Fascism and anti-authoritarianism in Adorno

• Grant number: 13/01056-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): May 01, 2013
• Effective date (End): February 28, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education - Specific topics in Education
• Principal Investigator: Sinésio Ferraz Bueno
• Grantee: Alcides Renofio Neto
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Marília. Marília , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The intent of this work is to comprehend the psychological mechanisms which characterize the authoritarian personality and the fascism according to Adorno, as well as to retrieve an antiauthoritarian project in his works since his exile in the USA in the decades of 1930 and 1940 and as from his regress to Germany, in the 1950s. Starting from a theoretical survey of issues relating to fascism as psychosocial phenomenon of modern industrial society from Adorno's viewpoint, we seek to investigate an educational project, an antiauthoritarian one, though presented unsystematically in writings as Educação & Emancipação (1971) and Liderança Democrática e Manipulação de Massas (1946). Thinker of the theoretical framework identified by Perry Anderson as Western-Marxism, Adorno conforms along with authors such as Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Jürgen Habermas, the general theoretical framework known by its researchers (ex. Barbara Freitag, Rolf Wiggerhaus) as Critical Theory. In the same way, we assign to our work the same essential prerogatives of Adorno's Critical Theory and his Freudo-Marxism, doing simultaneously a sociological and psychoanalytical criticizes of social relations and social phenomena belonging to industrial society. (AU)