A dialectical fairy tale. On Adorno and Benjamin's correspondence

Abstract

The choice of a singular word, the intrusion of a sudden tone, the recognition of an ambiguous gesture, the subtle and even so scandalous presence of an omission do not refute the content of a conscious and deliberate conceptual discussion, but they certainly make it rare. However, the conceptual analysis of philosophical criticism around the correspondence between Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin tends to neglect those moments, losing sight of the affections and forces that are mobilized in those exchanges. The present work seeks to restore the writing condition of the letters, in order to make the main figures of the correspondence sensitive to the reader and to critically reevaluate, based on this, some of the conceptual discussions that appear there.