Adorno - Negative Dialectics

To the isolated, isolation seems an indubitable certainty; they are bewitched on pain of losing their existence, not to perceive how mediated their isolation is'-Adorno-Theodor Adorno was one of the great intellectual figures of the twentieth century. Negative Dialectics is his major and culminating work. In it he attempts to free critical thought from the blinding orthodoxies of late capitalism, and earlier ages too. The book is essential reading for students of Adorno. It is also a vital weapon for making sense of modern times. ISBN 0-203-47960-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-47991-2 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-05221-1 (Print Edition)

Journal of Classical Sociology, 2012

Adorno's social theory dissolves the dogmatic posture of reified things. Its critical intention is to decipher the human social practice hidden in things. For Adorno, the social practice that counts is the one that fights barbarism, and for this fight to succeed, it has to tackle the social preconditions that make barbarism possible. A social practice that fails to do just that partakes in the false world of bourgeois society that it ostensibly seeks to overcome. In this context, Adorno argues, on the one hand, that the fight against barbarism is impossible because every social practice is the same. On the other, he says that negation is the only alternative to the falsehood of bourgeois society. The essay explores Adorno's Negative Dialectics to examine this paradox and to decipher its conception of social practice in a reified world. What does it mean to say 'no'?

A Companion To Adorno (ed. Peter Gordon and Espen Hammer), 2020

Adorno, like Hegel and Kant, addressed himself to the limits of thought, the bounds beyond which we cannot go since to go beyond them is to stop making sense at all. However, Adorno also thought, following a line of thought that flowers in Hegel and Marx, that what seem to be limits of thought can turn out in historical circumstances merely to be limitations that can be overcome with changed social and political circumstances. This is the core of Adorno’s theory of “non-identity.” This in turn requires him as he recognizes to take on all the Hegelian criticisms of such a view and to show how the negative dialectic not only escapes them but offers a new paradigm of dialectical thought.

New Formations, 2005

Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2006

Negative Dialectics, 1966

Original translation of Adorno's final completed work, a masterpiece of late 20th century dialectical thinking. Anyone who claims to be a progressive in the transnational era must engage with Adorno's concepts and theoretical innovations.

Ten days after the fateful U.S. presidential election, several leading scholars of the Frankfurt School of critical theory gathered at Harvard University to reevaluate the legacy of the German-Jewish philosopher Theodor W. Adorno. The occasion—“Negative Dialectics at Fifty”—marked a half-century since the publication of Adorno’s magnum opus in 1966. Fitting with the mood of the political moment, co-organizer Max Pensky (Binghamton) recalled Adorno’s 1968 essay “Resignation” in his opening remarks: “What once was thought cogently must be thought elsewhere, by others.” To use Walter Benjamin’s phrase, dialectical work as demanding as Adorno’s has a Zeitkern, or temporal core: its meaning unfolds over time through constant re-interpretation. As participants reflected on this work’s profound legacy, they also translated its messages into terms relevant today. Time has served Negative Dialectics well. Fulfilling Adorno’s call for philosophy to restore the life sedimented in concepts, the critical energy of this conference demonstrated that both the course of time and the practice of intellectual history do not necessarily exhaust texts, but can instead reinvigorate them.

Theor Soc, 1975

Global Storm: Theodor Adorno's Negative Dialectics, 2000

This is the dissertation I wrote to earn my dissertation in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon in 2000. The text analyzes Adorno's "Negative Dialectics" and then applies its concept to three artists of the late 20th century: the Nova trilogy of William S. Burroughs, William Gibson's "Neuromancer" and three plays by Heiner Mueller.

Marx and Philosphy Review of Books, 2019

Review of Eric Oberle's book 'Adorno and the Century of Negative Identity', Stanford University Press, 2019.