ABSTRACT
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno was born in 1903, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where he resided until 1934, when he left in response to the Nazi regime. The notion of negativity, however, is not novel to Adorno—G. W. F. Hegel’s dialectical thought, after all, revolves around negations. Against the positive reconciliation, Adorno insists on negativity, and he insists on this by speaking not of identity, but instead of non-identity. Adorno’s discussion of the problematic surrounding the naming of matter is strikingly resonant with the problematic surrounding the naming of God. The asymmetrical primacy that Adorno gives to darkness over light means that he will not promote—but instead will negate—attempts to locate alternative possibilities within society. For Adorno, what theology is ultimately about is not Christianity or religion or the overcoming of religion; it is only ever a matter of naming what cannot be identified, a matter of insisting on the force of the problematic against all media of reconciliation.
