Proximité à distance : les fonctions critiques de la mimêsis dans la pensée de Theodor W. Adorno

The main goal of this thesis is to give meaning to a concept which, despite being central to the thought of Theodor W. Adorno, is notoriously difficult to grasp, and for that reason, has not received the critical attention it deserves: mimesis (Mimesis). More precisely, this thesis will present mimesis as a central principle which grounds the particular type of philosophical critique developed and defended by Adorno. Despite its different meanings – and they are numerous, as we shall see –, adornian mimesis is always invoked as a means of countering the heteronomous (that is to say, dehumanizing) tendencies at the heart of advanced capitalist societies. Above all, we will try to show that mimesis is presented by Adorno as a materialist corrective to the type of abstract rationality that underlies these societies. This task is a difficult one, since for all its normative importance, the concept of mimesis is never conceptualized as such by Adorno, but simply alluded to. We will try to compensate for this indeterminacy, firstly, by identifying the most fundamental normative underpinnings of Adorno’s thought (0.0. Introduction : les fondements normatifs de la critique adornienne), and secondly, by giving a full account of the different critical contributions that mimesis brings to it (1.0. Les fonctions critiques de la mimêsis adornienne). This exegetical and interpretative effort will enable us to see that Adorno’s concept of mimesis contains three distinct critical potentials. First, insofar as it is presented – especially in the works of the late 1930s and 1940s – as a psychosomatic impulse which gives lie, momentarily, to the violence inflicted on man’s interior and exterior nature by the reifying forces of instrumental rationality (Instrumentelle Vernunft), Adorno’s mimesis can be understood as a bioanthropological mimicry (Mimikry) (2.O. Mimikry : le potentiel bioanthropologique de la mimêsis). Secondly, insofar as it presented – more often in the works of the late 1950s and onward – as an epistemological competence by which the thinking subject is able to re-encounter and re-determine the objects of his experience, adornian mimesis can be seen to counteract the appropriative logic of identity thinking (identifizierendes Denken) (3.O. Affinität et Entäusserung : le potentiel épistémique de la mimêsis). Finally, insofar as it informs the radical artwork’s modus operandi – as it is defended by Adorno in his unfinished Aesthetic Theory –, that is, its capacity to subvert the constraints of the totally administered world (total verwaltete Welt) by incorporating them, adornian mimesis can be understood as a strategic Methexis, as a seditious tactic by which heteronomous forces can be at once anticipated and countered (4.0. Methexis subversive : le potentiel stratégique de la mimêsis). Thus, while looking to do justice to the rich polysemy of the concept of mimesis in Adorno, we would also like to show what, in all its forms, it points towards one form or another of resistance: as expression, exteriorization or subversion.

Keyphrases: Adorno, Mimêsis, Nature, Philosophy, Mimesis, History, Dialectics