Critical Theory’s Foundation in the Theories of Freud and Marx, How to Read Adorno’s, and Butler’s Critique of Dialectics as Being Similar

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Critical Theory’s Foundation in the Theories of Freud and Marx How to Read Adorno’s, and Butler’s Critique of Dialectics as Being Similar

by Philip Højme Student number: 11105259 Universiteit van Amsterdam

08/08/2017

Research Master’s Thesis Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Josef Früchtl

Second Reader: Dr. Stefan Niklas Word count: ≈ 21.000

Abstract: It has been suggested that Adorno’s and Butler’s critical theories could be

understood as being similar, and it is the aim of this thesis to highlight certain similar aspects between their usage of Freud and Marx. A focus which is chosen due to critical theory generally being indebted to these two theories. By first outlining Butler’s critique of the gender/sex distinction, followed by a critique of this ‘undialectical critique of dialectics’ a critique which suggests that such a critique would be better formulated as the negative dialectics posited by Adorno. It is posited how Butler should be read in a dialectical favorable light. This is followed by an explanation on Adorno’s negative dialectics, and usage of Freud and Marx in two texts. After which comes an uncovering of Butler’s utilization of Psychoanalysis and Marxism, and how this shares strong similarities with Adorno’s. These similarities thus come to provide yet another argument for reading Adorno’s, and Butler’s critical theories of society as being similar, in addition to the claim that Butler’s critique of the gender/sex distinction is similar to Adorno’s negative

dialectics. By positing these similarities, together with the critique of Butler’s criticism of gender binarity, this thesis come provide yet another assertion for reading Adorno and Butler as conduction a similar emancipatory enterprise.

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Introduction

What is gender? 1_{When I came to reread Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, leaving this book}

the first time around after finishing my Bachelor degree, it left me with a renewed interest in this question. Issues of this kind have intrigued me for quite some time, and what shall be attempted in this thesis is a coupling of; a particular interest of mine in Psychoanalysis, with the allure which the theories of The Frankfurt School seem to have gained on me during my studies. The primary interest which was elicited in me, which prompted me to undertake this thesis, was a concern with similarities that I kept finding between Butler’s Gender

Trouble, and the general project of The Frankfurt School - in particular with Adorno’s

reformulation of dialectics as being negative (as opposed to positive in the sense Hegel had thought of it). Marcel Stoetzler (2005) and Carrie L. Hull (1997) thus came to provide me with a possible re-reading of Butler, to reinterpret the critique of dialectics that was given in

Gender Trouble in an way more lenient towards Adorno’s philosophical project in Negative Dialectics. However, seeing how my interest is more psychoanalytic inclined than Hull’s,

and Stoetzler’s arguments which seemed to be guided towards an interpretation of Butler’s

undialectical critique of dialectics more in line with Adorno’s. This raised my interest for the

role which Psychoanalysis and Marxism play in both the works of Adorno and Butler. Thus, by seeing how Psychoanalysis and Marxism were neglected in both Stoetzler’s and Hull’s interpretation of Butler, this thesis attempts to expand on this.

In the following paragraph, I will provide a rough outline of the structure of this thesis. The first chapter seeks to provide a general overview of Butler’s main argument in Gender

Trouble, follow by an overview of Stoetzler and Hull’s critical interpretation of Butler’s

critique of dialectics. This is followed by a lengthy chapter on Adorno’s conception of negative dialectics, divided into a first and second part. The former will have a more explanatory feel to it, as it will outline the theoretical concept of negative dialectics and to some extent its historical development. Whereas the latter part is an examination of

1_{I would like to note that I intend not to use any gendered pronouns (he, she, his, hers, and so on) in this paper. Doing}

so is a stylistic choice, as an attempt to write in a gender-neutral language. A point, not so much made as a part of the argument this paper seeks to suggest, instead it is more an act of trying to escape the normative gender constellations which suggest a particular usage of he, or she. Moreover, I hope the reader will receive this as an honest effort to bring a bit of the theory which this thesis deals with into the ‘matter’ of the thesis itself. So that the thesis describes a theory, which also works back on the thesis.

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Adorno’s usage of Psychoanalysis and Marxism in analyzing the fascist leader, and The

Cultural Industry. In the third and last chapter, will explore some of the similarities which

are to be found in Adorno’s and Butler’s usage of Psychoanalysis and Marxism - as frames of references for their critical analysis of society.

Gender Trouble - A Critique of the Dialectics of Sex and Gender

The general outline of Judith Butler’s argument in Gender Trouble which this chapter seeks to provide. Come to serve as a way of introducing a critical reevaluation of Butler’s project in Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter, has provided by Marcel Stoetzler (2005) and Carrie L. Hull (1997). Butler’s general project in Gender Trouble can be summed up as an attempt at collapsing the distinction between sex and gender, an attempt to show that they are both social constructions. What is important regarding the argument of this book, is how Butler comes to critique de Beauvoir’s claim: that one is not born as a woman, but rather

becomes a woman 2_{. While Butler does not contend the fact that woman is something that} one becomes, Butler does criticize the dialectical distinction between sex and gender which Butler suggests is to be found in the works of de Beauvoir. Butler formulates this at the beginning of Gender Trouble as: “If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender … the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.” (Butler, 1990, p. 7) By revealing that the categories of gender and sex are not part of the same constellation (to use terminology borrowed from Adorno) Butler shows that de Beauvoir was wrong in claiming that gender follows from sex, and in claiming sex to be naturally constituted. In addition to this Butler asserts that “sex by definition, will be shown to have been gender all along.” (Ibid. p. 8) Hence, if sex was gender all along, how does this fit with the fact that Butler shows de

Beauvoir’ error in claiming that gender follows from sex?

This question is answered by Butler’s collapsing of the sex/gender distinction in de Beauvoir. Together with the stipulation that the unnaturalness3_{of gender and sex, means that there} is not any correct way of being ‘gendered’ or ‘sexed.' In other words, Butler is suggesting that the category of gender does not follow from the sex of a person, or vice versa. These two claims are paramount to Butler’s project in Gender Trouble since they comprise the

2_{See; Butler, 1990, p. 8, and de Beauvoir, 1973, p. 301.} 3_{See; Salih, 2002, p. 46, and Butler, 1987, p. 35.}

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fundament of the stage on which Butler will create gender trouble. What this means is simply that if we are to follow Butler’s argument in Gender Trouble, we need to collapse the unnatural distinction between sex and gender. Moreover, we are to understand gender and sex as constructions created by a certain society (however this does not necessarily mean that they are consciously constructed).

At the beginning of the first chapter of Gender Trouble, Butler examines the subjects of gender/sex. Butler begins by undermining the “presumed universality and unity of the subject of feminism.” (Ibid. p. 4). This is done by pointing out the “fragmentation within feminism and the paradoxical opposition to feminism from ‘women’ whom feminism claims to represent.” (Ibid. p. 4) By providing this undermining of second wave feminism, Butler has efficiently disrupted (normative) feminist discourse enough to create the possibility of a reformulation of the project of feminism. Feminism is no longer thought of as claiming a universality to the category of woman, instead, it is to collapse the distinction which is so naturalized, between sex and gender.

Butler’s criticism of de Beauvoir means that the category of woman is no longer to be conceived of as being pre-discursive. Instead, it is a becoming; a performance, an act played out against the backdrop of culturally enforced heteronormativity. As an opposition to this position, Butler introduces another prominent thinker within feminist theory, Luce Irigaray. Butler sides with Irigaray and argues that women are “the subject which is not one.” (Ibid. p. 10) Butler, as Irigaray, posits an interpretation of the female gender, in which female is not understood as the negation, or lack of maleness (or male attributes) as it is in de Beauvoir. Leading Butler to claim that the subject for de Beauvoir was “always already masculine,” (Ibid. p. 11) meaning that for de Beauvoir the female body was understood as “restricted to its body.” (Ibid. p, 11) In other words; gender follows from sex, and a woman’s gender follows from the bodily reality of a woman’s sex, in the same way as a real man is only a man if equipped with a (erect) penis. Butler thus comes to suggest that de Beauvoir is perpetuating a phallocentric understanding of the categories of sex and gender, a point which shall be expanded upon later. For now, what is important is the critique which Butler levels against Irigaray when writing that:

“the power of her analysis [Irigaray’s] is undercut precisely by its globalizing reach … Feminist critique ought to explore the totalizing claims of a masculinist

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signifying economy, but also remain self-critical with respect to the totalizing gestures of feminism.” (Ibid. 1990, p. 13)

What Butler is pointing towards here is that the dichotomic thought inherent in much of feminist discourse; that women are either understood as the negation (de Beauvoir) or as that which is not (Irigaray). Both of these theories come to claim to a certain universal nature of the category of women. What Butler is hinting at here the fact that both, de Beauvoir and Irigaray, were using tactics employed by the masculine signified economy, to explain the category of women. This economy can best be described as an economy in which, the production of gender is signified by ‘male,' and “that she is not the sex she is designed to be, but, rather, the masculine sex encore (and en corps) parading the mode of otherness.” (Ibid. p. 12) Meaning that the feminist thoughts of de Beauvoir which Irigaray claimed mimicked a phallocentric economy, and the universal nature of both de Beauvoir’s, and Irigaray’s, notion ’woman,' both fail in providing a critique of gender which are freed from using tactics also employed by that which they critique. What Butler is criticizing, in de Beauvoir, is “the dialectic of master-slave [in de Beauvoir] … [which] prefigures what Irigaray will later describe as the masculine signifying economy that includes both the existential subject and its Other.” (Ibid. p. 12) While Irigaray’s critique of the masculine signifying economy in de Beauvoir is taken to be a valid criticism. Butler comes to regard Irigaray as being undercut by the globalizing reach which the argument against de Beauvoir is taken to imply. If women are the gender which is not (as Irigaray claims), then women are still conceived as a unified concept of every non-male. Using Nietzsche’s claim from On the Genealogy of Morals4

Butler comes to propose that: “there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its result.” (Ibid. p. 25)

To sum this up, Butler’s general claim can be said to be a rejection of the notion that gender, or sex for that matter, exists outside of the expressions which are taken to posit the naturalness or pre-discursive nature of gender and sex. Butler thus builds on Irigaray’s critique of de Beauvoir, by not only claiming that women are ‘that which is not’ but that gender/sex is ‘that which is not.' In other words, this distinction is suggested to be nonexistent pre-discursive notions.

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The Nonidentity of Herculine Barbine

The case history of Herculine Barbine (see Michel Foucault, Herculine Barbine) is taken up by Butler as an example of how the category of sex was in fact gender all along. In Butler’s reinterpretation of Barbine’s refusal to conform to the gender/sex categories, this refusal is taken to, “[reveal] the instability of those categories.” (Salih, 2002, p. 49) Hence, Butler comes to regard Foucault’s reading of the case of Herculine Barbine as showing that: the medical discourse (a discourse which is normative, thus implicitly heterosexual) of sex and gender cannot comprehend a hermaphrodite as being both sexes at the same time. Hence this discourse must allocate a hermaphrodite a place in one of the two binary categories; in other words, either as male, or as female, but being both is not impermissible. This reading of Herculine Barbine differs from Foucault’s, which describes Barbine’s childhood as a “happy limbo of a non-identity.” (Foucault, 1980, p. xiii) Instead Butler’s interpretation of the case history of Barbine comes to be an example of how the law produces its own outside. Expanding on this Butler writes that:

“Whether ‘before’ the law as a multiplicitous sexuality or ‘outside’ the law as an unnatural transgression, those positionings are invariably ‘inside’ a discourse which produces sexuality and then conceals that production through a configuring of a courageous and rebellious sexuality ‘outside’ of the text itself.”

(Butler, 1990, p. 99)

Hence the law, which permits and represses, comes to be formative both of the permitted inside, and of the repressed outside. In other words, for Butler, the binary notion of male and female as the only tolerable categories comes to create the impossibility of the existence of hermaphrodites. In Butler’s words “Foucault proposes an ontology of accidental attributes that exposes the postulation of identity as a culturally restricted principle of order and hierarchy, a regulatory fiction.” (Ibid, p. 24) Thus, what for Foucault seemed like (a happy) nonidentity, meaning that Barbine was nonidentical with both of the binary gender categories, is in Butler produced by a repressive society. Thus, Barbine was conceived (by Foucault) as being free, in the sense of being able to choose between both categories. This ‘happy limbo’ is in Butler’s reading more akin to an illusion since Barbine’s identity (or nonidentity if you will) is a product, a product of the law which excluded it from the realm of possibilities in the first place. Butler argues that the regulation which bars Barbine from acquiring a (binary) gender in the first place, does, in fact, create the possibility for Barbine

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to be thought of at all as being neither of the binary gender categories. Suggesting that the law creates its own outside, its own negation. An interesting question that thus arises here when taking Adorno’s negative dialectics into account is: to what extent can this gender be

said to be acquired by an identity or a nonidentity? To answer this question, it seems

necessary to further elaborate on Stoetzler’s comment on this. Stoetzler argues that Butler is attempting to read Foucault’s interpretation against itself, by way of using the lack of attention to the historical situation in which the production of gender takes place:

“[Foucault]explicitly takes a stand against emancipatory or liberationist models of sexuality … because they … does not acknowledge the historical production of ‘sex’ as a category … Where feminist analysis takes … the binary restriction on gender, as its point of departure, Foucault understands his own project to be an inquiry into how the category of ‘sex’ and sexual difference are constructed within discourse as necessary features of bodily identity.” (Ibid. p. 95-96)

What Butler is suggesting is that Foucault is, in fact, romanticizing the freedom which Barbine enjoys before being subjected, by the judicial system (the law), to dress, and exercise the rights of men5_{. Butler also stipulates that Foucault is positing Barbine’s} hermaphroditism as a utopian and unrestricted sexuality prior to any regulatory law. However, for Butler, the law is always prior to any conception of gender or sex. Hence in Butler’s critical rereading of the happy limbo of Barbine, a nonidentity that comes to be interpreted as a sexuality which is at once both shows the “ambivalent structure of its production,” (Ibid. p. 99) and the “historically specific formation of sexuality.” (Ibid. p. 100) This means that the ambivalence which is found between Barbine’s lived life and the law of binary genders (which is enforced by a heteronormative society) is specific to a historical form of envisioned sexuality, gender, and sex.

Reinterpreting Butler’s critique of Foucault, Stoetzler suggests that “Herculine’s suicide demonstrates that the dream of non-identity, in a dialectical sense a product of identitarian society itself, is ‘impossible’ within the framework of that same society.” (Stoetzler, 2005, p. 352) This reinterpretation, which is using insights taken from Adorno’s notion of negative dialectics, seems to suggest that Butler’s refusal of the Foucauldian utopian notion of the ‘happy limbo’ is itself a strange argument. Strange since this argument might lead to the

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belief that we are only to suppose subversion from within a “positivist and ‘realist’ ” (Ibid. p. 353) onlook on present-day reality. What this means this that we should only dream what is plausible, and not of what could be true if we were to transcend the restrictions of normativity. Butler’s claim is in Stoetzler’s view a far-cry from the conception of a critical theory which was conceived of by The Frankfurt School. Stoetzler seems to be suggesting that Butler’s refusal of a utopia is itself a case of a critique never reaching out from the grips of what it seeks to critique. Stoetzler is reading Butler’s argument against itself, as Butler did with Foucault. Paraphrased Stoetzler is saying that: if we are only to dream that which seems to be plausible from within a normative point of view, then to what extent does this become

more of an accepting of the status quo, and less of a theory critical of the status quo?

This leads Stoetzler to suggest a reading of Butler’s critique of Foucault that might be more open to the dialectical suggestion that “the contradictions intrinsic to modern society enable thinking and imagining transcending that form of society.” (Ibid. p. 353) In such a reading, Butler’s dismissal of Foucault, along the lines of the dismissal of de Beauvoir, comes to be situated in Butler’s rejection of any form of dialectical approach. In other words: “Butler praised Foucault here [in Subjects of Desires] as a critical inheritor of Hegel in words strongly evocative of Adorno’s Negative Dialectics, while in Gender Trouble Butler came to bury Foucault for the very same reasons.” (Ibid. p. 354) In the following, we shall quickly explore the notion of drag, as an example of subversion of gender categories, before moving on to a clarification of Stoetzler’s paper: Subject Trouble Judith Butler and Dialectics, and its reinterpretation of Butler. This clarification will be made in relation to the Butler’s critique of both de Beauvoir, and the subsequent acceptance of Irigaray’s claim: that Hegelian dialectics is phallocentric. A point which Butler did not accept in Subjects of Desire.

The Performance of Drag

Butler stipulates the performance of drag as an instance of subversion of gender categories, a point which is further elaborated on in Bodies That Matter. This possibility for subversion leads Butler to suggest that:

“Occasionally in his analysis of Herculine, Foucault subscribes to a prediscursive multiplicity of bodily forces that break through the surface of the body to disrupt the regulating practices of cultural coherence imposed upon that body by a power regime, understood as a vicissitude of ‘history’.” (Butler, 1990, p. 130)

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It is this pre-discursive multiplicity which Butler refutes by arguing that gender is a mere performance of certain intelligible (or unintelligible) styles of identities. What this means is that for Butler “the organizing principle of identity … are performative … fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means.” (Ibid. p. 136) Such an understanding of the nature of identity formation makes it possible for Butler to claim that the performance of drag (but not in all cases) can be an act which has the possibility of subverting hegemonic gender categories. For Butler, this means that the performance of drag could disrupt the (normative) stable categories of gender. These acts show the repetitive nature and reinforced styling of gender categories. Though it should be mentioned that it is also possible for a drag performance to reinforce gender categories, as Sara Salih points out is the case with “Dustin Hoffman’s performance in Tootsie … and we might also add the more recent film Mrs Doubtfire.” (Salih, 2002, p. 66-67) In both of these films the performance of drag is a repetition of normative gender categories, and hence these performances come to reinforce the heterosexual matrix of gender categories, instead of revealing the inner contradiction of this matrix. Butler, in Bodies That Matter, writes of the former of these film that, “I would be reticent to call them [Victor, Victoria (1982), Tootsie (1982), and Some Like It Hot (1959)] subversive.” (Butler, 2011, p. 85) Even if Butler is arguing against an interpretation of drag which equates it with misogyny, it seems important to note in passing that such a critique has been leveled against it by “Marilyn Frye and Janice Raymond.” (Ibid. p. 86) Leaving this discussion aside, we shall instead proceed to Stoetzler’s critique of Butler’s Gender Trouble.

Subject trouble, an Immanent Critique of Dialectics

As already mentioned Stoetzler provides a highly interesting critique of Butler’s Gender

Trouble. A critique which will be outlined and explored in this section. What Stoetzler is

interested in is Butler’s break with dialectics in Gender Trouble: “[Butler here] rejected … any form of Hegelian dialectics with reference to Luce Irigaray’s (1985) claim that it is ‘phall-ogocentric’.” (Stoetzler, 2005, p. 344) A refusal which according to Stoetzler is based on certain misconceptions (by Butler and Irigaray alike) of de Beauvoir’s argument in The Second Sex:

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“first, she [Butler] suggests that de Beauvoir presupposed that a ‘natural body’ actually exists, pre-existing the ‘historical’ body; second, she falsely identifies the ‘natural’ with the ‘sexed’ and the ‘historical’ with the ‘gendered’ body.” (Ibid.

p. 349)

This division is perceived when talking about ‘biological’ or ‘cultural’ bodies, where the ‘biological’ is ‘sexed,’ and the ‘cultural’ is ‘gendered.' Regarding such a division Stoetzler extrapolates that it is founded on a misunderstanding of de Beauvoir's argument, that one is not born as a woman but rather becomes a woman. For Stoetzler, Butler’s reading of de Beauvoir “implies that an un-gendered natural body only subsequently ‘becomes a woman’.” (Ibid. p. 349) This misrepresentation is a distortion of de Beauvoir’s original point, wherein ’becoming’ was a notion loaded with dialectical ambiguity. Butler refuses de Beauvoir’s claim, and asks the Nietzschean question: Who is this subject which becomes? Only to answer that, “there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender.” (Butler, 1990, p. 25) This reply is shaped by the Nietzschean claim that “there is no ‘being’ behind doing,” (Nietzsche, 1969, p. 45) Butler’s misreading of de Beauvoir’s ‘becoming’ is thus hinged on the insistence on de Beauvoir arguing for a prediscursive body onto which gender is inscribed. This prediscursive body is that which Butler ‘falsely identifies’ with being ‘sexed’ (having a sex), as opposed to being ‘gendered’ (having a gender). What is important in this regard is that these two misconceptions of de Beauvoir’s, the de-dialecticizing of ‘becoming’ and the identification of an argument for a prediscursive body, is what leads Butler (in Stoetzler’s view) to ask questions regarding the acquisition of gender and sex which “de Beauvoir would [not] have needed to find unsettling.” (Stoetzler, 2005, p. 349) Stoetzler proposes that Butler’s rejection of dialectics, as being phallogocentric, is based on an unsupported claim which Butler rejected in Subjects of Desire. This earlier rejection of the phallogocentric nature of dialectics is what brings about Stoetzler’s proposal that Butler should be read ‘backward’. Meaning that one is to read Gender Trouble first, and then proceed to read Subjects of Desires. Stoetzler’s main point is thus that Butler’s anti-dialectical project could be read in a more anti-dialectical favorable light, by reading her backward. Butler’s question who is this I that becomes? Is itself an issue that “makes sense only when the dialectical interpenetration of being and becoming is given up.” (Ibid. p. 354) Interpenetration here is taken to mean that being is already always a becoming and vice versa. This criticism of Butler’s reading of de Beauvoir raises the question: if Butler’s critique

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of dialectics is based on a misreading of de Beauvoir, how are we then to salvage, or

understand, this critique in a way that is more favorable towards dialectics?

What is meant here is simply a question of what is left for us in Butler’s project now that it has been shown to be based on a misrepresentation. Luckily for us, Stoetzler suggests Adorno’s Negative Dialectics as a critique of dialectics which resembles Butler’s general project, while also being favorable to the dialectical enterprise. Stoetzler can thus be understood as hinting at the possibility for a reinterpretation of Butler’s critique as an immanent critique of dialectics, instead of an ‘anti-dialectical’ critique of dialectics. A point which is summarized by Stoetzler in this quote:

“Butler in Gender Trouble accuses the dialectical tradition (represented by de Beauvoir) for not being dialectical enough … While authors in the tradition of dialectical critical theory (such as Adorno) understand dialectics as an

emancipatory, critical, dynamic and open way of thinking (much like Butler herself in Subjects of Desire), Butler in Gender Trouble refers with the same term to a closed and mechanical way of thinking which the former would find to be undialectical and inadequate to understanding social and cultural practices in an antagonistic society.” (Ibid. p. 357)

The critique of dialectics which Stoetzler posits Butler is partaking in in Gender Trouble is suggested as being a undialectical critique. However, as we shall see it is also possible to reinterpret Butler’s critique, so it becomes possible to se similarities between this book and Adorno’s Negative Dialectics.

Materiality, On the Similarities in Adorno and Butler

Before concluding this chapter, it seems prudent to explore an earlier critique of Butler which was delivered by Carrie L. Hull in: The Need in Thinking, Materiality in Theodor W.

Adorno and Judith Butler. This article describes certain similarities between Adorno and

Butler, but where Stoetzler was mainly concerned with Gender Trouble, Hull is concerned with Butler’s Bodies That Matter. Though this book is an elaboration on Gender Trouble, Butler’s general proposition remains unchanged (at least the changes are small enough as not to warrant a further elaboration of them). Hull extrapolates two important arguments in Butler: Firstly, Butler is taken to insist “that there is no access to matter prior to its conceptualization in thought and language.” (Hull, 1997, p. 22), and secondly, that

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“mediation will of necessity entail partial formation or construction of reality.” (Ibid. p. 23) Regarding the first of these two points, Hull suggests that Butler’s claim that there are no genders outside of the cultural instigated gender is resembling Adorno’s argument: “that thought or language can never equate to what it is an effort to describe, its object.“ (Ibid. p. 22). In other words, Butler is suggesting that there is no gender prior to a discourse. The second point where Hull posits parallels which between the writings of Adorno and Butler is that both of them claim that language/discourse is formative of reality, but with slight deviations in their respective arguments. For Butler “discourse or language … is never purely ideal; it is not simply a reflection of prior reality because it will actually shape the materiality it supposedly mirrors.” (Ibid. p. 23) While Adorno would agree with this claim, it would be “with significant qualifications” (Ibid. p. 23) writes Hull. Hull argues that Adorno’s critique of Hegelian dialectics means that for Adorno “thought has an ʻaffirmativeʼ substance, that it can constitute reality.” (Ibid. p. 23) This claim goes well with Adorno own postulate, in

Negative Dialectics, that “The test of the turn to nonidentity is its performance; if it

remained declarative, it would be revoking itself.” (Adorno, 1973, p. 154-155) Meaning for Adorno that nonidentity affirms itself. Hull exemplifies this point by stressing that “[Adorno’s] ʻIt is soʼ has an obvious parallel with Butlerʼs ʻItʼs a girl!ʼ.” (Hull, 1997, p. 24) The clear parallel between these two statements is in the sense that both claims; ‘it is so,' and ‘it’s a girl,' are affirmations of identity. Meaning that the statements affirm the identity of the object, it thus constitutes reality – as opposed to just describing it. What seems important to take from this resemblance is the degree to which Butler could be interpreted as echoing Adorno. In the sense that both Adorno and Butler seems to suggest that interpellation, the hailing of a person, comes to affirm identity.

Another similarity which Hull posits between these two thinkers is a parallel which can be drawn between Butler's insistence on the fact that, "the man or woman who resists the norms of heterosexuality via homosexual or bisexual practice has had their rebellion defined in terms of that heterosexuality." (Ibid. p. 24) Moreover, Adorno's description of identity thinking as: "When identity thinking is aware of otherness, it can only imagine it in terms of absolute contradiction." (Ibid. p. 24) This similarity which Hull stipulates can be formulated as: Identity is already structured as either permitted (in Butler’s case this would be within a

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male/female dichotomy) or abjected6_{(A term borrowed from Julia Kristeva’s Power of} Horror [1982], in this case it comes to mean an identity located in a realm comprised of

socially unintelligible identities, outside of the margins of society.) Hull’s insistence on the similarity between Butler’s and Adorno’s view on the role of thought and language, makes Butler’s claim to a realm of unintelligible ‘sexed,’ or ’gendered’ identities an original contribution to the feminist discourse. Before concluding this chapter, it would seem sensible to quickly summarize Butler’s discussion on the role the law plays in society, as the role of the law in this Lacanian sense in important for Butler who describes Lacan’s position regarding gendered subjects as being one in which:

“The masculine ‘subject’ is a fictive construction produced by the law that prohibits incest and forces an infinite displacement of a heterosexualizing desire. The

feminine is never a mark of the subject … Rather, the feminine is the signification of lack, signified by the Symbolic.” (Butler, 1990, p. 27)

The question which Butler raises based on Lacan’s claim can be phrased as whether there are any categories to be found before an instigation of the law. In this regard, Butler’s claim that there is no ‘doer behind the deed’ becomes vital once again. As this stipulation makes it such that it is impossible to postulate anything prior to the law. The following quote by Butler should hopefully elicit this point:

“If sexuality is culturally constructed within existing power relations, then the postulation of a normative sexuality that is ‘before,’ ‘outside,’ or ‘beyond’ power is a cultural impossibility and a politically impractical dream, one that postpones the concrete and contemporary task of rethinking subversive possibilities for sexuality and identity within the terms of power itself.” (Ibid. p. 30)

In this way, Butler argues (using Lacanian Psychoanalysis mixed with the Foucauldian claim that sexuality and power coincide – thus there can be no ‘before’ the law7_{) that the}

materialistic position regarding sex/gender is an ‘impractical impossibility.' However, where Butler suggests that there is nothing before the law, Adorno would argue something

6_{”What is abject, on the contrary, the jettisoned object, is radically excluded and draws me toward the place where}

meaning collapses. A certain "ego" that merged with its master, a superego, has flatly driven it away. It lies outside, beyond the set, and does not seem to agree to the latter's rules of the game.” Kristeva, 2nd_{Essay, 1982, p. 3.} 7_{Butler, 1990, p. 29.}

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different. According to Hull Adorno would instead postulate “that the abject outside maintains a distinctness owing directly to its objectivity.” (Hull, 1997, p. 25)

A Dialectical Reading of Butler

By outlining Butler’s general argument in Gender Trouble, I have hoped to provide a basis on which the reader could come to terms with the critique leveled, by Stoetzler and Hull, against the argument of Gender Trouble. Both argued for a more dialectical inclined reading of Butler. A reading which will not attempt to reconcile the ambiguities in de Beauvoir’s notion of becoming a woman (as Butler attempts in Gender Trouble). Instead, it would also “[adopt the] typical double-figure of dialectical social criticism: the illusion of sex as a substance is real only to the extent that it is acted out – ‘performed’ – on the stage of everyday life.” (Stoetzler, 2005, p. 348) Stoetzler here seems to suggest that Butler’s argument for the illusionary status of sex must itself be played out against the backdrop of a heteronormative society and the binary notions of gender (and sex). A claim, which I think, would not be refuted by Butler, as we shall see later. This means that the unreal nature of binary sexes is itself conditioned on the seemingly natural notion of these in everyday life. This is also posited by Hull who writes that for Butler: “[the word] vagina means girl because penis means boy, and vice versa.” (Hull 1997, p. 23) An Adornian reading of this act of naming would interpret this dichotomy in an analogous way to Butler’s claim: that these sexed categories are not natural. In Adorno’s conception of a negative dialectic (which shall be explained in the coming chapter) this equation of the object (penis, vagina) to its concept (boy, girl) leaves a reminder, a something, which cannot be subsumed or described. Thus, the boy is not identical to the penis, as the girl is not identical to the vagina, “sex was gender all along, but gender never is fully identical to sex.” (Stoetzler, 2005, p. 348) By claiming this, Butler’s argument comes to resemble Adorno’s claim regarding the unsubsumable reminder. This reminder is what is the nonidentity of identity and nonidentity.

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Adorno, a Negative Dialectics

This chapter deals with Theodor W. Adorno’s conception of negative dialectics. First will be a brief biographic introduction, followed by an explanation of negative dialectics – both as a critique of Kant’s, and Hegel’s dialectics. Together with an account of the theoretical developments that led Adorno to posit a negative dialectics – the latter will provide examples of Adorno’s use of Psychoanalysis and Marxist theory, as examples of two theoretical frameworks for carrying out a philosophical critique.

Adorno was a prominent member of what is known as the Frankfurt School (also called The

Institute). This was a group of scholars was based loosely around The Institute for Social

Research in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The goal of The Institute was to promote Marxist studies in Germany8_{, and later under the guidance of Horkheimer primary in relation to}

social theory. It is therefore hardly any surprise to the reader that The Institute was forced to shut down, and it members went into exile during the 1930’s with the rise of Nazism in Germany and the subsequent war. Adorno was at the beginning reluctant to join The

Institute but returned to Frankfurt in 1949 to take up a chair at the philosophy department.

Before returning to Germany from the US, Adorno had become more and more important for The Institute during the 1930s and 40’s. While more can easily be said of Adorno’s role as a part of The Frankfurt School, this would be outside of the scope of this thesis (see instead i.e. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Adorno, or Müller-Doohm [2005]). What is important regarding Adorno’s assimilation with The Institute is the fact that, while in exile, Adorno wrote the Dialectics of Enlightenment, together with Max Horkheimer, (who was the director of The Institute, a position which Adorno would later come to hold): who was another prominent member of the Frankfurt School. This book became widely influential within, and outside of The Institute and came to be formative of its view on culture and society. Another important book published by Adorno was Negative Dialectics. The particularities of the history of this book is quite interesting, but for our purpose it shall serve just to mention that it was supposed to be published with Max Horkheimer, but because of their exile - and the rise of fascism in Europe in the 30’s and 40’s, Adorno and

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Horkheimer decided to write Dialectics of the Enlightenment instead of what was to become Adorno’s Negative Dialectics.

The primary source of this chapter will be Negative Dialectics, as it is widely regarded as Adorno’s theoretical masterpiece. While often described as; hard to read, and as riddled with contradictions, this book is the culmination of Adorno’s thinking. A book in which Adorno’s writing culminates in the creation of a new brand of dialectics – one which is construed negatively (meaning a reversal of the earlier dialectics of Hegel). It has however been necessary, due to limitations on the scope of this chapter to focus on certain aspects of this book. This chapter shall thus be limited in regards to the concepts and arguments used from Adorno’s Negative Dialectics.

The first part of this chapter; which is entitled Negative Dialectics is an account of Adorno’s conception of dialectics, which is opposed both to Hegelian and Kantian dialectics. Followed by an account of the development and theoretical groundwork of Adorno’s dialectic. In the second part of this chapter on Marx and Freud we will examine Adorno’s usage of, their theories as methods for conducting philosophical investigations into the nature of concepts.

Negative Dialectics

The following is an attempt at an elaboration of Adorno’s conception of a negative dialectics, its connection to the earlier theory of a logic of disintegration, and Adorno’s reinterpretation of Walter Benjamin’s theory of constellations. The primary goal of this first part is to explain Adorno’s negative dialectics and its connection to what Adorno calls the principle of nonidentity. Together with a theoretical grounding of earlier concepts which helped Adorno develop this dialectic. At the beginning of Negative Dialectics Adorno suggests that “philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed.” (Adorno, 1973, p. 3) A claim which is best understood as a comment on what Adorno thinks is the purpose of philosophy9_{. It is a comment on the fact that philosophy;}

has either gotten stuck in metaphysical thoughts, or in phenomenological thoughts on the nature of the ‘Other.’ Instead Adorno cclaim that we are not to be limited by a phenomenological description of the world, nor by a transcendental description (which seeks to transcend and reach a unified whole. Andrew Bowie explains this as:

9_{A reference to Marx’ 11th thesis on Feuerbach (1845): “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various}

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“What Adorno seeks in philosophy are ways of transcending the world as it

presents itself to us in specific historical circumstances, where the pressure of those circumstances can blind people to more humane alternatives.” (Bowie, 2013, p. 23)

These alternatives, which Bowie attributes to Adorno, are the emancipatory possibility for a world transcending philosophy. A philosophy of this kind would not accept the world as it is given. Instead, it would seek “not to philosophize about concrete things; [instead] we are to philosophize, rather, out of these things.” (Adorno, 1973, p. 33) A point which might be said to fit with Butler’s project in Gender Trouble, where the goal is to philosophize one’s way out of the heteronormative conception of gendered and sexed categories.

Adorno’s whole conception of a negative dialectics rests upon the notion of a prior conception of a logic of disintegration. The connection between both of these notions is described as: “ ‘the principle of nonidentity’, which Adorno was to develop with increasing richness, [and which] became the foundation of his philosophy, that is, of ‘negative dialectics’.“ (Buck-Morss, 1977, p. 63) The principle of nonidentity, which is to be understood as Adorno’s break with Hegelian dialectics, is Adorno’s suggestion of the nonidentity of identity, and of nonidentity, a point which will be developed later. Chronologically the conception of a logic of disintegration was developed long before negative dialectics, as it is an elaboration on a logic of disintegration which had been suggested by Benjamin. In the following I will elicit Adorno’s notion of a negative dialectics by referencing to his critique of; primarily; Hegel and to some extent Kant. The attentive reader might note that Adorno also criticizes Husserl, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard in

Negative Dialectics. This critique, while interesting from a theoretical point of view, is

outside of the scope of this thesis. While it might be claimed that this limitation might construe the theoretical investigation towards a certain interpretation, the phenomenological aspects of Adorno’s Negative Dialectics are taken to have little importance for the project of this thesis. As our concern is mainly with dialectics, and the usage of Marxism and Psychoanalysis.

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Negative Dialectics, and the Principle of Nonidentity

Adorno in Negative Dialectics describes Hegelian dialectics as claiming, together with Marxist dialectics that the negation of negation is a positive. However, where Marx argues that: “The capitalist mode of appropriation … is the negation of negation.” (Marx, 2013, p. 535) Hegelian dialectics is often described as “Hegel’s dialectics follows a thesis-antithesis-synthesis pattern” (Maybee, Winter 2016). Adorno opposed these two notions of dialectics, and instead claimed that “to negate a negation does not bring about its reversal.” (Adorno, 1973, p. 159) In its place, Adorno suggests that “what is negated is negative until it has passed. This is the decisive break with Hegel [and Marx].” (Adorno, 1973, p. 160). Adorno is here positing that the difference between, on the one hand, negative dialectics, and on the other Hegelian dialectics, is a difference in their claim to either being positive or negative. A difference in the sense that the negative dialectics which Adorno comes to suggest is to be thought of as being purely negative (i.e. the negation of negation is negative), whereas the Hegelian dialectics, is conceived as being positive (the negation of negation is positive). To put this in different words; since negative dialectics follows another logic than the Hegelian dialectics, it comes to a radically different conclusion regarding concepts and objects. To understand this development of the logic implied in dialectics, and how Adorno comes to break with Hegelian dialectics, it is necessary to trace dialectics back to how it was envisioned by Kant, as Hegel’s dialectics was a critique of Kant. This shall be done in a simplified way so as only to provide an outline on which to understand Hegel’s dialectics in its historical context.

Another reason for returning to Kant is that Adorno “uses Kant to criticize Hegel and Hegel to criticize Kant.” (Jarvis, 1998, p. 152) Hence we should be able to shed valuable light on the tradition of dialectics and the development of it. A tradition which Adorno critiques and expands upon in Negative Dialectics. While Adorno’s negative dialectics differs from the analytic theories of that time (e.g. mathematical logic, formal logic), Adorno’s theory does engage which a certain kind of logic, as Alison Stone writes: “[Adorno] does engage with an alternative tradition in logic which Kant and Hegel developed.” (Cook et al. 2008, p. 47) This is a logic which takes contradictions as its beginnings, and from these engages with oppositions to elicit truth. It is a logic used by both Kant and Hegel, and before these, in the dialectic developed by Socrates and the greek philosophers. Socratic dialectics shall only mention in passing here, to position dialectics within a historical, philosophical tradition.

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This notion of dialectic was a method of presentation were Socrates attempted, by way of example, to show the contradictions of the opponent’s argument10_.

Kant in his writings distinguished between two kinds of logic: general and transcendental logic. Of which we shall only be concerned with the latter, as this is the logic which Hegel critiques, and which Adorno then salvages and uses against Hegel. In Kantian terms, transcendental logic is a mode of inquiry which; “tries to identify which concepts structure

any thinking at all about objects.” (Ibid. p. 48) Or if one wishes to hear it from Kant: “Whatever the content of our cognition may be, and however it may be related to the object, the general though to be sure only negative condition of all of our judgments whatsoever is that they do not contradict themselves; otherwise these judgments in themselves are nothing.” (Kant 1998, 279)

Meaning that for Kant some concepts are a priori (e.g. causality, substance, unity) and that these concepts are paramount for us to be able to experience objects at all11_{. These concepts}

comprise the knowledge which Kant claim is how objects are thought12_{. This is a knowledge}

which is opposed to what is known empirically (a posteriori). Kant can thus be said to operate with two distinct kinds of knowledge: a priori and a posteriori. This means that for Kant understanding becomes doing, an act done to the empirical data which we receive. It is impossible to have any knowledge without this knowledge being structured in some way. And a priori concepts make it possible for us to have meaningful judgments about sense data, as opposed to having to guess an object’s meaning every time it is encountered. Based on such judgments we can identify concepts with their objects. This is to say that, if one has the right judgments to go with an identification, one can make a correct identification. In this regard, it should be noted that Kant distinguishes between; form – which is how an object is given to us through our understanding, while matter is how an object is given to us by our senses13_{. The latter a fact which is not lost on Butler in Bodies That Matter when}

claiming that: “This unsettling of ‘matter’ [by way of critical inquiry] can be understood as initiating new possibilities, new ways for bodies to matter.” (Butler, 2011, p. 6) What Butler is hinting at here is the possibility of creating new objects, or ways for bodies to (be)

10_{Maybee, Winter 2016, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-dialectics/} 11_{Cook et al. 2008, p. 48.}

12_{Bennett, 1974, p. 16.} 13_{Cook et al. 2000, p. 16.}

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matter(ed), or sensed. This point besides, the following will provide an account of Hegel’s critique of Kant’s transcendental logic.

While Hegel did, in fact, accept Kant’s claim that experiences are actively structured into basic categories, Hegel did, however, maintain that these categories must be deductible (a posteriori), and thus they cannot be a priori as Kant argued14_{. Hegelian thought can roughly}

be said to be based on a disagreement with the Kantian understanding of the separateness of form and matter15_{. What this means is that for Hegel “causality is not just a category in}

terms of which we must think, but a basic principle that organizes all mind-independent things into causal relations.” (Cook et al. 2008, p. 49) What is important for Hegel is that categories build on each other in a three-stage model. A model which is constituted by: “abstraction or understanding – where we begin with a certain category; dialectic – where this category generates or turns into its opposite; and the speculative stage – which reconciles the first two categories.” (Ibid. p. 49) In other words, the three-part dialectics of Hegel which is often summarized to students as, thesis-antithesis-synthesis.

As already pointed out Adorno disagrees with Hegel on the matter of whether, or not, the negation of negation is positive or negative. This does however not mean that Adorno shies away from dialectics. Instead, Adorno conceives of dialectics as a way of criticizing a dominant social/historical Anschauung. By placing an emphasis on the historical situation Adorno comes to have has more in common with the Marxist interpretation of importance of context, than with the Hegelian notion of history:

“[Regarding] history as an intelligible process moving towards a specific

condition—the realization of human freedom … And he views it to be a central task for philosophy to comprehend its place in the unfolding of history ... Hegel

constructs world history into a narrative of stages of human freedom.”

(Little, Summer 2017)

This stands in sharp contrast to both Kant’s and Hegel’s dialectics, which was more concerned with the basic categories of understanding than with the historical context of the social. The second difference between Adorno’s and Hegel’s dialectics can be boiled down to the way in which they respectively confront the notion of reconciliation; “In Hegel,

14_{Cook et al. 2008, p. 49.} 15_{Adorno, 1973, p. 144.}

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reconciliation occurs whenever a second category proves to be essentially the same as the first.” (Cook et al. 2008, p. 52-53) This understanding of reconciliation differs from Adorno’s, who would propose that there is still something in the second category which cannot be identical with the first category – hence for Adorno there is always something which will escape a reconciliation, i.e. the nonidentity of identity and nonidentity, a reminder. Regarding this Stone uses an example of the reconciliation between nature and culture which occurs both in Adorno and in Hegel. For Hegel, contradictions become reconciled when “enquiry establish nature as essentially rational.” (Ibid. p. 53) Opposed to this Adorno suggests that “our thinking depends on and grows out of impulses that are not wholly rational.” (Ibid. p. 53) Meaning that in Adorno’s reconciliation rationality never eclipsed irrationality, or, enlightenment has never surpassed myth (it simply reverted into it). Once again, this points us towards the fact that where Hegelian dialectics are constructed as positive - in the sense that it reconciles contradictions. This is not the dialectics envisioned by Adorno, instead this dialectics is far more negative. But Hegel’s

thesis-antithesis-synthesis does share some similarities with Adorno negative dialectics. This might be the

similarity between Adorno’s reconciliation and the Hegelian notion of sublimation (Aufheben). In Hegel, something new comes out of what was prior without actually destroying the previous. An example of this could be Adorno’s description of the relationship between nature and culture in Dialectics of Enlightenment. Here, Adorno comes to posit that the nature which the enlightenment seeks to surpass, comes back as enlightenment thought itself. Meaning that the wish for progress is, in fact, itself a part of human nature. Adorno writes that: “Enlightenment consummates and abolishes itself when the closest

practical objectives reveal themselves to be the most distant goal already attained.” (Adorno,

1947, p. 33) This movement of negating itself, which the enlightenment comes to perform in Adorno, is somewhat similar to the Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis.

Instead of following Hegelian dialectics zealously, Adorno accepts that there are some things which cannot be excluded, that neither can be reconciled with either of the dialectical poles. Meaning that in Adorno’s dialectics, there is some part of the concept of nature which escapes nature’s inherent rationality, meaning that some part of nature escapes scientific rationalizing. Adorno is seemingly accepting a paradoxical idea, namely that every concept holds within it something which is non-identical to its concept. Adorno comes to interpret

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the Hegelian reconciliation as being anti-dialectic, and as resembling mathematical logic. Instead of this logic Adorno posits, a logic of disintegration which is described as:

“To equate the negation of negation with positivity is the quintessence of

identification; it is the formal principle in its purest form. What thus wins out in the inmost core of dialectics is the anti-dialectical principle: that traditional logic which, more arithmetico, takes minus times minus for a plus. It was borrowed from that very mathematics to which Hegel reacts so idiosyncratically elsewhere.”

(Adorno, 1973, p. 158)

We will return to this later, for now we will content ourselves with how Adorno in Negative

Dialectics highlights two important points that explain what negative dialectics is. Firstly, it

is a mode of philosophical inquiry, and secondly, it is a critique of the idealistic dialectics found in both Kant and Hegel. Adorno once stated that there could be no poetry after Auschwitz16_{, as a rejection of the possibilities present in the profoundly positive notions of}

dialectics as we saw it in Hegelian dialectics. This point was made by Zoltán Tarr who writes that “in the dialectics of Hegel and Marx, the negation of the negation results in a position on a higher level. After Auschwitz, this is no longer possible.” (Tarr, 1977, p. 146) Auschwitz for Adorno was the ultimate proof of how progress reverts into barbarianism, thus foreclosing the possibility of a positive dialectics, as Hegel had envisioned. Meaning that the negative dialectics Adorno comes to formulate must be embedded within the context it seeks to examine. What is important for Adorno is that this new mode of critique is immanent, meaning that it is a critique which criticizes a context from within. Critique in this sense would be a critical self-reflection which would have to work its way out of its context – or as Adorno writes: “The only way out of the dialectical context of immanence is by that context itself. Dialectics is critical reflection upon that context.” (Adorno, 1973, p. 141) This means that it is impossible in Adorno’s view to take philosophy out of the context which surrounds it. Paraphrasing this; philosophy is always already situated in, and engaged with, a certain historical context. Thus, Adorno’s negative dialectics is a decisive break with Hegelian idealism. A break that comes in the form of Adorno’s “rejection of ‘identity’ in favor of ‘non-identity’.” (Sherman, 2016, p. 353)

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Any such thinking, which speculates of a primacy allocated to the object is precisely the thinking which Adorno turns on its head when positing that the goal of negative dialectics is “To change this direction of conceptuality, to give it a turn toward non-identity.” (Adorno, 1973, p. 12) This means that any claim to an identity, or unity, between concepts and objects, are ignoring their differences. Ignoring the differences in the sense that they are positing universality where none is to be found. To put this in other words, the identity of a concept and an object, can only be stipulated if their inherent differences (their nonidentity) are ignored. An example of this might be a sentence like: this ‘dog’ is a dog. If this ‘dog’ is to be a part of the general conception of what it is to be a dog, we have already established that ‘dog’ is identical to the universal concept of dog. Here Adorno comes to say that it is in the contradiction between a particular (‘dog’) and a universal (dog) that the nonidentity of both concepts comes to be revealed. Negative dialectics can be said to be “the consistent sense of nonidentity.” (Adorno, 1973, p. 5) In other words, “nonidentity is the secret telos of identification.” (Ibid. p. 149) Identity in this sense can never be a universal identity, but must always only a particular identity. Meaning that ‘dog’ cannot be fathomed by the universal category of dog. By claiming that this ‘dog’ is a part of what we take to be the general conception of dog, we lose knowledge of the fact that this ‘dog’ is this dog. This is, of course, a simplistic way of paraphrasing Adorno’s critique of identity thinking. However, it highlights the fact that what Adorno’s critique of identity thinking is criticizing is the equation between a concept and its object:

“To define identity as the correspondence of the thing-in-itself to its concept is hubris; but the ideal of identity must not simply be discarded. Living in the rebuke that the thing is not identical with the concept is the concept’s longing to become identical with the thing. This is how the sense of nonidentity contains identity.”

(Ibid. p. 149)

By realizing that concepts are not the totality of their object, and vice versa, Adorno comes to suggest that we opt for nonidentity thinking instead of identity thinking. What Adorno is grasping at here, reaching towards, has been expressed as the “repressed truth of the ‘ineffable’ that represented the utterly untrue in Hegel’s eyes.” (Jarvis, 2007, p. 181) An example of identity and nonidentity can be found in Adorno’s interpretation of Marx’s theory of exchange value. Here Adorno argues that the barter principle is in effect an identification made between a product (use) and currency (exchange):

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“The barter principle, the reduction of human labor to the abstract universal concept of average working hours, is fundamentally akin to the principle of identification … It is through barter that nonidentical individuals and performances become commensurable and identical.” (Ibid. p. 146)

This criticism of the barter principle, as an identifying principle of thought allows us to realize that it is the principle itself which is nonidentical with reality. By way of an immanent critique of the barter principle, we come to realize its transgressions against the principle of equality17_{. Thus, we have come to realize the non-identical aspect of the barter principle –}

by unmasking its ideal of “free and just barter” (Ibid. p. 147) as its inner contradiction. Returning shortly to Hegel, who suggested that an identity was to be found in the synthesis between identity and nonidentity. This is opposed to Adorno’s notion of nonidentity, where nonidentity was not obtained through a synthesis, but instead through provoking the revelation of the nonidentity of concepts and their objects. Where Hegelian dialectics saw a possibility for achieving systemic completion, this possibility is nonexistent in the dialectics of Adorno18_{. Nevertheless, this does not mean that we can have (direct) access to the}

nonidentical. According to Adorno, we can: “have access to the nonidentical via conceptual criticisms of false identifications.” (Zuidervaart, Winter 2015) However, to see such a conceptual criticism, and to become aware of this false identification, we often need a kick off to see other possibilities. Such a kick off could e.g. some performances of drag, or other of what Butler came to call subversive performances. Drag, in the sense of a kickoff, would then be an act which shows other possible ways of being gendered. Meaning that a drag performance, as a subversive act, would posit the possibility of genders to be rethought, reformulated, and renewed. Hence there must be an experience that suggests the false identity of naturalized concepts, prior to any criticism of these. Negative dialectics is hence to be conceived of as a method (in the broadest sense of the word, being a method that is dynamic and changing/changeable) that can stimulate these kinds of conceptual criticisms by showing what is nonidentical of a perceived identity.

17_{Adorno, 1973, p. 190.} 18_{Buck-Morss, 1977, p 63.}

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Logic of Disintegration

This logic was the theoretical backbone of Adorno’s writings in the thirties19_{, and in an}

attempt to keep this explanation concise this part will draw heavily on the secondary literature of Susan Buck-Morss’ book The Origin of Negative Dialectics. It might be the case that there are other interpretations of how, or even whether the earlier Adorno’s conception of a logic of disintegration could even be equated as strongly with Adorno’s latter conception of a negative dialectics as Buck-Morss equates it. This is however taken to have little influence on our current purposes, as this account is primarily aimed at showing where Adorno’s negative dialectics developed from, its roots. Adorno explains this connection as:

“Its motion [a dialectics no longer reconcilable with that of Hegel] does not tend to the identity in the difference between each object and its concept; instead, it is suspicious of all identity. Its logic is one of disintegration: of a disintegration of the prepared and objectified form of the concepts which the cognitive subject faces, primarily and directly. Their identity with the subject is untruth.” (Adorno, 1973,

p. 145)

This logic is for Adorno one which is inherent in bourgeois society, a logic that can be exemplified by the splitting of academic disciplines; i.e. theology from philosophy, or chemistry from physics. This specialization for Adorno illustrates a reproduction of the present way of production20_{, a reproduction of the division of labor, of specialization and}

rationalization of society. Adorno thus came to propose the necessity of applying this logic to itself, meaning that the goal of philosophy was to show that the truth inherent in capitalist (bourgeois) society were untrue (nonidentical with itself). Or as Buck-Morss describes it, Adorno called for “a liquidation of idealism from within.” (Buck-Morss, 1977, p. 64)

Another important thing to notice here is how Adorno is indebted to the writings of Walter Benjamin. As Buck-Morss points out: Adorno’s conception of a logic of disintegration was inspired by the early works of Benjamin21_{. Adorno came to borrow Benjamin’s notion that}

the utmost importance for philosophy is that it should carry out its criticism from within its context. And that such a project could only be achieved by using capitalism’s inherent logic

19_{Buck-Morss, 1977, p 63.} 20_{Buck-Morss, 1977, p. 64.} 21_{Buck-Morss, 1977, p. 64.}

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(a logic of disintegration) against itself, as a way to break “out of bourgeois idealism.” (Ibid. p. 66) This act of breaking out can only be realized by an immanent critique, a mode of critique, or inquiry which was the to become a pillar in Adorno’s conception of negative dialectics. Hence Adorno came to regard truth to be found in the object, the material, but not without being aided by a subject; meaning that truth needs the subjective experience to be released by a kickoff22_{. This release can be understood as an action undertaken by using}

an immanent critique as a starting point. Thus, for Adorno, the material truth of an object is to be found in a subjects working its way out through the fogged glasses of bourgeois idealism, identity thinking.

The subject is appropriated by Adorno as a way of realizing what is true in the object. Here Adorno returns to Kant, but reinterpret his “individual, spontaneous, knowing subject” (Ibid. p. 82) against the grain. This new interpretation is one in which the nonidentity of the subject, and of the object, becomes the core tenet of Adorno's twist on Kant. Turning Kant’s notions into their contradictions, Adorno insists on the primacy of nonidentity over identity. An insistence that led Adorno to the realization that an individual will always be nonidentical with its pronounced identity, and that there is always something which escapes an identification. Even though identity is needed if the individual is to be non-identical to itself; the subject cannot escape the predicament of not being identical with its identity. In other words, for Adorno, there is an importance placed upon that which is; unconventional, nonconformist or queer.

Constellations

Another concept which Adorno borrows from Benjamin is the theory of constellations23_{, and}

this notion is introduced as a way to gain insights into the uniqueness of an object. Here it is important to note that concepts for Adorno always enter into a constellation with other concepts, and hence they are equally determined by and determines other concepts. A group of concepts hence enters into a constellation which form an object. However, Adorno also suggests that we cannot have any exhaustive understanding of the constellation of an object, in this sense, Adorno breaks with the Hegelian conception of a range of concepts24_{. Meaning}

that for Adorno we can only know a concept’s constellation within a certain context, and this

22_{Buck-Morss, 1977, p. 81.}

23_{“Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars” - Benjamin 1985, p. 34.} 24_{Cook, 2008, p. 58.}