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Description
'Life does not live'
This certainty, that the conditions governing existence in contemporary societies generates irretrievably damaged lives, lies at the heart of Theodor W. Adorno's critical theory.
Under the coercion of overwhelming social powers, individual character is constituted as a "system of scars". This notion of “damaged life” is central to Jordi Maiso's book, which frames critique as emerging from within a reality scarred by systemic coercion. Adorno's negative dialectics, his notion of theory as a “science of mourning,” and his insistence on determinate negation, all converge to expose the falsity of social normality.
Maiso's analysis spans key themes: the administered world, total socialization, the culture industry's role in shaping consciousness, and the anthropological transformation of subjectivity under advanced capitalism. It also revisits Adorno's aesthetic theory, highlighting art's fragile autonomy as a site of resistance and remembrance. Indeed, what Jordi Maiso shows us, with the help of Adorno, is that in the experience of damage, that which is at stake is that criticism does not give in, that life – even if damaged – continues to offer resistance.
Both historical and urgent, The Critical Theory of Theodor W. Adorno interrogates the persistence of fear, heteronomy, and avoidable suffering, asking whether emancipatory thought can still carve out spaces of hope amid the overwhelming power of social systems.
Table of Contents
Part One: The Core of Experience and the Coordinates of Critique
Critical Theory as a “Science of Mourning”
I. RESIGNATION? HISTORY, EMANCIPATION AND BARBARISM
“After Auschwitz”
“Where is the proletariat?”
“From the standpoint of redemption”
II. DOES IT NOT HURT TO BE DEVOURED? THE POSITION OF THE CRITICAL INTELLECTUAL
The fragile nonconformity of the spirit
Art as a battlefield
Critical theory and praxis
III. A FAREWELL TO MARX? UNRAVELING CONTEMPORARY PREHISTORY
The “unity of an epoch”: Capitalism and fascism
Protohistory of contemporary prehistory
Absolutized self-preservation
Part Two: ADORNO AND THE CRITICAL THEORY OF CAPITALISM
In the Labyrinth of the Social Constitution
IV. A NEW STATE OF UNFREEDOM: THE LOGIC OF CAPITALIST SOCIALIZATION
Capitalist society as a “system”: a twist on totality
Capitalism as “natural history”
A social whole with no outside: “Total socialization”
V. CULTURE INDUSTRY: INTEGRATION AS MASS DECEPTION
The social location of culture
The culture industry as an instance of socialization
The “deception” of the culture industry and its limits
VI. TOWARDS A NEW TYPE OF HUMAN BEING: ANTHROPOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF ADVANCED CAPITALISM
The historical decline of the individual and the sacrifice of the living
Traits of the “new type of human being”
Contradiction in the subject and the role of psychoanalysis
VII. STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND UNCONSCIOUSNESS: THE NEW FIGURE OF IDEOLOGY
Sociality and appearance: The transformation of ideology
Critique of ideology and analysis of the self
“Normal monsters”: The persistent potential of authoritarianism
Coda: “THE LIMIT OF REIFICATION”: ADORNO AND LATE CAPITALISM TODAY
Product details
| Published | Aug 20 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 352 |
| ISBN | 9781350562806 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Series | Critical Theory and the Critique of Society |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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