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Yifan Song

Abstract

Theodor Adorno attributes the symptoms of late capitalist society to a kind of social “powerlessness,” which aims to reveal a close connection between the phenomenon of power and the inner realm of the subject. The dialectical relationship between powerlessness and power may offer an intrinsic clue to reconstruct Adorno's philosophy. This problem-domain intertwines Nietzsche's genealogy with the interdisciplinary research of the early Frankfurt School in the field of psychoanalysis. On the micro level, it narrates how the subject, out of powerlessness, fear, and narcissism, turns to a compensatory identification with the powerful and ultimately is realized in the bourgeois ideal of the ceaselessly “active life.” On the social level, powerlessness is less a psychological condition to be “cured” than a mechanism of integration generated by the social structure itself. On the political level, the phenomenon of powerlessness explains precisely why “Pseudo-Aktivitt” arises amid profound social pathologies and even crises. It can be said that Adorno proposes a kind of sociology of affect, which aims to transcend the bourgeois form of practice, make “non-identity” visible, and promote the radical self-transformation.

Keywords

affect, powerlessness, narcissism, social integration, self-transformation

First Page

118

Last Page

129

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