Journeying with Adorno: Passion, pathways and ethno-mimesis

This article discusses the central importance of Adorno in the development of my feminist research practice as ‘ethno-mimesis’, the combination of ethnographic, biographical and arts-based research, operationalised by working with artists at the borders of art and ethnography, as critical theory in practice. The concept of ethno-mimesis emerged from my engagement with Adorno's work across five main pathways (non-identity thinking, aesthetics and politics, micrology, the importance of the critical recovery of history, in ‘living a damaged life’) and is informed by my reading of Negative Dialectics and the central dialectic in Aesthetic Theory of mimesis and constructive reality, that speaks to the relationship between art and society. Two key ethno-mimetic examples are used to explore this journey with Adorno: Not all the Time…But Mostly… and The Bosnian's in Nottingham. I argue through these examples that Adorno's work is as important now as it ever was, and the concept of ‘ethno-mimesis’ can articulate Adorno's value to sociology both theoretically and methodologically by facilitating understanding of: (i) the contradictions of oppression and the utter complexity of our lived relations, the inter-relationship and mediation between the ‘micrology’ of lived experience and broader structures of power, domination and control; (ii) the importance of continuously challenging identity thinking (as Adorno articulates it) of opening and keeping open space for critical discourse and dialogue towards a radical democratic imaginary and (iii) demonstrating through ethno-mimesis the transformative role and potential of art in countering social pathologies.