Shannon L. Mariotti
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780813167336
- eISBN:
- 9780813167411
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813167336.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This introductory chapter lays out the argument of the book, discusses the largely unexplored English-language compositions it analyzes, and demonstrates its unique contributions to existing ...
More
This introductory chapter lays out the argument of the book, discusses the largely unexplored English-language compositions it analyzes, and demonstrates its unique contributions to existing scholarship. This book analyzes Adorno’s largely unexplored English compositions, written in the United States and directed toward an American audience—Current of Music, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, and The Stars Down to Earth—to show how a prescriptive and productive democratic project developed during his years of “exile.” This chapter gives an overview of the constellation of concepts the book traces—experience, critique, negative dialectics, pedagogy, leadership, democracy—to demonstrate the reparative work that Adorno performs on the practice of American citizenship during his years in the United States.Less
This introductory chapter lays out the argument of the book, discusses the largely unexplored English-language compositions it analyzes, and demonstrates its unique contributions to existing scholarship. This book analyzes Adorno’s largely unexplored English compositions, written in the United States and directed toward an American audience—Current of Music, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, and The Stars Down to Earth—to show how a prescriptive and productive democratic project developed during his years of “exile.” This chapter gives an overview of the constellation of concepts the book traces—experience, critique, negative dialectics, pedagogy, leadership, democracy—to demonstrate the reparative work that Adorno performs on the practice of American citizenship during his years in the United States.
Shannon L. Mariotti
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780813167336
- eISBN:
- 9780813167411
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813167336.003.0007
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter shows how Adorno identifies small-scale, modest, less visible “substantive democratic forms” in the United States that act as countertendencies that might be drawn out as a vaccine ...
More
This chapter shows how Adorno identifies small-scale, modest, less visible “substantive democratic forms” in the United States that act as countertendencies that might be drawn out as a vaccine against more prevalent fascistic elements of pseudo-democracy in America. In his writings on American culture, we see Adorno employing the same mode of critique that Marx applies to the commodity, but with a different object: Adorno’s critique is directed toward an exploration of the radio or the Los Angeles Times’s astrology column, for example, as microcosms of the larger modern capitalist culture in the United States. But Adorno aims to illuminate how even seemingly insignificant cultural objects actually contain important nonidentical qualities—countertendencies—that protest against and can be used to unsettle the problematic conditions that they otherwise participate in and uphold. Adorno’s writings on American culture must be read in terms of his theory and practice of negative dialectics for our picture of him to avoid the problematic distortions it has been subjected to in the past. In this way, Adorno sees the potential for change—what might be—arising from the tensions and contradictions—the countertendencies—that exist within a problematic status quo.Less
This chapter shows how Adorno identifies small-scale, modest, less visible “substantive democratic forms” in the United States that act as countertendencies that might be drawn out as a vaccine against more prevalent fascistic elements of pseudo-democracy in America. In his writings on American culture, we see Adorno employing the same mode of critique that Marx applies to the commodity, but with a different object: Adorno’s critique is directed toward an exploration of the radio or the Los Angeles Times’s astrology column, for example, as microcosms of the larger modern capitalist culture in the United States. But Adorno aims to illuminate how even seemingly insignificant cultural objects actually contain important nonidentical qualities—countertendencies—that protest against and can be used to unsettle the problematic conditions that they otherwise participate in and uphold. Adorno’s writings on American culture must be read in terms of his theory and practice of negative dialectics for our picture of him to avoid the problematic distortions it has been subjected to in the past. In this way, Adorno sees the potential for change—what might be—arising from the tensions and contradictions—the countertendencies—that exist within a problematic status quo.
