Abstract

This dissertation investigates Theodor W. Adorno's concept of technology as elaborated by his negative dialectical critique of modern western philosophy and culture. Because, for Adorno, technology is always deployed by the subject, the dissertation also investigates Adorno's concept of subjectivity. Adorno's association of technological domination of nature with totalitarianisms of all sorts is stressed, and Adorno's professed aim of disrupting totalizations is critically analyzed. ;The first two chapters examine Adorno's complication of the concept of technology. Chapter 1 explicates Adorno's point that technology can best be understood as a mode of thinking which he designates "technological rationality". Chapter 2 discusses Adorno's analysis of the social and cultural manifestations of technological thinking. It also examines Walter Benjamin's crucial influence on Adorno's analysis. In Chapter 3, Adorno's negative dialectical response to the dangers of technology is examined. ;Chapter 4 offers an extended critique both of Adorno's concept of technology and of his negative dialectic. It shows that all problems of technology in Adorno's work are fundamentally also problems of language. It therefore investigates Adorno's philosophy of language as well as his unorthodox use of language. It is proposed that Adorno's negative dialectical critique of technology and his reassertion of a negative metaphysics of subjectivity undercut themselves. Yet it is also proposed that the very passages in Adorno which inadvertently undermine his negative dialectic also achieve its aim: the subversion of technological totalization. The Appendix takes a closer look at the techniques of linguistic subversion both explicit and implicit in Adorno's philosophy.