Subject and subjectivity in Theodor W. Adorno’s critical theory

Abstract

The article´s central purpose is to analyze the notions of subject and subjectivity in Theodor W. Adorno’s Critical Theory. I argue that Adorno proposes a negative dialectic of the subject, since he conceives subjectivity both in its active and constituent sense and in its passive and constituted meaning, showing the opposites without reconciling them. I consider that the Adornian notion of subjectivity is a constellation shaped both by ideas taken from the modern-Enlightenment model of the subject, and by notions resulting from its immanent critique. It is, then, the image of a reconfigured subject. The article is made up of the following moments: first, I carry out a minimal reconstruction of the concept of “subject” in the wake of modern-Enlightenment thought, the intellectual history of modernity and its elaborations in Kantian philosophy. Secondly, I recover some traces of the Adornian critique of the model of the modern-Enlightenment subject. Finally, I make a first approach to the notion of subjectivity in Adorno from the concept of critical selfreflection and its links with those of mimesis and memory.