Feasibility and sense of political transformation in Adorno in light of negative dialectics

Abstract

Adorno’s critical theory –whose fundamental philosophical and methodical development is to be found in Negative Dialectics– has been the subject of sharply contrasting readings, from those who criticise the narrowness of his social analysis and the impotence of his political attitude, to those who see in it an admirable analytical lucidity and a radical political background whose possibilities have not yet been fully explored. This interpretative ambiguity, due in large part to Adorno’s reluctance to formulate a political philosophy as such, leads us to ask ourselves to what extent the extemporaneity of his thought has made him a precedent for political approaches that are already familiar to us today, and, above all, whether this can help us to reconceptualise some of these notions and thus provide an answer to the question of political transformation in such a problematic context as the contemporary one. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to try to elucidate the conception of the political that underlies Adorno’s theory and to place his thought in dialogue with rigorously contemporary political perspectives –particularly those of the impolitical and post-foundational political thought– in order to delineate the possible orientation and form of a proposal for political transformation based on Adorno’s dialectics.