SIMONE BERNARDETE FERNANDES

This research investigates the reception of the Freudian concept of "death drive" by Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse, from the 1930s to the 1960s. The subject is elaborated by the perspective of these author's conceptions of the senses, obstacles and potentials for social emancipation, following the hypothesis that in their views on emancipation we can find the key to understand the references to the death drive. The interest in such theme is motivated by the importance of drive theory for critical theory in this period and by the renewed discussions about it in the last decades, by Amy Allen, Judith Butler, Benjamin Fong, and Joel Whitebook, that cast new light on the topic and on the work of the authors here investigated, by debating the relationship between death drive, negativity and emancipation. That entails facing the problems that permeate the bond between death drive and emancipation in 1930s-1960s critical theory and how they are reviewed contemporarily.