| This study examines the central importance of the often neglected rhetoric of nature in the writings of Theodor W. Adorno for a broader understanding of his views on a wide variety of concerns, from the figurative movement of literature to a theory of the political, and from philosophical issues to questions of ethics in a world after Auschwitz. This study argues that Adorno, in his subtle insistence that the rhetoric of nature be understood in both philosophical and ethico-political terms, envisions non-exploitative modes of relating to the other---whether a human other, an animal, the natural world, even "otherness" itself.; To accomplish this task, the individual chapters analyze the rhetorical, philosophical and political strategies Adorno sets to work in his writings about nature. The chapters examine the ways in which his discourse of nature opens up the thinking of an alterity. For Adorno, it is shown, enlightenment's alleged mastery and superiority instead emerges as a suppression of nature, a dialectic that is inextricably intertwined with his analyses of the politics of fascism. The chapters draw on a network of references from Adorno's entire oeuvre, in order to demonstrate that the problem of nature is a permanent concern, from Adorno's earliest to his last.; Since Adorno stages nature differently in various works, the following chapters are each organized around a particular work and a particular formulation of nature. The first chapter focuses on natural history in Adorno's early lecture "The Idea of Natural History", which Adorno, drawing on Benjamin's Origin of German Tragic Drama, employs in order to provide a materialist critique of Heidegger's "historicity." The second chapter studies natural history in Dialectic of Enlightenment and in Negative Dialectics, where Adorno reassesses the role of nature in Hegel. While third chapter concentrates on natural beauty in Aesthetic Theory, the fourth chapter examines the alterity of animals throughout Adorno's writings, particularly in his texts on Kafka. This strategy makes it possible to discern a geneaology of Adorno's intricate concept of nature and to reconstruct its significance. |
