Resigned and Radical Thought It has been said on numerous occasions that Frankfurt School critical theory is, and always was, a spent force. Its totalizing theory of reification leads to a reification of the theory itself. Famously, Adorno was forced to answer to the “reproach” of “resignation” from his students during the 1960s.¹ Adorno had already defined his project as “melancholy science,” and it is not difficult to connect melancholia to resignation.² In this essay Adorno will be read by way of a polemical inversion of melancholy, as it is commonly understood. This interpretation is motivated by…