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Damaged Life as Exuberant Vitality in America: Adorno, Alienation, and the Psychic Economy

In the aphorism "The Health Unto Death," in Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, Adorno issues a provocation and a challenge: "If such a thing as a psycho-analysis of today's prototypical culture were possible," it would need to "show the sickness proper to the time to consist precisely in normality."¹ Investigating this unique form of illness would require questioning the traditional markers of health: "unruffled calm," an "unhampered capacity for happiness," "exuberant vitality," and even the "champagne jollity" of "the regular guy" and the "popular girl" (MM 58, 63). Hence, Adorno identifies a need to explore "the inferno in which...