Continental Philosophy Research Group Talk (William Ross, Groupement de Recherche en Théorie Critique, Reims)

The Continental Philosophy Research Group is pleased to welcome as guest speaker William Ross, who forms part of the Groupement de Recherche en Théorie Critique at the University of Reims. He is the president of the Association for Adorno Studies, and he works across topics in epistemology and critical theory. Dr. Ross is particularly interested in the concept of Darstellung in German philosophy from Kant to Adorno. He also works on the reconstruction of the Frankfurt School’s social theory.

Talk Title

The Concept of Fantasy in Benjamin and Adorno

Talk Abstract

For Critical Theory, fantasy is neither an escape from reality nor an act of creation ex nihilo, but the very site where totality can be conjured. In Adorno’s work, Phantasie marks this fault line—running from his early reflections in “The Actuality of Philosophy” to later works such as Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory. This talk traces the concept’s trajectory from Kant’s “lawless imagination” through Benjamin’s allegorical melancholy to Adorno’s notion of “exact fantasy.” Against readings that treat fantasy as a merely epistemic gesture or conflate it with imagination, I argue that it designates a distinctive form of experience—one that interrupts the subject’s self-posited unity and transforms the very form of subjectivity. Finally, fantasy will be situated within the constellation of Adorno’s materialism, alongside the priority of the object and the concept of obstinacy.

About the Continental Philosophy Group

One of six departmental research interest groups, the Continental Philosophy Group works in the traditions of textual interpretation of human consciousness, phenomenology, and post-structuralist critical theory, among other related traditions of thought.