T.W. Adorno : the memory of utopia

This thesis has two principal aims: to demonstrate the centrality of memory to \nthe philosophy and aesthetics of T. W. Adorno, and to assess its philosophical \nsignificance. Although in recent years Adorno's work has been the object of increased \nscrutiny within Anglo-American philosophical circles, as yet little sustained attention has \nbeen devoted to the concept of memory within Adorno's oeuvre. However, in Dialectic \nof Enlightenment Adorno and Horkheimer proclaimed that it is "by virtue of this \nmemory of nature in the subject" that "enlightenment is universally opposed to \ndomination. "Given that all of Adorno's work is concerned to redeem enlightenment \nfrom domination, the importance of a philosophical interpretation of the concept of \nmemory is pivotal for an engagement with the legacy of Adorno's thought today. \nIt will be argued that, for Adorno, memory always operates in relation to \nreification. The construal of this relation enjoins the consideration of a number of \nsignificant categories within Adorno's work: notably tradition, experience, mimesis and \nutopia; and further, it serves to situate and distance Adorno from those thinkers - Kant, \nHegel, Heidegger and Benjamin - with whom he incessantly engages. Finally, by \nfocusing on the relation between memory and reification, one can gauge the stakes of \nthe Habermasian critique of Adorno, for it is Adorno's understanding of reconciliation \n(utopia) as the "remembrance (Eingedenken) of nature in the subject" that is the crux \nof the agon between Habermas and Adorno. I will argue that it is Habermas's failure to \nfully engage with the ramifications of Adorno's concept of memory that vitiates his \ncritique, and indeed, that this failure provides the means for an Adornian critique of \nHaberman. It will be argued that memory is not an object of Adornian thought, but \nrather, that it provides the utopian texture of that thought.