PES Yearbook 2016 254 Adorno, (Non-)Dialectical Thought, (Post-)Autonomy, and the Question of Bildung A response to Douglas Yacek Gregory N. Bourassa University of Northern Iowa In recent years, the very idea of the dialectic has been met with suspicion by a number of philosophers with an affinity for postmodern thought. For those operating within the tradition of autonomist and post-autonomist Marxism, this has been a persistent source of tension. Some of the key theorists, such as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, have been the most vociferous critics of the dialectic, claiming that it leads to closure rather than openness. The dialectical moment of synthesis, the argument goes, amounts to a reconciliation of opposites that flattens out dimensions of antagonism by rendering difference and multiplicity as a single contradiction — an abstraction to be enveloped. Social struggles, which entail a multiplicity of differences and singularities, are often mischaracterized in ways that are dialectically reductive, obscuring their political content. Moreover, Hardt and Negri embrace a positive affirmation of being in the notion of life-for, and thus find limitations in forms of opposition and negation that conceal or obscure its productive dimensions in a negative formulation of life-against. Others in the autonomist Marxism tradition, such as John Holloway, have sharply criticized (ardt and Negri’s renunciation of the dialectic. From (olloway’s perspective, it makes little sense to abandon the dialectic as a whole simply due to the rejection of Hegelian forms of synthesis. While Holloway shares (ardt and Negri’s skepticism of closure and premature synthesis, he is drawn to Adorno’s negative dialectics primarily because it suspends two competing moments and signals a process of endless revolt. In addition to adamantly opposing the premature reconciliation of contradictions, Adorno was also mindful of Dzthe duality of the moments,dz meaning that he resisted forms of abstraction and sought to rigorously stress non-identity, so as to avoid erasing particularities in the form of a generalization. 1 The emphasis on non-identity served as a constant reminder of the limitations of conceptual engagements that attempt to reduce the irreducible into a single and intelligible object. For Adorno, mediation was not a device to overcome contradiction and arrive at a new synthesis; it was alleged to exist primarily in the inner structure of a cultural artifact rather than in the space of contradiction between thesis and antithesis. This is evident in his observations about music. We are told that music contains social contradictions and is thus neither fully reflective (assimilatory) nor autonomous. Thus, while classical art reflects the constituted