부정의 정치성:아도르노와 장자

Abstract

Though the subject matter of "Negativity" hasbeen discussed for a long time as we see in Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, and even in Kant, it is still a theme of much interest as recently shown in the great concern about Adorno's "Negative Dialectics." Why does the subject come up again and again and how does Adorno's concept differ from those of the others? Does it have anything to do with the Tao which is the oldest and most enduring “negativity” of Oriental society? This paper explores these questions in an effort to find some reasons why Western negativity has been transformed while the Eastern one has not. We will examine the difference in the politics of the two. To this end, the paper traces the history of negativity through Freud, Lacan, Adorno, and Chuang-Tzu. Chuang-Tzu represents the spirit of Taoism. After Adorno experienced the violence of Nazism, he became deeply concerned with the human psyche, particularly the Death Drive as formulated by Freud. However, Adorno, as a socialist, wanted to go beyond Freud who presumably limited his analysis to the human psyche only. Adorno develops the other side of Eros, the death drive, into "nonidentity" without which a society cannot move in any certain direction. His "nonidentity"is almost similar to the concept of the Real, or the other, in Lacanian psychoanalysis. Moreover, as is widely known, Lacan came up with the Real, borrowing the idea of "Wu-wei". which is a core of Taoism. From these connections it is not so hard to relate the negativity of Adorno to that of Chuang-Tzu.