Immanent Critique “From the Standpoint of Redemption:” Adorno’s Method and Its Sources in Kafka

Abstract At the conclusion of “Minima Moralia,” Theodor W. Adorno invokes a “standpoint of redemption.” I interpret this formulation as a methodological self-description and argue that it does not conflict with critical theory’s commitment to immanent critique. After distinguishing between two divergent accounts of immanent critique in recent scholarship, I turn to the idea of a “standpoint of redemption” or “inverse theology,” traced back to Siegfried Kracauer’s early writings on Franz Kafka. In his “Notes on Kafka,” Adorno develops motifs from Kracauer into his most thorough articulation of the negativist-messianic device. Instead of contrasting social phenomena with ideal alternatives, “inverse theology” presents the absurd as normal, rendering reality uncanny through analogies that depict humans as animals and the present as if it belonged to a distant past. In this way, the standpoint of redemption emerges indirectly, by estranging everyday life. Adorno’s reading of Kafka thus clarifies his own method of social critique. This method neither contradicts the version of immanent critique that, I contend, most faithfully captures the tradition of critical theory, nor does it entail substantive theological commitments. Rather, it can be understood as a form of “inverse utopianism.”