Reflections on education for resistance and emancipation in the light of theodor adorno´s thought

Abstract

This article evaluates the theme related to education as seen on the thoughts of Theodor W. Adorno (1903 – 1969), with the aim of explaining the dual function applied to forming the autonomous subject in the capitalist society. To attain this, there is, on the one hand, education that gives precedence to the function of adapting individuals to control mechanisms of the present-day society and, on the other hand, the author highlights the resistance aspect of education, enhancing thinking and the criticism exerted by individuals about the socially constituted reality. In the first case, considered extremely important, education embodies the stage of integrating the individual into the social collective, while in the second case, no less relevant, resistance shapes itself into a movement to challenge what invalidates the critical subjectivity of individuals within the society. However, in the capitalist society, education, when linked to technical-scientific rationality, results in attaching importance to the adaptation aspect thus curtailing the resistance dimension. With this, there is a predisposition to promote the technical-professional improvement of the individual, as if such procedure were synonymous with autonomy, in the Kantian sense of self-government. The effort to act without the supervision of others changes itself into the operationalization of knowledge to produce goods, thus satisfying the economic interests of that society.