A dialogue between Negative Dialectics, by Theodor Adorno, and “O alienista”, by Machado de Assis

Abstract

This work proposes to establish a dialogue between the procedure called by Theodor Adorno “negative dialectics”, systematically explained in the book of the same name (ADORNO, 2009), and the aesthetic procedures used in the short story “O alienista”, by Machado de Assis, published in the book Papéis avulsos, 1882. Considering that art and philosophy offer different responses to the unitary order imposed by the concept on the object, an attempt is made to respect the specificity of each one in this dialogue. In “O alienista”, the focus will be on artistic mimesis, since art, by pointing to the object, undermines the rationality with which we apprehend reality; in Negative Dialectics, emphasis will be placed on questioning the insufficiency of conceptual thinking based on the concept itself. In the end, the self-reflexivity of Machado's narrative is approximated to “the effort to go beyond the concept through the concept” that Adorno proposed to philosophy (ADORNO, 2009, p. 14).