Event overview
InC Seminar Series: The future: philosophy between utopia and end-time prophecy'
Sebastian Truskolaski (Goldsmiths) 'Bilderverbot: Adorno, Benjamin and the ban on images of the future'
In this paper I aim to expound Theodor Adorno’s notion of an imageless materialism, as it appears in his ‘Negative Dialectics’ (1966). I will contend that Adorno’s idea is forged in response to a polemic with Walter Benjamin concerning the notion of the image, evinced in a series of letters from the 1930’s. I will begin by asking what role the image plays in Benjamin’s early work (particularly the ‘Origin of German Tragic Drama’ [1925]) and what development it undergoes in the notes informing his unfinished ‘Arcades Project’ (1927-1940). That is: what role do images play in Benjamin’s conception of a materialist philosophy of history and which aspects of this construction does Adorno attack? It will be my aim to prove that, on Adorno’s self-understanding, his critique of Benjamin amounts, not only to a defence of his friends’ early insights against their subsequent revision, but, rather, to an intensification of their theological impulse. That is, by referring to the biblical Bilderverbot: the ban on the positive schematization of utopia, Adorno seeks to redeem Benjamin’s project from the crossroads of magic and positivism by articulating the notion of an imageless materialism. I hope that this confrontation of Adorno’s and Benjamin’s works will illuminate the character of the image under the aspect of a materialist philosophy of history, and –despite (or, indeed, because of) their differences– ultimately serve to unpack something of the theologically inflected Marxism that is common to both their positions.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 20 Mar 2012 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm |
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