The withered experience: between annihilation and emancipation

Abstract

The condition of the individual as the subject of experience constitutes one of the main themes on which the critical reflection of Frankfurt intellectuals, such as Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer to name a few, focuses. This article proposes an exploration around the recurring judgment of the impoverishment of the experience denounced by Walter Benjamin and the silenced experience defined in the work of Theodor W. Adorno. The objective is to present a critical approach on the problematic experience-subject relationship, as well as the obstacles that arise around the configuration of the Self and that require a new form of theoretical consciousness, capable of resisting the annihilation of the content of experience of the individual. The article takes place in two moments: “The degraded subject” addresses the modern subject as a central reference for the critical thought and the second part is entitled “The withered experience” that outlines the disastrous outcome of the subjection of the empirical on the individual consciousness and thus depriving it of an intimate and whole experience. The reflection on the reifying power of the operative social objectivity, hidden behind the consensus that seeks to impose itself over social antagonisms, allows us to intensify the dialectic of civilization and rethink the collapse of the subject.