THE CLAIMS OF PAIN: CRITICISM AND SUFFERING IN THEODOR W. ADORNO

The relationship between suffering and critique of society in Adorno is the focus of misunderstandings in literature. On the one side are those who believe that Adorno made a mistake by immediately extracting normativity from suffering, psychologizing critique, and associating non-identity with the social place of the victim. On the other side are those who affirmatively understand that a normativity intrinsic to suffering justifies social criticism and gives it its criteria. The article seeks to question the assumptions common to these two positions, showing that, for Adorno, suffering does not have a normativity of its own, nor does it fulfill any function of justification or grounding, either theoretical or practical. Adorno's thesis is that suffering drives critique and that, in this sense, theory, far from being neutral, is somatically implicated in its object, thereby possessing a strong expressive component.