‘Suffering ought not to be’: Adorno on the dialectics of memory

Abstract

In recent decades, social and cultural memories have been much discussed in human geography. In line with an increasing interest in the nexus between memory and social justice, this article theoretically investigates the political geographies of remembering and its emancipatory potential. Surveying recent literature on the topic, I argue for a more nuanced consideration of capitalist thought forms as generally hindering remembrance. To pin down this argument, I draw on Theodor W. Adorno’s negative dialectics, stressing the all-encroaching totality of capitalist thought forms while adhering to the hope of overcoming them. While this perspective stresses how capitalist relations render remembrance precarious, it also enables us to conceptualize spontaneous, embodied moments of memory as acts of resistance against the dominance of these capitalist thought forms. Thus, this article introduces negative dialectics as an approach to consider how places of memory might challenge capitalist relations by circumventing the respective thought forms and transforming society through tenderness and solidarity between diverse people.