Justice beyond repair: Negative Dialectics and the politics of guilt and atonement

Abstract

AbstractThis article draws out a critical, yet under-appreciated political theme in Adorno’s Negative Dialectics, namely his emphasis on guilt and atonement. First, the article assesses how Adorno’s Marxism allows him to think justice and guilt beyond the familiar legalistic frame. Second, the article reconstructs Adorno’s treatment of guilt as a distinctly political capacity to imagine one’s boundedness and indebtedness to others, and the affective engine enabling us to engage in a political ethic distinct from familiar categories of reparation. Third, the article shows how the themes of guilt and atonement give us a more complete picture of Negative Dialectics. This inquiry also intervenes in contemporary debates regarding the political status and emancipatory potential latent within guilt-feelings, and claims Adorno gives us a path forward to imagine the relation between guilt and politics in a novel way.