A Method of Mobility: Dialectical Critique and the Work of Concepts

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article discusses dialectics as a method of critique which takes concepts it primal object of inquiry. Through a reading of Theodor W. Adorno’s lecture course Introduction to Dialectics, it argues that for dialectical critique concepts are living organs of social reality whose work must observed in terms of constellations of experiences and practices, and through specific historical sites and social processes. The article reconstructs three moments in Adorno’s thinking of critique’s relation to conceptuality: the “pedagogical effect” of concepts on our habits of thought, the socio-historical formation of concepts as “fields of force”, and the need of a “micrological method” of engagement with social reality. Within this framework, the article shows that the movement of dialectical critique is prompted by the cognitive utopia of using concepts to reach material reality, as well as by the ethical demand of making justice to what is not grasped by the existing conceptual order of society. By combining both moments, the goal of dialectical critique is not to identify the correct meaning of concepts, but to work through them as to unlock the normative imagination of society.