The Critical Pessimism of Theodor Adorno
2022; Routledge; Volume: 44; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/07393148.2022.2076509
ISSN1469-9931
Autores Tópico(s)Critical Theory and Philosophy
ResumoAbstractIn response to widespread environmental concerns, a global pandemic, and authoritarian creep there has been insufficient political will to grapple with these pervasive problems. This lack of a political response is troubling, yet people are condemned as irrational, unpatriotic, or worse – conservative – if they do not maintain optimism about a better future. There is widespread repudiation of pessimism on the left, meanwhile there is little guarantee the future will deliver a brighter tomorrow. Philosophical pessimism may seem an unexpected position from which to consider the incongruent relationships among the myth of progress, contemporary political stagnation, capitalism, and climate change. However, a critical version of this orientation offers a ballast to toxic positivity, as well as a unique orientation to the myth of progress and the domination of nature. One that enables a reframed relationship to the climate crisis, income inequality, and creeping authoritarian populism. Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute (New York: Free Press, 1977), quoting Adorno, 46.2 Walter Benjamin, "On the Concept of History," in Selected Writings: Volume 4, 1938-1940, eds. Edmund Jephcott, et al. trans. Howard Eiland, Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 392.3 Ibid., 392.4 Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics, quoting Adorno, 46.5 Nick Estes, Our History is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (London: Verso Books, 2019).6 Ibid.7 Ibid. See also Dina Gilio-Whitaker, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, From Colonization to Standing Rock (Boston: Beacon Press, 2019).8 Stephanie Ebbs and Mary Alice Parks, "Line 3 pipeline resistance continues as activists ask Biden admin to shutdown project," ABC News, September 21, 2021, https://abcnews.go.com/US/Politics/line-pipeline-resistance-continues-activists-biden-admin-shutdown/story?id=80096664.9 Benjamin, "On the Concept of History," 392.10 Alvin Powell, "Mark I, rebooted," Harvard Gazette, July 23, 2021, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/07/harvards-mark-1-finds-its-new-home/.11 Amy Allen, The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), I draw on Allen's conceptual distinctions between technical-scientific, and moral-political progress.12 Ibid., 3.13 Ryan Gunderson, "A Defense of the 'Grand Hotel Abyss': The Frankfurt School's Nonideal Theory," Acta Sociologica 58, no. 1 (2015): 25.14 Joshua Dienstag, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).15 Reality was so unavoidably abysmal during the hey-day of the Frankfurt School that it would be challenging to ignore. Among other justifiably appalling political machinations, proletarian revolutions failed, fascism was on the rise, the Frankfurt School was exiled from Germany, WWII enabled the development and use of nuclear bombs, and leftist movements were being violently suppressed.16 György Lukács, The Theory of the Novel, trans. Anna Bostock (London: Merlin Press, 1971), 9.17 Ibid.18 Mikkel Krause Frantzen, "Against Pessimism, or, the Education of Hope," SubStance 49, no. 1 (2020): 151.19 Wendy Brown, "Resisting Left Melancholy," Boundary 2, no. 3 (1999): 25.20 Ibid.21 Michael Löwy, Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin's 'On the Concept of History,' trans. Chris Turner (New York: Verso Books, 2016), 9.22 Frantzen, "Against Pessimism," 102.23 Dienstag, Pessimism.24 Ibid., x.25 Gunderson, "A defense of the 'Grand Hotel Abyss,'" 26.26 Ibid.27 Ibid., 34.28 Ibid., this moment is alternatively referred to as "messianic time" by Benjamin.29 Ibid., 28.30 In response to Marx, who argued that "The philosophers have only interpreted the world…the point is to change it" (Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach), Adorno proclaimed, "Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed…after the attempt to change the world miscarried." Negative Dialectics, 3.31 Gillian Rose, The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno (London: Verso Press, 2014 [1978]), ix.32 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, ed. Michael Tanner, trans. Shaun Whiteside (New York: Penguin Classics, 2003 [1872]).33 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton (New York: Continuum Publishing, 1973); see also Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics.34 Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 1.35 To name only two horrific events in the last 150 years.36 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 320.37 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 20.38 Ibid., 20.39 Theodor Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, trans. Henry W. Pickford (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 137.40 Regina Cochrane, "Climate Change, 'Buen Vivir', and the Dialectic of Enlightenment: Toward a Feminist Critical Philosophy of Climate Justice," Hypatia 29, no. 3 (2014): 576–98, 588, drawing on Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 6–12.41 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 21.42 Ibid., 20.43 Cochrane, "Climate Change, 'Buen Vivir', and the Dialectic of Enlightenment," 589, referencing Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment.44 Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Verso Press, 2005 [1951]), 114.45 Adorno, Minima Moralia, 115.46 Barry Goldstein, Peter H. Kobos, and Patrick V. Brady, "Unintended Consequences of Atmospheric Injection of Sulphate Aerosols," The Sandia Report (Albuquerque: Sandia National Laboratories, 2010); Stephen M. Gardiner, "Why geoengineering is not a 'global public good', and why it is ethically misleading to frame it as one," Climactic Change 121 (May 2013): 513–25.47 Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).48 Adorno, Negative Dialectics. Theodor Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics: Fragments of a Lecture Course 1965/1966, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008).49 Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics, 63.50 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 5.51 Ibid.52 Ibid., 161.53 Michael Lipscomb, "Adorno's Historical and Temporal Consciousness: Towards a Critical Theoretical Environmental Imagination," in Critical Ecologies: The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Environmental Crises, ed. Andrew Biro (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 285.54 Timothy W. Luke. "Reflections from a Damaged Planet: Adorno as Accompaniment to Environmentalism in the Anthropocene," in Anthropocene Alerts: Critical Theory of the Contemporary as Ecocritique (Candor, NY: Telos Press Publishing, 2019), 293.55 Deborah Cook, Adorno on Nature (Durham, England: Acumen Publishing, 2011), 15.56 Cook, Adorno on Nature, 12.57 Bradley J. Macdonald, "Theodor Adorno, Alterglobalization, and Non-Identity Politics," New Political Science 34, no. 3 (2012): 328.58 Ibid.59 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 93.60 Lipscomb, "Adorno's Historical and Temporal Consciousness," 282.61 Adorno, Minima Moralia.62 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 187.63 Adorno, Negative Dialectics.64 Ibid., 68.65 Ibid.66 Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics.67 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 78.68 Adorno, Critical Models, 133.69 Ibid., 138.70 Ibid.71 Ibid., 281.72 Ibid., 290.73 Ibid., 291.74 Ibid.75 The decolonial movements of the 1960s and 1970s notwithstanding, as these revolutions often achieved their aim of ousting the imperial power. That said, many decolonial movements resulted in authoritarian regimes of a different order.76 Ibid., 292–3.77 Ibid., 293.78 For a brilliant analysis of the role of unhappiness in highlighting oppression, see Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).79 Lipscomb, "Adorno's Historical and Temporal Consciousness," 300.
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