Adorno's Poetics of Critique

Adorno's Poetics of Critique is a critical study of the Marxist culture-critic Theodor W. Adorno, a founding member of the Frankfurt school and widely regarded today as its most brilliant exponent. Steven Helmling is centrally concerned with Adorno's notoriously difficult writing, a feature most commentators acknowledge only to set it aside on the way to an expository account of 'what Adorno is saying'. By contrast, Adorno's complex writing is the central focus of this study, which includes detailed analysis of Adorno's most complex texts, in particular his most famous and complicated work, co-authored with Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment. Helmling argues that Adorno's key motifs - dialectic, concept, negation, immanent critique, constellation - are prescriptions not merely for critical thinking, but also for critical writing. For Adorno the efficacy of critique is conditioned on how the writing of critique is written. Both in theory and in practice, Adorno urges a 'poetics of critique' that is every bit as critical as anything else in his 'critical theory.

"A subtle and original take on Adorno's thought, which approaches it from the writing rather than the reading side. We all have much to learn from Helmling-'s brilliant analyses." - Frederic Jameson "With a precision and sensitivity that Adorno would have himself admired, Stephen Helmling provides a nuanced reading of the dialectic of ideas and expression that marked his idiosyncratic variant of Critical Theory. Even seasoned students of the Frankfurt School will find this book an invaluable guide." - Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley, USA "In Adorno's Poetics of Critique, Steven Helmling extends his brilliant, sustained inquiry into the relationship between Marxist philosophy and the specific styles of its written expression ... Ultimately, Helmling's study, providing a superb reappraisal of Adorno's work, stands also as an original contribution in its own right to the theory of the aesthetic. This is a book for everyone who takes seriously the question of how critique should be written." - Professor James F. English, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Steven Helmling is Professor of English at the University of Delaware, USA. His previous publications include The Success and Failure of Fredric Jameson (SUNY Press, 2001) and The Esoteric Comedies of Carlyle, Newman and Yeats (CUP, 1988).