Adorno reading and writing sociology
TL;DR: The authors argue that the inability to grasp the rhetorical character of Adorno's critical interpretive approach prevents an understanding of his potenti...This character is identifiable in Adorno’s prose and grasped through a close attention to his account of the negative dialectic.
Abstract: In the context of recent attempts to more adequately engage with Adorno’s approach to sociology and social theory, this article argues that such a project requires a more complete understanding of the philosophical basis of Adorno’s critical material perspective on knowledge and language. In particular, the interpretation of Adorno within sociology has been hampered by a fundamental misunderstanding regarding his methodology of critique and composition, which prioritizes the content of Adorno’s claims regarding sociology and social theory, over their rhetorical and performative character. This character is identifiable in Adorno’s prose, and grasped through a close attention to his account of the negative dialectic. Using Bernstein’s articulation of the ‘complex concept’ as an analytical framework, and Adorno’s introduction to Durkheim as its material, the article argues that the inability to grasp the rhetorical character of Adorno’s critical interpretive approach prevents an understanding of his potenti...
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TL;DR: The main purpose of as discussed by the authors is to provide a critical overview of the key contributions made by Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre in Enrichissement and to demonstrate that Boltanski's Enrichissment contains valuable insights into the constitution of Western European capitalism in the early twenty-first century.
Abstract: The main purpose of this paper is to provide a critical overview of the key contributions made by Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre in Enrichissement. Une critique de la marchandise (Paris: Gallimard, 2017). With the exception of one journal article, entitled 'The Economic Life of Things: Commodities, Collectibles, Assets', their collaborative work has received little attention in Anglophone circles. This paper aims to demonstrate that Boltanski and Esquerre's Enrichissement contains valuable insights into the constitution of Western European capitalism in the early twenty-first century. In order to substantiate the validity of this claim, the subsequent inquiry focuses on central dimensions that, in Boltanski and Esquerre's view, need to be scrutinized to grasp the nature of major trends in contemporary society, notably those associated with the consolidation of the enrichment economy. In the final section, attention will be drawn to several noteworthy limitations of Boltanski and Esquerre's analysis.
39 citations
Cites background from "Adorno reading and writing sociolog..."
...In addition, see Fuller (2016) and Gartman (2012)....
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01 Jan 2020
26 citations
Cites background from "Adorno reading and writing sociolog..."
...Während seine Arbeiten im anglophonen Sprachraum, vor allem in der Sozialtheorie, eine kleine Renaissance erfahren (vgl. Fuller 2016, 431 f.), ist diese in der deutschsprachigen Soziologie zu großen Teilen ausgeblieben....
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TL;DR: The authors analyzes a dual relationship between Adorno and Durkheim: on the one hand, Adorno adopts the perspective on society, describing it as an obscure, opaque thing that individuals cannot understand by themselves; on the other, he tries to get out of the opacity that he recognizes as a structural moment of the society he lives in.
Abstract: This paper analyzes a dual relationship between Adorno and Durkheim: on the one hand, Adorno adopts Durkheim’s perspective on society, describing it as an obscure, opaque thing that individuals cannot understand by themselves; on the other, he tries to get out of the opacity that he recognizes as a structural moment of the society he lives in. This last point engages us in a discussion of the relationship between political sociology and philosophy of emancipation, which allows to study in a new perspective the only text Adorno published in his lifetime on Durkheim: his preface to Philosophy and Sociology, the critical violence of which is well known and often interpreted as a complete rejection of Durkheim’s sociology. The thesis of this article is that the conflict between Adorno and Durkheim is a political one and that the division between the two authors lies in their evaluation of the capacity of the modern capitalist society to produce out of itself common ideals that assure the justice of the actual...
5 citations
Cites background from "Adorno reading and writing sociolog..."
...A more patient and therefore more fruitful interpretation of Adorno’s relationship to Durkheim was made by Brian W. Fuller (Fuller, 2016)....
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References
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Book•
01 Jan 1950
TL;DR: The Authoritarian Personality "invented a set of criteria by which to define personality traits, ranked these traits and their intensity in any given person on what it called the 'F scale' (F for fascist)".
Abstract: The Authoritarian Personality "invented a set of criteria by which to define personality traits, ranked these traits and their intensity in any given person on what it called the 'F scale' (F for fascist)." The personality type Adorno et al. identified can be defined by nine traits that were believed to cluster together as the result of childhood experiences. These traits include conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intellectualism, anti-intraception, superstition and stereotypy, power and "toughness", destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and exaggerated concerns over sex.
7,003 citations
01 Jan 1997
1,020 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1963
TL;DR: The culture industry intentionally integrates its consumers from above as mentioned in this paper and fuses the old and familiar into a new quality, fusing high and low art, separated for thousands of years, in order to exclude from the outset the interpretation agreeable to its advocates: that it is a matter of something like a culture that arises spontaneously from the masses themselves.
Abstract: The term culture industry was perhaps used for the first time in the book Dialectic of Enlightenment, which Horkheimer and I published in Amsterdam in 1947. In our drafts we spoke of "mass culture." We replaced that expression with "culture industry" in order to exclude from the outset the interpretation agreeable to its advocates: that it is a matter of something like a culture that arises spontaneously from the masses themselves, the contemporary form of popular art. From the latter the culture industry must be distinguished in the extreme. The culture industry fuses the old and familiar into a new quality. In all its branches, products which are tailored for consumption by masses, and which to a great extent determine the nature of that consumption, are manufactured more or less according to plan. The individual branches are similar in structure or at least fit into each other, ordering themselves into a system almost without a gap. This is made possible by contemporary technical capabilities as well as by economic and administrative concentration. The culture industry intentionally integrates its consumers from above. To the detriment of both it forces together the spheres of high and low art, separated for thousands of years. The seriousness of high art is destroyed in speculation about its efficacy; the seriousness of the lower perishes with the civilizational constraints imposed on the rebellious resistance inherent within it as long as social control was not yet total. Thus, although the culture industry undeniably speculates on the conscious and unconscious state of the millions towards which it is directed, the masses are not primary, but secondary, they are an object of calculation; an appendage of the machinery. The customer is not king, as the culture industry would like to have us believe, not its subject but its object. The very word mass-media, specially honed for the culture industry, already shifts the accent onto harmless terrain. Neither is it a question of primary concern for the masses, nor of the techniques of communication as such, but of the spirit which sufflates them, their master's voice. The culture industry misuses its concern for the masses in order to duplicate, reinforce and strengthen their mentality, which it presumes is given and unchangeable. How this mentality might be changed is excluded throughout. The masses are not the measure but the ideology of the culture industry, even though the culture industry itself could scarcely exist without adapting to the masses.
376 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1990
TL;DR: Theodor Adorno is widely recognized as one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century, as a foremost cultural critic and philosopher, and one the most important figures in the Frankfurt School and Western Marxism more generally as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Theodor Adorno is widely recognized as one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century, as a foremost cultural critic and philosopher, and one of the most important figures in the Frankfurt School and Western Marxism more generally. And yet, Adorno's reputation has suffered from accusations about his alleged pessimism and, even worse, from attempts but postmodernists to recruit him to their war against all 'grand narratives', including, most importantly, Marxism itself. In this work Frederic Jameson rescues Adorno from the claws of his critics and the clutches of his false friends. Jameson sees Adorno as not only a thinker whose contribution to Marxism was unique and indispensable, but also as the theorist of late capitalism. Late Marxism introduces Adorno's thought to a new generation of dissidents and demonstrates the freshness and relevance of dialectical thinking to criticism and resistance today.
343 citations
"Adorno reading and writing sociolog..." refers background in this paper
...For example, Bernstein (2001); Helmling (2009); Jameson (1990); Nicholsen (1997); Plass (2007); Richter (2007). inal....
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...Those who have paid closest attention to form (e.g. Jameson, 1990; Nicholsen, 1997; Richter, 2007), have usually focused their efforts on his more ‘artistic’ texts, both in terms of their form and their content....
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