Chapter published in:
Key Cultural Texts in Translation
Edited by Kirsten Malmkjær, Adriana Şerban and Fransiska Louwagie
[Benjamins Translation Library 140] 2018
► pp. 235–254

Chapter 14
Adorno refracted

German critical theory in the neoliberal world order

Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno’s oeuvre has been widely translated into English, and despite an uneven reception history in the Anglophone world, he can be regarded as a “fashionable”, perhaps even a “celebrity” philosopher in English translation. Whilst it remains an open question to what extent a high intellectual pedigree can be distilled into cultural capital when refracted through the lens of translation, it appears reasonable to assume that key works of German critical theory in English are refracted through a positivist order of discourse, which is at odds with the ideological, or more precisely utopian, convictions of mainstream critical theorists. This article discusses the translational recontextualisation of Adorno’s concept of the “non-identical” and some of its associated conceptual frames.
Keywords: translation and philosophy, critical theory, capitalism, power asymmetries, ideology, domination, hegemony, non-identitarian thinking, instrumental reason, translation and the market
Article outline
  • 1.Hope and suffering in the age of identity thinking
  • 2.Translation’s suffering: Critical theory under the spell of advanced capitalism
  • 3.Translation’s hope: Non-identity rescued?
  • 4.The language of suffering refracted
  • References
Published online: 16 May 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.140.14bau
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