Da epistemologia à crítica cultural: o problema da dominação e reificação em Theodor Adorno.

Abstract

This paper addresses the process of reification of individuals in the administered world from the perspective of Theodor W. Adorno. We will discuss the relationship between socio-historical domination and epistemological analysis. We present the epistemological critique, which results in the analysis of writings on the split between subject and object and how this relates to bourgeois thought. The impoverishment of consciousness and, consequently, the annulment of the idea of the emancipated subject, would arise from the pure positivity of the absolute identity of the self with itself, and the absence of communication between subject and object; the self, which only sees objects separate from itself, would be directly related to the reification process that these individuals undergo as they naturalize relations of domination – including both dominating and being dominated. We will focus on the relationship between social and epistemological critique, pointing to the internal and external domination of the individual. Thus, we will analyze authors who dedicate themselves to criticizing instrumental and bourgeois thought, and especially the critique of the cold rationality of the administered world. Nietzsche, as one of the forerunners of the critique of the massification of individuals in the administered world, provides us with a basis to think about the relationship between the moral, linguistic, and physical domination of individuals. Meanwhile, Lukács provides us with the basis for critiquing the immediacy of the relationship between subject and object, which de-naturalizes what is already naturalized in the administered world: the commodity form that permeates human relations. This critical approach derived from both authors leads us to Dialectic of Enlightenment by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, which is one of the main points of this paper, as it connects the critique of the domination of nature with the reification suffered by individuals. In the third part, we discuss the reification caused by the Cultural Industry, using texts throughout the author's life to present the debate on the subject. We also draw on texts from other authors to provoke the discussion. In Dialectic of Enlightenment, the authors analyze mass media and how it is used for the dissemination and creation of art as entertainment. The critique from the authors occurs both through the impossibility of this process to emancipate and the severing of the critical horizon of its consumers.