How to redeem a corrupted world: The aporia of negative theology in the thought of Theodor Adorno

In Minima Moralia, Adorno talks about a ‘messianic light’ which shines from beyond the corrupted world, offering the possibility of redemption from suffering. Theological statements like these have created significant controversy within the literature on Adorno, with interpreters like Hent de Vries and Peter Gordon arguing that the ‘messianic light’ depicts a transcendent negativity in line with negative theology. This is in opposition to the materialist interpretation, with interpreters like Jay Bernstein who oppose this reading, arguing that Adorno’s use of messianic language is only a metaphorical means to express a negative approach to finite, material experience. In this article, I argue that an ambiguity concerning the source of redemption in Adorno’s work prevents either interpretation from being conclusive. Adorno vacillates between locating hope in sensuous experience or in spiritual negativity. In response, I offer a reading of Adorno’s notion of the object’s preponderance that fulfils both the materialist concern with concrete mediation as well as the theological notion that the messianic light cannot arise from the existing world. The experience of the retreat of the object’s preponderance explains our consciousness of a negative notion of redemption that transcends our current cultural circumstance.