Archive for the ‘Adorno’ Category
Adorno Letter to Fromm on Women
More and more I am convinced that the actual coincidence of Marxist theory and psychoanalysis lies not only in analogies of superstructure and base with ego and id etc., but rather in the connection between the fetish character of the commodities and the fetishized character of human beings. I believe that the methodological difference between Marxism and psychoanalysis becomes can be overcome only at the moment, in which it becomes possible to show successfully how the economic fetishism turns into psychic fetishism; this is something that—in a side note—also suggests tracing back the economic fetish character beyond capitalist society potentially to prehistoric times, in which the original facts of economic fetishism found their first mental sources.
These traits seem to be closely connected to the relationship between the consumer and the commodity that I cannot prejudge. One should analyze thoroughly the completely irrational behavior of women in dealing with commodities—shopping, clothes, hairdressing etc.—and it will probably become evident that all those moments that seem to serve sex appeal are in reality desexualized.
Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism
How can activists combat the political paralysis that characterises the anti-dialectical Marxism of Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze, without reverting to a dogmatic orthodoxy? This book explores solutions in the ‘negative dialectics‘ of Theodor Adorno.The poststructuralist shift from dialectics to ‘difference‘ has been so popular that it becomes difficult to create meaningful revolutionary responses to neoliberalism. The contributors to this volume come from within the anti-capitalist movement, and close to the concerns expressed in Negri and Hardt‘s Empire and Multitude. However, they argue forcefully and persuasively for a return to dialectics so a real-world, radical challenge to the current order can be constructed.This is a passionate call to arms for the anti-capitalist movement. It should be read by all engaged activists and students of political and critical theory.
Habermas on Adorno
What seems to be trivial in retrospect could not be taken for granted by the time I joined the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research); that its reputation would be more dependent on Adorno‘s incessant productivity, which was only then heading for its climax, rather than on the success of the empirical research with which the institute was supposed to legitimize itself in the first place. Although he was the nerve-center of the institute, Adorno could not handle administrative power. Rather, he constituted the passive center of a complex area of tension. When I arrived in 1956 there were symmetrical differences between Max Horkheimer, Gretel Adorno and Ludwig von Friedburg that were defined by the fact that their respective expectations toward Adorno were thwarted.
If I want to try and describe the change in consciousness and the impact of the mental influence that the daily contact with Adorno had brought about in me, then it is best captured by the distancing from the familiar vocabulary and the outlook of the very German historical humanities that are rooted in Herder’s romanticism.
