Inverse Theology: Adorno, Benjamin, Kafka

The striking prevalence of theological motifs spanning Theodor W. Adorno's work has long been noted, from his repeated references to the Old Testament interdiction against making images of God to his evocative citations of a messianic light. This terminological peculiarity raises a difficult question: how are we to grasp the relation between Adorno's worldly critique of capitalist modernity and his use of religious terms? After all, Adorno explicitly echoes the verdicts of his intellectual forerunners, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud, arguing that traditional theology is not restorable. Given the rejoinders that Adorno's phrasing has provoked from commentators such as Jacob Taubes and Giorgio Agamben, the present article proposes to re-evaluate the significance of Adorno's terminology with respect to two authors who colour his understanding of religion and theology: Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin. In doing so, I aim to investigate the sense in which Adorno is able to mobilise the modern dislocation of traditional theology for a critique of reality under the rule of a capitalist cult religion.