Adorno and biopolitics: Thoughts on our well-trained souls and bodies

In this text, I propose a novel interpretation of Theodor W. Adorno's thoughts on politics and society from the vantage point of post-Foucauldian biopolitics. The aim of the text is both to find answers to some of the most problematic aspects of Adorno's philosophy (i.e. how to justify the normative claims he makes, what the possibilities of emancipatory politics are) and also to reveal some important insights that might have been underemphasized in current biopolitical discourses (such as the psychological aspects of biopolitical oppression). In the first half of the text, which deals with Adorno's paradigmatic shift in comprehending politics, I consider the question of why he dedicated his political analyses to the micropolitical construction of human life instead of focussing on the more conventional topics of political philosophy. The second half then treats of the resulting question of what kind of moral or political resistance is available. Keywords : Theodor W. Adorno; Biopolitics; Auschwitz; Gender and Sexuality; Emancipatory Politics