Responding to Precarity: Ethics and Mediation in Butler and Adorno

This chapter argues that Adorno’s concept of mediation is relevant for Judith Butler’s relational ethics. In response to the precarity of contemporary life, Butler develops an account of relationality that is a vital source for theorising ethics. However, I argue that Butler’s theorisation of responsibility lapses into a pre-social foundational account, which is a position she is keen to avoid. Via Adorno’s concept of mediation, I argue that the ways in which we understand ethical claims are mediated by their relation to other concepts and society. As such, I maintain that any attempt to find ethical responsibility in an unmediated way, that is, without attending to particular social conditions, will fail to be sufficiently critical of the precarity in which human life is constituted.