Espen Hammer - Adorno and the Political

'Hammer is to be congratulated for presenting a lucid and consistent case for the significance of Adorno's political thought, doing justice to its complexity while situating it within its specific historical context.'

Howard Caygill, University of London

Clearly written, well-structured ... It is a remarkable achievement to have attained this level of clarity about a topic that is this difficult and obscure.

Raymond Geuss, University of Cambridge

Interest in Theodor W. Adorno continues to grow in the English-speaking world as the significance of his contribution to philosophy, social and cultural theory, as well as aesthetics, is increasingly recognized. In this lucid book, Espen Hammer critically considers and investigates Adornos political thought.

Espen Hammer examines Adornos political experiences and assesses his engagement with Marxist as well as liberal theory. Looking at the development of Adornos thought as he confronts fascism and modern mass culture, Hammer then analyzes the political dimension of his philosophical and aesthetic theorizing. By addressing Jrgen Habermas influential criticisms, he defends Adorno as a theorist of autonomy, responsibility, and democratic plurality. He also discusses Adornos relevance for feminist and ecological thinking. As opposed to those who see Adorno as someone who relinquished the political, Hammers account shows his reflections to be, on the most fundamental level, politically motivated and deeply engaged.

Adorno & the Political is an invigorating exploration of a key political thinker and also a useful introduction to his thought as a whole. It will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of philosophy, sociology, politics, and aesthetics.

Espen Hammer is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Essex. He is the author of Stanley Cavell: Skepticism, Subjectivity, and the Ordinary .

General editors:
Keith Ansell Pearson
University of Warwick
Simon Critchley
University of Essex

Recent decades have seen the emergence of a distinct and challenging body of work by a number of Continental thinkers that has fundamentally altered the way in which philosophical questions are conceived and discussed. This work poses a major challenge to anyone wishing to define the essentially contestable concept of the political and to think anew the political import and application of philosophy. How does recent thinking on time, history, language, humanity, alterity, desire, sexuality, gender and culture open up the possibility of thinking the political anew? What are the implications of such thinking for our understanding of and relation to the leading ideologies of the modern world, such as liberation, socialism and Marxism? What are the political responsibilities of philosophy in the face of the new world (dis)order?

This new series is designed to present the work of the major Continental thinkers of our time, and the political debates their work has generated, to a wider audience in philosophy and in political, social and cultural theory. The aim is neither to dissolve the specificity of the philo-sophical into the political nor to evade the challenge that the political poses the philosophical; rather, each volume in the series will try to show it is only in the relation between the two that the new possibilities of thought and politics can be activated.

Volumes already published in this series are:

• Foucault & the Political by Jon Simons
  
• Derrida & the Political by Richard Beardsworth
  
• Nietzsche & the Political by Daniel W. Conway
  
• Heidegger & the Political by Miguel de Beistegui
  
• Lacan & the Political by Yannis Stavrakakis
  
• Lyotard & the Political by James Williams
  
• Deleuze & the Political by Paul Patton
  
• Levinas & the Political by Howard Caygill
  
• Kristeva & the Political by Cecilia Sjholm

Espen Hammer

First published 2006

by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

2005 Espen Hammer

Typeset in Sabon
by Taylor & Francis Books

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hammer, Espen.
Adorno and the Political / Espen Hammer.
p. cm. -- (Thinking the political)
ISBN 0-415-28912-2 (hardcover: alk. paper) -- ISBN 0-415-28913-0 (pbk.:
alk. paper) 1. Political science--Philosophy. 2. Adorno, Theodor W., 1903
1969. I. Title. II. Series.
JA71.H273 2005
320.53'22'092--dc22
2005005628

ISBN 978 0 415 28912-2 (hbk)
ISBN 978 0 415 28913-9 (pbk)

Taylor & Francis Group is the Academic Divison of T&F Informa plc.

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