THE CHORDS OF NEGATIVE DIALECTICS AND PARATACTIC METHODOLOGY:

TOWARD AN EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE NON-IDENTICAL

Abstract

This study aims to analyze Theodor W. Adorno’s perspective on his paratactic methodology, understood as an expression of his negative dialectical thought, with Hegel as its principal interlocutor and theoretical adversary. The investigation begins by examining the distinctions between critical theory and traditional theory, in order to contextualize the emergence and the resonance of the Adornian negative dialectic. In this sense, the study seeks to highlight the fissures within Hegel’s identifying dialectic and, simultaneously, to emphasize the dissident accords proposed by Adorno in his constellatory thinking, among them: the principle of non-identity, the entrapment of the object in subjective meshes, negativity as a critical impulse, the constellation as a cognitive and aesthetic form, and the double meaning of the concept as an expression of the idea of constellation. Within this trajectory, it becomes unavoidable to point out the epistemicide inscribed in the Hegelian dialectic: by subordinating the particular to the conceptual whole, Hegel performs an operation that annihilates alterity – a kind of death of the non-identical – which Adorno denounces as theoretical violence and as the inaugural gesture of a reason that, by identifying, eliminates what cannot be fully conceptualized. Adorno demonstrates that this will to totality, present in Hegel’s logic, becomes a systematic suppression of difference, establishing a form of rationality that sacrifices singularity on the altar of the concept. The research adopts negative dialectics as its method, taking parataxism as its propelling axis in the confrontation with the Hegelian perspective. Finally, it examines the relation between the paratactic methodology and literature as a manifestation of the non-conceptual, highlighting the relevance of solidarity and transgressive empathy in teaching practice, both capable of restoring to the teaching of philosophy – and to the experience of thought – the right to uncertainty, imagination, and critical emancipation.