Partiendo de la recurrencia del motivo de la pobreza de la experiencia en el marco de la Teoría crítica y su entorno más afín, nos proponemos tematizar la equivocidad que presenta el mismo mediante la delimitación de sus diferentes sentidos en Adorno, Horkheimer y Benjamin. Ello nos permitirá dejar esbozadas las líneas generales de una problemática que, a nuestro entender, es producto de cierta complementariedad pero a la vez tensión entre dichos sentidos.

A diverse range of actors, from practitioners and academics to civil society groups and activists, appear to see hope in international law for the advancement of their causes. This article examines whether this optimism is well-founded. It explores whether international law can serve as an agent of social change, and whether it can accommodate radical changes in social order. It begins by exposing a formalist stance that is immanent to much ‘legal activist’ discourse. It then explores links between this mode (...) of jurisprudential thought and idealist epistemology. Drawing from the philosophy of Theodor Adorno, and in particular his notion of ‘identity-thinking’, it uncovers structural connections between formalism, idealism, law and economy that call into question international law’s socially-transformative potential. The perspective advanced in this article falls somewhere between the polarities of opportunity and impasse, seeking to acknowledge the importance of legal strategies in safeguarding the disenfranchised, while remaining alive to their potential dangers and limitations. (shrink)