CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALECTIC IN ADORNO A ...

individual is thereby constituted as incapable of autonomy, and empty of particular
content beyond universal adaptability to the impositions of the market.
Adorno thus reverses Hegel’s view that the nuclear family constitutes the
individual in such a way as to cultivate her ability for personal freedom (independence
from external coercion) and moral freedom (autonomy, self-determination). But what
about Hegel’s idea that the family promotes social freedom? If we conceive of the latter
as the simple alignment of the individual’s particular will and the demands of society,
then we could say that Adorno agrees that such integration of the individual into the
whole is facilitated by the contemporary structure of the family. However, this
integration is hardly a form of freedom because it unfolds through direct manipulation of
the individuals’ unconscious, and it is moreover aimed at turning individuals into
compliant consumers and not at turning them into responsible and reflective citizens.
Thus, on the bases of his analysis of the contemporary family structure and his orthodox
Freudian assumptions about ego development, 120 Adorno takes the institution of the
family to facilitate the direct social manipulation of the individual rather than the
individual’s freedom. The institution of the family thus functions in a way that is not
guided by ends internal to the family, which Hegel had identified as the promotion of an
independent, autonomous individual, who can put the shared ends of family life above
self-interested advantage, and who is thus also formed as a good citizen. Rather, the
contemporary family in Adorno’s view furthers only the goals of the market by
facilitating the constitution of a consumer army.
120 Adorno’s critique of the family however does not stand or fall with the Freudian model, but it
does require the claim that the contemporary family structure promotes the development of a self incapable
of protecting itself from direct manipulation by social pressures.
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