Sociology as Interpretation. A Reading of Theodor W. Adorno's Sociology

Adorno has been forgotten by sociologists. This can be explained by the bad re-putation that have cemented some interpretations that define him as an abstract theorist who escaped the demands of empirical research. To face this ostracism, the article proposes a recovery of Adorno for sociology today. It argues that his sociology should be understood first and foremost as a hermeneutical project. Thus, it proposes a reading of the late sociological texts in continuity with the project of a materialist hermeneutics defended by the young Adorno in texts such as The Actuality of Philosophy. This proposal, which points the centrality of empirical research in the interpretation, can avoid possible functionalist readings of his sociology or readings anchored to the idea of sense. Interpretative sociology emerges as a social physiognomics in which the interpreter is able to make the capitalist totality visible in the phenomena; a totality which, however, is not brought to give a sense to the phenomena, but is evidenced as meaninglessness that binds them, as an obstacle to the action of individuals.