Adorno, Obama, and Empire: Reflections on the U.S. Presidential Election and the Next President

• Main Author: Lukas Kaelin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Santo Tomas 2008-12-01
• Series: Kritike: An Online Journal of Philosophy
• Subjects: Theodor Adorno; Antonio Negri; Barack Obama
• Online Access: http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_4/kaelin_december2008.pdf

As tempting as it might be, politics is a difficult field for philosophers.Well known are Plato’s and Heidegger’s attempt to influence the political developments of their time, which went badly wrong. Much safer is it to provide an interpretation of current political events, which is the aim of this paper. The paper attempts to philosophically assess the recent U.S. presidential race and to look at some aspects of the underlying beliefs of Barack Obama that aided him in his campaign. The philosophical framework used in order to interpret the political events are mainly from the Critical Theory of Theodor W. Adorno and the neo-Marxist approach of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Further observations will concentrate on the logic and attraction of the electoral process and the dialectical logic of Sarah Palin’s statements. The first part will discuss the form of U.S. electoral politics, especially the perpetual campaign, whereas the second part will put the policiesof the next U.S. president into a philosophical context.