Adorno sought an open dialectic of subject and object, not a materialist one

Evidence

The trenchant demonstration of the aporias in Husserl’s phenomenology cleared the way for the only solution then still conceivable: a dialectic of subject and object in which dialectics was no longer, as in Hegel, hypostatized into an absolute dialectics of the mind. It was fruitful to speak of a materialist dialectics so far as this emphasized a source that was able to act as a corrective to idealist dialectics. Strictly speaking, however, Adorno was not concerned with materialist dialectics, butas one might say, to make the analogy with his musical intentions clearwith a dialectic in which the subject was open towards the object: a free dialectics, therefore, a dialectique informelle. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 562

Categorization

• DEFINE: dialectique informelle is Adorno’s own coinage for a free dialectic where the subject stays open toward the object, distinct from Hegelian absolute dialectics.
• XREF: Connects to Adorno’s musical writings, since he explicitly frames the dialectic by analogy with his musical intentions.