantive sense, that is, the sense in which claims are made concerning the directionality of the historical process. Benjamin sought to show that in this sense of the term, it was important to avoid belief in the necessity of progress. However, I argue that he overstated his case in his determination to avoid a philosophy of history committed to belief in progress. His implicit claim that a merely negative philosophy of history is possible proves to be an illusion because (whether negative or positive), a philosophy of history makes presuppositions about the directionality of history (or its absence) which go beyond the empirical evidence. (shrink)

“Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw” explores Adorno’s ideas about our mediated relationship with nature. The first section of the paper examines the epistemological significance of his thesis about the preponderance of the object while describing the Kantian features in his notion of mediation. Adorno’s conception of nature will also be examined in the context of a review of J. M. Bernstein’s and Fredric Jameson’s attempts to characterize it. The second section of the paper deals with Adorno’s Freudian account of (...) internal nature. While arguing against Joel Whitebook’s view that Adorno needs a concept of sublimation, I contend that Adorno’s genetic account of the relationship between nature and mind enables him to respond to the Freudian injunction to displace the id with the ego with a view to fostering autonomy. In the final section of the paper, problems with Adorno’s ideas about external and internal nature are briefly discussed. (shrink)

There are two dominant schools of thought addressing problems of cosmopolitanism and conflict: democratic national sovereigntism, inspired by Hegel, and global constitutionalism, inspired by Kant and reformulated by Habermas. This paper develops a third position by reading Adorno's critique of both theoretical traditions. Rather than compromising between these camps, Adorno triangulates between them. Critically illuminating their respective deficiencies in view of the changing conditions of a globalized modern world has critical implications for cosmopolitics. Although largely negative, Adorno's critique provides an (...) important framework for a contestatory reformulation of cosmopolitanism, one that is better equipped to confront societal and political global conflicts insufficiently reflected in sovereigntist and global constitutionalist models. (shrink)

Adorno and Foucault are among the 20th century’s most renowned social critics but little work has been done to compare their ideas about the activity of critique. ‘Adorno, Foucault and Critique’ attempts to fill this lacuna. It takes as its starting point the Kantian legacy that informs Adorno’s and Foucault’s notions of critique, or their ‘ontologies of the present’, as Foucault calls them. Exploring the ontological foundations of critique, the article then addresses the principal objects of critique: domination and fascism. (...) It ends with a comparative account of the central aims of Adorno’s and Foucault’s critiques of western societies. (shrink)

The article explores the character of Adorno’s materialism while fleshing out his Marxist-inspired idea of natural history. Adorno offers a non-reductionist and non-dualistic account of the relationship between matter and mind, human history and natural history. Emerging from nature and remaining tied to it, the human mind is nonetheless qualitatively distinct from nature owing to its limited independence from it. Yet, just as human history is always also natural history, because human beings can never completely dissociate themselves from the natural (...) world, nature is inextricably entwined with human history. Owing to the entwinement of mind and matter, humanity and nature, a version of dialectical materialism can be found in Adorno’s work. Key Words: body • dialectics • Hegel • history • idealism • Marx • materialism • mind • nature • Timpanaro. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show that what Gaston Bachelard called the “psychology of the imagination” often doubles as moral psychology. In Water and Dreams, for example, Bachelard presents “water’s morality,” which is a morality attained by an imagination of water’s purity. Similarly, in Air and Dreams, he explores the aerial imagination that forms the moral thought in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and calls the will to dynamism in Nietzschean philosophy “an experimental physics of moral life.” In Earth and (...) Reveries of Will, numerous terrestrial images are considered and the moralities they embody are discussed—among them the supreme hardness of the oak tree in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and the “counsel of solidity” it gives. As Bachelard becomes more inclined to call his endeavor a “phenomenology of the imagination,” concern for morality becomes less pronounced. And yet in two of his later works, The Poetics of Space and The Poetics of Reverie, Bachelard continues to delve into the ways imagination allies with moral life. Sensitively heeding the solicitations from the material world and our responses to them, Bachelard’s psychology of the imagination is a project of self-knowledge of an unusual sort: it uncovers “the autobiography of lost possibilities” and revives confidence in human strength. Finally, a comparison between Bachelard’s moral psychology with the work of Theodor Adorno and of John McDowell shows that its philosophical significance is best viewed as a re-enchantment project—the re-enchantment of nature and our relationship with it. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider not only the crisis in conservative neoliberalism and free market economics, but a crisis of representation and plausibility in progressive new liberalism; a situation which leads to deadlock for progressivism in which things cannot progress. In order to address this state of crisis in the global perception of the “white left,” Critical Theory, as a mode of Western liberal thought, needs to rethink the direction of its own criticism. Additionally, Critical Theory needs to adjust its (...) focus to respond to the deadlock presented by the rise of right-wing populism and the derogation of liberal values in these regressive times. The radical democratic ideal advocated by Habermas, comprising universal equality and emancipation, should still be the goal for liberalism, and for Critical Theory, but first of all, the achievements and advances liberal progressivism has already made need to be secured to prevent society from regressing. This does not mean making a choice between neoliberalism and authoritarianism, but that a new paradigm of thinking is due. I argue that universality is anterior to cultural pluralism, as are social topics to cultural issues, and justice of distribution to justice of identity. In the complex world of modernity, good things do not come together if there is conflict between desirable values, so choices need to be made: a ranking of real, material conditions is necessary, to ensure cohesion and progression. (shrink)

Focusing on the notion of the subject in Sartre's and Adorno's philosophies, David Sherman argues that they offer complementary accounts of the subject that ...

Narrative fiction has the power to unsettle our deep-seated intuitions and expectations about what it means to live an ethically good life, and the kind of society that best facilitates this. Sometimes its disruptive power is disclosive, leading to an ethically significant shift in perception. I contend that the disruptive and disclosive powers of narrative fiction constitute a potential for ethical knowledge. I construe ethical knowledge as a learning process, oriented by a concern for truth, which involves the rational agency (...) and affective engagement of an embodied human subject. For the purposes of showing this, I engage critically with Adorno’s reading of Kafka, using Kafka's story ‘In the Penal Colony’ to challenge Adorno’s analysis. (shrink)

_An in-depth look at the theory of solidarity of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, serving also as a comprehensive introduction to his work._.

Adorno thought that substantive change was not just desirable but also possible. He also offered ideas about what positive change might look like on the basis of his determinate negation of damaged life. This paper begins by exploring Adorno’s ideas about possibility and determinate negation. It also discusses his views about the sort of changes that might be made. Given Adorno’s ideas about the possibility of change, the paper ends by challenging Fabian Freyenhagen’s reading of Adorno as a methodological, epistemic, (...) and substantive negativist. (shrink)

Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History" have been interpreted almost exclusively in relation to Marxist historical materialism and, in that context, inevitably found wanting, misunderstood as the unwelcome intrusion of mystical and voluntarist notions into a rational method of historical explanation. Levinas, although he never mentions Benjamin, nonetheless affords a better clue as to what Benjamin might have been trying to accomplish. The major distinction animating and structuring Levinas's work is that between ethics, or the ethical relation, and ontology, (...) or the disclosure of being. One of the principal ways this distinction is elaborated is in terms of the contrast and conflict between the synchronizable time assumed by the historical memory belonging to the ontological project and the diachrony of the ethical relation, or the non synchronizable time, the posterior anteriority of the memory of radical separation and interiority. The distinction between synchronic temporalization and diachrony can enable a different understanding of the central concept of Benjamin's "Theses...", viz. "empty homogeneous time, and also thereby of the perspective of Benjamin's "angel of history" from which the liberatory(non-)activity of the Benjamininan historical materialist follows. What the historical materialist does in allowing the flow of time and thought to be arrested in the grand abridgement of a monadic image is to speak for those Others whose being has been functionalized within universal history. (shrink)

This thesis has two principal aims: to demonstrate the centrality of memory to the philosophy and aesthetics of T. W. Adorno, and to assess its philosophical significance. Although in recent years Adorno's work has been the object of increased scrutiny within Anglo-American philosophical circles, as yet little sustained attention has been devoted to the concept of memory within Adorno's oeuvre. However, in Dialectic of Enlightenment Adorno and Horkheimer proclaimed that it is "by virtue of this memory of nature in the (...) subject" that "enlightenment is universally opposed to domination. "Given that all of Adorno's work is concerned to redeem enlightenment from domination, the importance of a philosophical interpretation of the concept of memory is pivotal for an engagement with the legacy of Adorno's thought today. It will be argued that, for Adorno, memory always operates in relation to reification. The construal of this relation enjoins the consideration of a number of significant categories within Adorno's work: notably tradition, experience, mimesis and utopia; and further, it serves to situate and distance Adorno from those thinkers - Kant, Hegel, Heidegger and Benjamin - with whom he incessantly engages. Finally, by focusing on the relation between memory and reification, one can gauge the stakes of the Habermasian critique of Adorno, for it is Adorno's understanding of reconciliation as the "remembrance of nature in the subject" that is the crux of the agon between Habermas and Adorno. I will argue that it is Habermas's failure to fully engage with the ramifications of Adorno's concept of memory that vitiates his critique, and indeed, that this failure provides the means for an Adornian critique of Haberman. It will be argued that memory is not an object of Adornian thought, but rather, that it provides the utopian texture of that thought. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin’s writings on fashion need to be read as engagements with the problem of historical time and a related politics of time. The aim of this article is to develop this position. Its point of orientation is Thesis XIV from the Theses on the Philosophy of History. What is argued is that close attention to the temporality of change and novelty within fashion may allow an insight into a conception of interruption and the ‘new’, however, it cannot yield a (...) politics. Moreover, the link between fashion and utopianism allows for the development of a critique of the utopian dimension of Benjamin’s thought. The basis of that critique is the inherent politics of time in his own writings. (shrink)

An in-depth look at the theory of solidarity of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, serving also as a comprehensive introduction to his work.

This thesis explores the theme of animals in Adorno’s philosophy through an examination of his critique of Kant.

Jürgen Habermas’ characterization of Adorno’s project as an aestheticization of philosophy continues to influence our reading of his work. In contradiction to Lambert Zuidervaart, who suggests that in order to be understood as politically relevant, Adorno’s philosophy must be supplemented with empirical research, I argue in this article that Adorno’s work contains many of the resources we would need to theorize an ethical politics. First, it both identifies the moral debt carried by the subject and addresses the need for social (...) transformation in order to change this situation. Second, it proposes an ethical comportment of self-relinquishment as a first step towards this reorganization of the social. The self-relinquishment of philosophy to its object is modeled upon aesthetic experience, which, according to Adorno, we must regard as a remorseful atonement for the subject’s domination of the object in its attempt to ‘wrest itself free’ ( Aesthetic Theory, 1997c: 112) of undifferentiated being. By incorporating into philosophical thought the mimetic bodily impulses tamed by aesthetic form, we may engender within ourselves a solidarity with objectivity. Rather than the self-possessing and conservative subject that constitutes its world mentally, Adorno theorizes a subject for whom thinking is a temporalization or a becoming. Thinking produces otherness within the subject itself. In this thinking-as-becoming, we see the beginnings of a highly individuated political subjectivity capable of acting in solidarity with the other. This brings us to the third element within Adorno’s philosophy that can serve us in formulating an ethical politics: the non-violent organizational principle of the modern work of art. In mobilizing the logic of the modern work of art, the autonomous individual is empowered to forge a politics that preserves contradiction in the facilitation of a non-violent relation with others. (shrink)

This thesis argues for the continuing possibility of Adorno set against the backdrop of a post-modern proliferation of affects. A major theoretical contention is the concept of the subject: a sticking point within philosophy. The thesis takes this up and offers a new pathway without falling into the cliché of a renewal of Adorno’s position. Drawing on Adorno’s theoretical thoughts on the subject the thesis contends that the subject is that which by turns dissolves all eventualities or more proportionally acts (...) like a place-holder for the newly emerging: structures that cannot be explained by recourse to the laws that govern its parts. These experiential structures present a surface, resistance, or solidarity that upon closer examination dissolve back into the ephemeral. Although such structures are profligate and prolific, the thesis adopts as its major concern artworks and aesthetics. Following Adorno, a claim is made for artworks that present open-ended possibilities. They are able for example to critically challenge the dominant hegemony the profundity that all too easily sides with the oppressors of life. What philosophy, a critical tool in furtherance of the good life, a concept restaged, here takes from art is not a sense of equivalence, art and philosophy are held apart in a creative and critical tension, but the sense of yearning that animates the nonconceptual side of art which the concept negates. The yearning, being experiential, is always embodied. Its fulfilment negates the immediacies, the mere appearance of life, particularly in its systematically reflexive form. The conclusion concurs with Adorno in the thought that affinity with the object is achieved not as the resultant of identity thinking, but through the act of definite negation of identifying schema. (shrink)