Abstract

ExcerptResigned and Radical Thought It has been said on numerous occasions that Frankfurt School critical theory is, and always was, a spent force. Its totalizing theory of reification leads to a reification of the theory itself. Famously, Adorno was forced to answer to the “reproach” of “resignation” from his students during the 1960s.1 Adorno had already defined his project as “melancholy science,” and it is not difficult to connect melancholia to resignation.2 In this essay Adorno will be read by way of a polemical inversion of melancholy, as it is commonly understood. This interpretation is motivated by…