Re-examining Adorno on the Regression of Consciousness and Democracy: Towards Social Transformation

Abstract

Scholars have charged Adorno of hypocritically abandoning efforts to articulate possibilities of social transformation, a propensity he emphasizes is central to social critique and sociocritical sociology. Keeping consistent with his fundamentally negative position, this essay reexamines democracy by scoping his work and reorganizing its philosophical and sociological contexts to open dialogue on the characteristics of democracy that Adorno would not reject. Throughout, I negatively reflect upon the nature of this democracy and criticize it towards the goal of fleshing out the paths of social transformation possible and available for its realization – through the things it could not be. Adopting this coupling as a point of departure, I analyze the regression of consciousness in Adorno’s thought, as the root of ego-weakness – the destroyer of maturity and that which underpins every shackle he sees as subjugating the masses – and bring this into dialogue with the insights informed by Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and action theory. To examine the practical implications of social transformation, this essay will also demonstrate how they play out in contemporary contexts, drawing parallels with evidence from contemporary social movements, on account of their conception as a means of social transformation and of Adorno’s own engagement with this conception.