Mascaretti G.M.
Brothers in arms: Adorno and Foucault on resistance
(2023) Philosophy and Social Criticism,
DOI: 10.1177/01914537221150497
ABSTRACT:
This article offers a comparative exploration of the practices of resistance Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault champion against the structures of modern power their enquiries have the merit to illuminate and contest. After a preliminary examination of their views about the relationship between theory and praxis, I shall pursue two goals: first, I shall illustrate the limitations of Adorno’s negativist portrait of an ethics of resistance and contrast it with Foucault’s more promising notion of resistance as strategic counter-conduct, which in his late ethico-political writings becomes the heart of a distinctive politics of the governed. Second, despite their dissimilarities, I shall argue that their ideas can be brought together to elaborate a ‘compounded’ account of resistance, where Adorno’s politics of suffering figures as the necessary pre-condition for the creative practices of freedom Foucault seeks to encourage. © The Author(s) 2023.
AUTHOR KEYWORDS: Adorno; critique; Foucault; resistance; suffering
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