Reification, Labor, and Dialectic: Adorno's Social Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology

This paper traces the relationship between Adorno’s critique of phenomenology and his works in political economy and social theory by attending to the use of sociological concepts in his engagement with Husserl. After outlining the need to consider these two parts of Adorno’s project together (1), we will turn to Adorno’s dialectical criticism of Husserl’s eidetic method, examining this critique’s dependence on sociological concepts including reification, labor, and relations of production (2). In the following section (3), we will see how this social critique of phenomenological methodology also involves a critique of Husserl’s later “genetic phenomenology.” Finally, we will look at the appropriation of some aspects of phenomenology represented in Adorno’s “social physiognomy” (4). Taking our cue from some of Adorno’s texts describing this mode of reflection, we will characterize his alternative to phenomenology as the development of thought-models following from singular experiences but nevertheless attesting to the structure of the social object as a negative totality. While the insights generated from these models are not discernible to a methodological approach to experience, and resist being developed into a rational system, they do demonstrate the systematically irrational character of experience’s social pre-formation.