From constellations to autoprohibition: Everything you wanted to know about Adorno's ethics (but were afraid to ask Zizek)

This project is centered on two primary concerns. First, a reformulation of Adorno's notion of ethical subjectivity in a way that allows for a clearer articulation of his normative position, which is defined by a series of a priori moral imperatives. These imperatives include: an emphasis on the physical body as a source of truth; the injunction to end unnecessary suffering; and the importance of recognising non-identity both in one's self and in others. Second, this project attempts to make Adorno's ethics more relevant to our contemporary social context and advances in social theory. My claim is that we can achieve this by rejecting Adorno's philosophical method (negative dialectics and constellations) by reading it through the lens of Zizek method which I am calling 'autoprohibition.' As I will show, autoprohibition is Zizek's strategy for breaking the deadlock of the dialectic of enlightenment and its accompanying defeatist politics by developing a dialectical theory that neither rests on pure negation nor falls into the totalising and reifying trap of orthodox Marxism. It is in the context of autoprohibition that one can rearticulate Adorno's normative imperatives mentioned above, without these imperatives being negated by the totalising dictates of the dialectic of enlightenment. The best way to redeem the important normative components of Adorno's formulation of ethical subjectivity is to reject its underlying philosophical method and resituate it in another. I frame this methodological shift as one from 'constellations to autoprohibition,' which allows for a more positive articulation of Adorno's ethics; a plan for actively practising an ethical life vs. one premised on the rejection of participating in an unethical system.