Adorno again

Ned

Ruby Tuesday
OK I promise this is the last time I will ever ask this or any other forum to help me with exams, but:

On Friday I may have to do a very long essay on 'originality', and I'd like to do it on Adorno and the standardisation of mass culture. I've never actually read any Adorno. What should I read in the next forty-eight hours, either by him or about him? I have access to basically every book in the world.
 

owen

Well-known member
Dialectic of Enlightment
also
The Culture Industry (Routledge Anthology)
Do some bloody work, boy!
 

Moodles

Active member
Not by Adorno, but closely related:

Walter Benjamin - The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

can be found in Illuminations by Benjamin.

This is a good one, especially if you are short on time. Much of Adorno's writing is extremely dense and somewhat long-winded.

I second the recommendation of The Culture Industry essay because it is also shorter and fairly easy to digest compared to some of his other writing.
 

D7_bohs

Well-known member
Fred Jameson's 'Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism' is a good intro to lot of the debates both pro- and anti- Adorno - easier to read than any Adorno too; also essay by Habermas on the Dialectic of Enlightenment in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity
 

borderpolice

Well-known member
Ned said:
What should I read in the next forty-eight hours, either by him or about him? I have access to basically every book in the world.

His book "Minima Moralia" is full of quotable material. if there's only one text of TWA, you'd like to read, it would have to be that. The most worked out treatment of aesthetics is in "Aesthetic Theory", his sustained investigation of (musical) aesthetics can be found in "Philosophie der neuen musik", which i don't think has been translated [its a bit bollox anyway ...]. as its been quite a while since i read him, i no longer remember if any of those contain explicit discussions of "originality".
 

borderpolice

Well-known member
Moodles said:
I second the recommendation of The Culture Industry essay because it is also shorter and fairly easy to digest compared to some of his other writing.

while "culture industry" is certainly an important work, it shows Adorno at his worst, foaming with anger at popular culture (the way he misunderstands it). his interpretations of artists he deems progressive are more interesting.
 
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