ABSTRACT:
Questioning the place of Theodor W. Adorno's philosophy within contemporary critical thought, this article attempts to account for the politico-philosophical reception of Adorno's negative dialectics (from critical appraisals by Habermas, Lyotard, or Agamben, to sympathetic ones by Jameson or Holloway) and to discuss its present-day relevance. I argue that it is possible to politicize Adorno's work, although its critical valences go far beyond this possibility. Today, negative dialectics would provide an antidote against the shortcuts taken by 'voluntarist' (cf. Peter Hallward), 'messianic' (cf. Agamben) and 'ontological' (cf. speculative realism) turns/trends in twenty-first-century philosophy. However, in view of the complexity of Adorno's appraisal of the interplay between theory and praxis, the current relevance of his thought gains plausibility by being linked with critical responses to 'speculative realism'. In dialogue with some of its interlocutors (Markus Gabriel and Adrian Johnston), I suggest that developing a 'constellative dialectics' depends on the introduction of a detotalizing element within the radical - at once materialistic and transcendental - diagnosis of negative dialectics.
KEYWORDS:
Theodor W. Adorno; negative dialectics; critique; politics; constellation