The sociology of Theodor Adorno

Theodor Adorno is a widely-studied figure, but most often with regard to his work on cultural theory, philosophy and aesthetics. The Sociology of Theodor Adorno provides the first thorough English-language account of Adorno's sociological thinking. Matthias Benzer reads Adorno's sociology through six major themes: the problem of conceptualising capitalist society; empirical research; theoretical analysis; social critique; the sociological text; and the question of the non-social. Benzer explains the methodological and theoretical ideas informing Adorno's reflections on sociology and illustrates Adorno's approach to examining social life, including astrology, sexual taboos and racial prejudice. Benzer clarifies Adorno's sociology in relation to his work in other disciplines and the inspiration his sociology took from social thinkers such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Kracauer and Benjamin. The book raises critical questions about the viability of Adorno's sociological mode of procedure and its potential contributions and challenges to current debates in social science

No Easy Way Out: Adorno's Negativism and the Problem of Normativity

In this paper, I will address a question that has long overshadowed T.W. Adorno?s critical theory, namely, the question of whether or not it is possible to account for normativity within his negativistic philosophy. I believe that we can answer this question in the affirmative, but in this paper my aim will be more limited. I will clarify the problem and lay out the response strategies that are open to those hoping to defend Adorno?s theory. And I will argue that the problem cannot be dismissed as easily as is sometimes suggested, namely, by those who claim that Adorno?s theory is not normative

Squeezing, bleaching, and the victims’ fate: wounds, geography, poetry, micrology

This article opens a dialogue between geohumanities and poetry—or, more broadly, creative writing—around the subject matters of violence and wounding. It considers what kinds of “poetry” might be usefully enrolled by the geoliterary critic, or even authored by the geographer-poet, in response to such subject matters. Difficult questions abound about what it means to author, hear, and read poetry that is engaged and enraged by instances of violence, trauma, and victimhood. One horizon for these questions is Adorno’s ([1966] 1973) claim that “there can be no more poetry after Auschwitz,” and more particularly his elaboration and partial retreat from this claim in Negative Dialectics. Here, wary of attempts “at squeezing any kind of sense, however bleached, out of the victims’ fate” (Adorno [1966] 1973, 361), he nonetheless concluded that “perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man to scream; hence it may be wrong to say that after Auschwitz you can no longer write poems” (363). This article explores Adorno’s position, chiefly pursuing his arguments about the need for poetry—and indeed philosophy—that strives not for “purity” but precisely to be “soiled” and “spoiled,” never comforting, always disconcerting, never idealistically “transcendent,” always materialistically “micrological.” Including reference to a short story by Borges and critique of poetry by the geographer Wreford Watson, the argument is further advanced by attending to Adorno’s claims about another poet, Heine, sometimes regarded as a particularly “geographical” poet. The article concludes with final notes on possible implications for recasting work on wounded geographies as a species of applied micrology

To Shudder in the Sign of Mimesis Towards a Recovery of Unreduced Experience in Theodor W. Adorno

In the last decades, an enthusiastic and undivided attention has been firmly dedicated to Adorno’s notion of mimesis. Highly enigmatic and resistant to an easy comprehension, this concept has often been regarded as a fundamental cornerstone of Adorno’s philosophy. In actual fact, the meanings and uses he has endowed the term with are so pervasive and diffuse that its imbrication in Adorno’s main philosophemes transcends the strict realm of art, showing a substantial entanglement between the aesthetic dimension and the epistemic, the anthropological and the social ones. More precisely, this paper aims to investigate his specific conception of mimesis as that faculty that could contribute to heal that historical process of experiential impoverishment that affects modern life. To the mimetic comportment Adorno associates a productive openness to the other that allows the subject to touch and to be touched by the object, without coercively subsuming it. Thereby, through a renewed interplay between mimesis and rationality, Adorno hopes to restore the possibility of a full and unreduced experience.In the last decades, an enthusiastic and undivided attention has been firmly dedicated to Adorno’s notion of mimesis. Highly enigmatic and resistant to an easy comprehension, this concept has often been regarded as a fundamental cornerstone of Adorno’s philosophy. In actual fact, the meanings and uses he has endowed the term with are so pervasive and diffuse that its imbrication in Adorno’s main philosophemes transcends the strict realm of art, showing a substantial entanglement between the aesthetic dimension and the epistemic, the anthropological and the social ones. More precisely, this paper aims to investigate his specific conception of mimesis as that faculty that could contribute to heal that historical process of experiential impoverishment that affects modern life. To the mimetic comportment Adorno associates a productive openness to the other that allows the subject to touch and to be touched by the object, without coercively subsuming it. Thereby, through a renewed interplay between mimesis and rationality, Adorno hopes to restore the possibility of a full and unreduced experience

Authoritarianism and Ideology

In “Authoritarianism and Ideology,” Asad Haider approaches the problem of authoritarianism by considering the classical question of tyranny, as framed by Spinoza, and how this can be traced to the Marxist theory of ideology. A fundamental axis of the debate over ideology in twentieth century Marxism was the phenomenon of fascism, theorized in highly influential but also markedly different ways by figures like Wilhelm Reich and Theodor Adorno. A close reading of two major texts—Reich\u27s Mass Psychology of Fascism and Adorno\u27s contributions to The Authoritarian Personality—provides a basis for conceptually elaborating different directions that can be taken in the study of authoritarianism within the framework of ideology critique. The essay concludes by examining a specific form of ideology which is gestured to by both Reich and Adorno, though not systematically explored: racial ideology. As a fundamental component of contemporary authoritarianism, the phenomenon of racism allows us to elaborate the theory of ideology and its political implications

Big Data, ubiquitous exploitation, and targeted advertising:: new facets of the cultural industry

The emergence of the so-called digital culture from the development of new information and communication technologies led to criticisms of the concept of cultural industry, elaborated by Horkheimer and Adorno in the 1940s, defining the new configuration based on interactivity, open communication and greater freedom among users. However, to a critical view, the new configuration is even more totalitarian than the previous one. All the actions of users in the digital environment generate information that can be compiled and organized according to mathematical algorithms, configuring the so-called Big Data; such information includes personal preferences, political trends, gender, and even personality profiles, and leads to ubiquitous surveillance and manipulation through targeted advertising, being politically and economically far more effective than in the age of the cultural industry described by Adorno. The update of the critical theory of society implies understanding this new configuration, its pretensions and its contradictions. Therefore, the present article aims both to update the concept of cultural industry denouncing, thus, the new forms of manipulation, and to criticize the idea that freedom is immanent to the Digital Culture, present in its defenders.A emergência da cultura digital a partir do desenvolvimento de novas tecnologias de informação e comunicação levou a críticas ao conceito de indústria cultural elaborado por Horkheimer e Adorno nos anos 1940, definindo a nova configuração a partir da interatividade, comunicação aberta e maior liberdade entre usuários. Entretanto, a um olhar crítico, a nova configuração se revela mais totalitária que a anterior. Todas as ações dos usuários no ambiente digital geram informações que podem ser compiladas e organizadas de acordo com algoritmos matemáticos, configurando o chamado Big Data; essas informações incluem dados sobre preferências, tendências políticas, gênero e perfis de personalidade, e levam a tentativas de vigilância ubíqua e manipulação por meio de propaganda dirigida, sendo política e economicamente muito mais eficaz do que na era da indústria cultural descrita por Adorno. A atualização da teoria crítica da sociedade implica compreender essa nova configuração, suas pretensões e contradições. Nesse sentido, este artigo objetiva tanto atualizar o conceito de indústria cultural, denunciando, assim, as novas formas de manipulação, quanto criticar a ideia de que a liberdade é imanente à Cultura Digital, presente em seus defensores

Book review: critical theory of communication: new readings of Lukacs, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the age of the internet by Christian Fuchs

In Critical Theory of Communication, Christian Fuchs explores how the theories of five key thinkers from the Frankfurt School – Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Axel Honneth and Jürgen Habermas – can contribute to a critical understanding of contemporary media. While the book succeeds in underscoring the need to continue re-examining the vital contributions of these theorists, it does not always fully convince of their relevance to more specific aspects of the digital age, argues Adam Hodgkin

Adorno: Filosofía, estética y música. Hacia una educación crítica musical

Treball de Final de Grau en Humanitats: Estudis Interculturals. Codi: HU1036. Curs acadèmic 2014-2015Este trabajo de investigación, pretende una aproximación a Theodor Adorno. Este trabajo solamente pretende entender la parte de la música de este escritor, pero necesitamos hacer una aproximación para entender la filosofía y la estética explicadas por este filósofo. Este es un hombre que escribir sobre los sucesos en la historia de la humanidad, pero que vive en el siglo funesto de la humanidad, la primera mitad del siglo XIX. En sus estudios sobre música, los métodos de control de masas, la libertad, y otros, nunca pierde de vista la visión Marxista y Freudiana.This searching work, pretends an approximation to Theodor Adorno. This woks pretends only understand the music part of this writer, but we need make an approximation for understand the philosophy, and the esthetics explained by this philosopher. This is a man than write about the successes in the human history, but he lives in the black century on humanity, the first middle of the 19th century. In his studies about the music, mass control methods, the freedom, and others, he never loss the point of view of the Marxism and Freudian thinkings

Adorno on the ethical and the ineffable

The thesis is that Adorno has a normative ethics, albeit a minimal and negative ethics of resistance. However Adorno’s ethical theory faces two problems: the problem of the availability of the good and the problem of whether a normative ethics is consistent with philosophical negativism. The author argues that a correct of understanding the role of the ineffable in Adorno’s Negative Dialectics solves both problems: it provides an account of the availability of the good that is consistent with his philosophical negativism. The author counters the prevalent objection that Adorno’s aporetic philosophy, like some negative theology, leads to irrationalism and mysticism. The parallel with negative theology is developed by means of a comparison with Nicholas of Cusa. Drawing on Wittgentstein’s saying/showing distinction and Adrian Moore’s work the author argues that Nicholas and Adorno can be seen to share a philosophically defensible notion of ineffable knowledge