Adorno's "Natural History" and Anti-Colonial Critique

Critical Theory and Afro-Caribbean Marxism

Abstract

In spite of the Frankfurt school's emphasis on the "consumer society" and its relative silence on questions of colonialism and imperialism, this paper aims to reconstruct critical resources for the critique of colonialism from the work of Theodor Adorno. Specifically, the paper demonstrates the immanent compatibility of his conception of "natural history" with the analytical focus of Afro-Caribbean Marxism, examining what is shared between this concept and the materialist analyses of anti-colonial critique in the 20th century. The paper distinguishes how "natural history" has, historically, functioned as an ideological rationalization of colonization and how, critically, it echoes some of the basic aspects of the critical work of Franz Fanon, Walter Rodney, and C.L.R. James. Constructing a theoretical encounter between Adorno and thinkers of African and Caribbean decolonization, the paper advocates for a renewed critical conception of natural history which not only identifies the false naturalization of racial and geographical hierarchy, but also grasps the exploitation of natural resources in the colonies and the realities of global inequality and underdevelopment.