Adorno and Kafka

Negativity’s aesthetic

Abstract

This article has two objectives. The first is to show how the emergence of the cultural industry is related to the elaboration of a negative aesthetic. Against the cultural industry, which satisfies the needs of distraction and aesthetic enjoyment of the public and reinforces the status quo, a negative aesthetics is established. Adorno, in evaluating the control of the cultural sphere, seeks in modern art elements that assure the autonomy of art and its disidentification, that is, its negative moment and, therefore, critical of the social false totality. The second goal is to clarify, supported by the considerations of Adorno in his work Notes on Kafka, how the negative element is present in the work of this writer. Adorno performs an immanent analysis of the Kafkaesque form and sheds light on the evocation of images, through which Kafka provides a reflection on the deteriorated social whole.