Negative Organicism: Adorno, Emerson, and the Idea of a Disclosing Critique of Society. Issue 3 (2nd July 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Särkelä, Arvi
• Is Part Of: Critical horizons. Volume 21:Issue 3(2020)
• Page Start: 222
• Page End: 239
• Publication Date: 2020-07-02
• Subjects: Disclosing critique -- Adorno -- Emerson -- critical theory -- second nature -- social ontology; Critical theory -- Periodicals; 142.05
• DOI: 10.1080/14409917.2020.1790752
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1440-9917

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article articulates the idea of a disclosing critique of society. It starts from the assumption that the curiously organicistic undertones of Adorno's negative social ontology is part and parcel of a disclosing gesture in his social criticism. It then traces Adorno's debate with social organicists to the point where the critical theorist's own concept of society emerges with a claim to be critical in itself. It is argued that this critical claim is enforced by a disclosing gesture. To articulate what is at stake in this gesture of critical disclosure a parallel is drawn, and contrast made, to Emerson's conception of disclosure as "drawing a circle around a circle". The relationship between Adorno's and Emerson's conceptions of critical disclosure is complex. However, their juxtaposition allows for a distinction between two directions of critical disclosure. It will be argued that disclosing critique of society can be understood as an exemplary dissociation from alienated society by means of a creative association of empirical knowledge, poetic description and philosophical speculation by a critic standing, as it were, with one foot inside and the other outside our form of life.