Abstract

This dissertation explores the political implications of Derrida's deconstruction by setting forth its roots in the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, and specifically in the works of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. The project probes the relationship between the three thinkers by means of their shared conception of the responsibility of critique and their progressively radical transformations of the Hegelian dialectic that arise from an ever-broadening and less determined notion of negativity as it develops from determinate negation to differance. Derrida's deconstruction is presented as the most radical of these transformations, yet still recognizably within this genealogy of dialectical thought. A brief epilogue sketches the effects of these radical dialectics on some key points of modern political theory