Integration-disintegration: the relation between social antagonisms and damaged processes of individuation in Theodor W. Adorno

• Grant number: 20/11828-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: April 30, 2022
• End date: April 29, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Luiz Sérgio Repa
• Grantee: Gabriel Petrechen Kugnharski
• Supervisor: Georg W. Bertram
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
• Associated to the scholarship: 18/06291-0 - Limits of integration: the issue on the antagonism between totality and individual in Theodor W. Adorno, BP.DR

Abstract

The internship project aims to gather elements to comprehend the relation between social antagonisms and the damages inflicted to the processes of individuation in the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno. The theorist's emphasis on the persistence of social antagonisms in late capitalism and his conception of integration as a "thin layer" that conceals a process of disintegration is accompanied by a notion of a damaged individual, never well-integrated to society. In this regard, the identity principle in its socioeconomic form, the exchange, and in its conceptual form, is reproduced by individuals in their thinking and behaviors, and intensifies the antagonisms and the tendency towards social disintegration. Apart from having the same structure (both expressions of identity reduce all multiplicity into a rigid unity), it is not immediately clear how exactly one impacts on the other. As the compulsive element present in this complex form of domination points to a process that happens unconsciously, "behind the backs" of individuals, the hypothesis that guides this research is that the nexus between both expressions of identity could be better understood examining Adorno's account of Freudian psychoanalysis, especially of his drive theory and of phenomena such as neurosis, internalization and repression, which may elucidate how this principle damages individuals and their possibilities of resistance. (AU)