Note on The Origin of Negative Dialectics

The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School (New York, 1977) was my dissertation. It is the first, and only one of my books that was published without images (not even on the cover). Also relevant is the fact that I was only beginning to become involved in the feminist movement – hence the paucity of references to women in the text, which essentially concerns dead white males.

Fig. 1

Book cover

The images in this constellation are those that now in retrospect I think should have been included: portraits of the men; the women in their lives; Sartre’s chestnut tree that explains the uniqueness of Adorno’s understanding of materialism as concrete and particular: particular things can burn up (see The Concrete Particular) and a final image that reminds us that books can be held in the hands of readers as the world and its trees are destroyed about them.

Free downloads from The Origin of Negative Dialectics can be found on this website (see Books)

Fig. 2

Adorno as child

Fig. 3

Theodor W.Adorno (1903-1969)

Fig. 4

Edmund Husserl

Fig. 5

Martin Heidegger

Fig. 6

Paul Sartre

Fig. 7

Gretel Adorno

Fig. 8

Husserl’s Family

Fig. 9

Hannah Arendt

Fig. 10

Simone de Beauvooir, 1945, photo by Cartier Bresson

Fig. 11

Angela Davis

Fig. 12

Judith Butler receives Adorno Prize in 2012

Fig. 13

Chestnut tree

Fig. 14

Burning tree

Fig. 15

Reading as world is destroyed

  • Posted 29 July 2013