What distinguishes Adorno`s critical theory from other Marxists is his attentive devotion to evaluating modern culture and modernist works of art in relation to the society. For Adorno, genuine works of art are the ones that do not, nor need to, directly address social reality; only the literary works that do not realistically represent or directly address the reality are able to detach themselves from the conformist bourgeois values and thus capable of bringing out a critique. Adorno further postulates that great literature is "autonomous" because it negates the reality which it relates to. While Lukacs and other Marxist critics attack modernist novels as "decadent" embodiments of late capitalist society and evidence of the writers` inability to depict reality, Adorno argues that art does not simply reflect the social system but acts within that reality as both "an irritant" and "the negative knowledge of the actual world." While there have been many theoretical works focusing on clarifying the purport of Adorno`s aesthetic theory, still, reevaluating Adorno`s "modernist" aesthetic theory with a close textual analysis (which will be the focus of my next research project) is certainly more than necessary in rendering James Joyce`s Ulysses a new understanding in the aspects of aesthetics, politics, and its relation to the society. The fact that modernist aesthetics and literary techniques are now taken for granted urges us to re-contextualize their significance, to study more closely what kinds of social situation they address in order to re-appreciate their aesthetic potentials. This essay attempts to evaluate Adorno`s comments on modernist works of art according to his aesthetic theory exemplified in his essays and debates with/against other Western Marxists. By examining Adorno`s aesthetic theory, in which the autonomy of art occupies an indispensible importance, we can better understand the socio-political significance and the aesthetic value of Joyce`s Ulysses.