Roshanak Kheshti
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479867011
- eISBN:
- 9781479861125
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479867011.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Fearing the rapid disappearance of indigenous cultures, twentieth-century American ethnographers turned to the phonograph to salvage native languages and musical practices. Prominent among these ...
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Fearing the rapid disappearance of indigenous cultures, twentieth-century American ethnographers turned to the phonograph to salvage native languages and musical practices. Prominent among these early “songcatchers” were white women of comfortable class standing, similar to the female consumers targeted by the music industry as the gramophone became increasingly present in bourgeois homes. Through these simultaneous movements, listening became constructed as a feminized practice, one that craved exotic sounds and mythologized the ‘other’ that made the. In Modernity’s Ear, Roshanak Kheshti examines the ways in which racialized and gendered sounds became fetishized and, in turn, capitalized on by an emergent American world music industry through the promotion of an economy of desire. Taking a mixed-methods approach that draws on anthropology and sound studies, Kheshti locates sound as both representative and constitutive of culture and power. Through analyses of film, photography, recordings, and radio, as well as ethnographic fieldwork at a San Francisco-based world music record company, Kheshti politicizes the feminine in the contemporary world music industry. Deploying critical theory to read the fantasy of the feminized listener and feminized organ of the ear, Modernity’s Ear ultimately explores the importance of pleasure in constituting the listening self. The chapters in Modernity’s Ear are organized around the particular ways in which sound’s form is instrumentalized and utilized by the world music culture industry writ large to produce racialized and gendered encounters in the listening event. The familiar tropes deployed in the critical examination of world music—hybridity, appropriation, identity, authenticity, orality, and field recording—are upended in six chapters that reread these formations instead as miscegenation, incorporation, signifiance (loss of self), aurality, and refusal. This reorientation toward the embodied encounters and subjective outcomes staged by the WMCI enables a critical engagement with the utopian claims about music that motivate this very study.Less
Fearing the rapid disappearance of indigenous cultures, twentieth-century American ethnographers turned to the phonograph to salvage native languages and musical practices. Prominent among these early “songcatchers” were white women of comfortable class standing, similar to the female consumers targeted by the music industry as the gramophone became increasingly present in bourgeois homes. Through these simultaneous movements, listening became constructed as a feminized practice, one that craved exotic sounds and mythologized the ‘other’ that made the. In Modernity’s Ear, Roshanak Kheshti examines the ways in which racialized and gendered sounds became fetishized and, in turn, capitalized on by an emergent American world music industry through the promotion of an economy of desire. Taking a mixed-methods approach that draws on anthropology and sound studies, Kheshti locates sound as both representative and constitutive of culture and power. Through analyses of film, photography, recordings, and radio, as well as ethnographic fieldwork at a San Francisco-based world music record company, Kheshti politicizes the feminine in the contemporary world music industry. Deploying critical theory to read the fantasy of the feminized listener and feminized organ of the ear, Modernity’s Ear ultimately explores the importance of pleasure in constituting the listening self. The chapters in Modernity’s Ear are organized around the particular ways in which sound’s form is instrumentalized and utilized by the world music culture industry writ large to produce racialized and gendered encounters in the listening event. The familiar tropes deployed in the critical examination of world music—hybridity, appropriation, identity, authenticity, orality, and field recording—are upended in six chapters that reread these formations instead as miscegenation, incorporation, signifiance (loss of self), aurality, and refusal. This reorientation toward the embodied encounters and subjective outcomes staged by the WMCI enables a critical engagement with the utopian claims about music that motivate this very study.
Ehrhard Bahr
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520251281
- eISBN:
- 9780520933804
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520251281.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter focuses on the concept of the “culture industry,” as defined in Dialectic of Enlightenment, and on Theodor W. Adorno's Philosophy of Modern Music of 1949 and his late Aesthetic Theory of ...
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This chapter focuses on the concept of the “culture industry,” as defined in Dialectic of Enlightenment, and on Theodor W. Adorno's Philosophy of Modern Music of 1949 and his late Aesthetic Theory of 1970. The process of enlightenment had proved both progressive and regressive, and culminated in a crisis around 1933 that needed not only political action to decide its outcome, but also philosophical reflection to chart the future course of enlightenment. The chapter shows how Adorno, in his book on Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, integrated the development of modern music into the historical process and identified resistance to society as the function of art. Later in his aesthetics, Adorno added the concept of art as historical record and the permanent language of human suffering. As a close reading of the chapter “The Culture Industry” shows, Max Horkheimer and Adorno suggest similarities between Adolf Hitler and Hollywood, or between German national socialism and American mass culture.Less
This chapter focuses on the concept of the “culture industry,” as defined in Dialectic of Enlightenment, and on Theodor W. Adorno's Philosophy of Modern Music of 1949 and his late Aesthetic Theory of 1970. The process of enlightenment had proved both progressive and regressive, and culminated in a crisis around 1933 that needed not only political action to decide its outcome, but also philosophical reflection to chart the future course of enlightenment. The chapter shows how Adorno, in his book on Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, integrated the development of modern music into the historical process and identified resistance to society as the function of art. Later in his aesthetics, Adorno added the concept of art as historical record and the permanent language of human suffering. As a close reading of the chapter “The Culture Industry” shows, Max Horkheimer and Adorno suggest similarities between Adolf Hitler and Hollywood, or between German national socialism and American mass culture.
Jack Zipes
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691160580
- eISBN:
- 9781400852581
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691160580.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Folk Literature
This chapter discusses how the Grimms became involved in hyping their own tales to change their reception at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It first considers some of the theoretical ...
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This chapter discusses how the Grimms became involved in hyping their own tales to change their reception at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It first considers some of the theoretical aspects of hyping and the particular role hyping plays in the media paratexts of the culture industry. Hereafter the chapter reviews how the Brothers Grimm changed the format and scope of their tales, primarily under the influence of Taylor's 1823 translation, German Popular Stories, to make their tales more accessible to the general reading public in Germany. Lastly, the chapter examines some recent filmic adaptations of fairy tales and considers whether the hyping of these films detracts from the value of the fairy-tale genre and storytelling in general.Less
This chapter discusses how the Grimms became involved in hyping their own tales to change their reception at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It first considers some of the theoretical aspects of hyping and the particular role hyping plays in the media paratexts of the culture industry. Hereafter the chapter reviews how the Brothers Grimm changed the format and scope of their tales, primarily under the influence of Taylor's 1823 translation, German Popular Stories, to make their tales more accessible to the general reading public in Germany. Lastly, the chapter examines some recent filmic adaptations of fairy tales and considers whether the hyping of these films detracts from the value of the fairy-tale genre and storytelling in general.
Juliet John
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199257928
- eISBN:
- 9780191594854
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199257928.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The Conclusion analyses the larger implications of the debate surrounding the opening of the commercial visitor attraction, ‘Dickens World’ in Chatham, Kent, in 2007. It argues that the site ...
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The Conclusion analyses the larger implications of the debate surrounding the opening of the commercial visitor attraction, ‘Dickens World’ in Chatham, Kent, in 2007. It argues that the site represents a challenge to the process of familiarization and ‘heritagization’ that has accompanied Dickens's rise to respectability and diminished his ability to empower ‘the people’ in the sense of those outside the cultural elite. Disparaging comparisons between Dickens World and Disney stem partly from a prevailing distrust in the modern era of the ‘culture industry’ — but also to the perceived Americanization of Dickens. The chapter argues that Dickens World reverses of the dissociation of Dickens from materialism that has accompanied his rise to ‘English iconhood’ in the public imagination. Moreover, if ancestry and heritage involve an idea of value residing in veneration, in an emotional relationship between the past and the present which is nonetheless hierarchical, then the accessibility, materialism and indeed playfulness of Dickens World break the bonds of ancestry. It arguably had to do so if it wanted to play to the lowbrow end of the spectrum in today's segregated cultural marketplace; its success or failure will thus tell us a great deal about whether or not Dickens's inclusive vision for the amusements of the people is still viable in the twenty‐first century, and about whether Dickens continues to amuse the people.Less
The Conclusion analyses the larger implications of the debate surrounding the opening of the commercial visitor attraction, ‘Dickens World’ in Chatham, Kent, in 2007. It argues that the site represents a challenge to the process of familiarization and ‘heritagization’ that has accompanied Dickens's rise to respectability and diminished his ability to empower ‘the people’ in the sense of those outside the cultural elite. Disparaging comparisons between Dickens World and Disney stem partly from a prevailing distrust in the modern era of the ‘culture industry’ — but also to the perceived Americanization of Dickens. The chapter argues that Dickens World reverses of the dissociation of Dickens from materialism that has accompanied his rise to ‘English iconhood’ in the public imagination. Moreover, if ancestry and heritage involve an idea of value residing in veneration, in an emotional relationship between the past and the present which is nonetheless hierarchical, then the accessibility, materialism and indeed playfulness of Dickens World break the bonds of ancestry. It arguably had to do so if it wanted to play to the lowbrow end of the spectrum in today's segregated cultural marketplace; its success or failure will thus tell us a great deal about whether or not Dickens's inclusive vision for the amusements of the people is still viable in the twenty‐first century, and about whether Dickens continues to amuse the people.
Benjamin Y. Fong
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231176682
- eISBN:
- 9780231542616
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231176682.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Employs the drive theory developed in the first three chapters toward a reinterpretation of the culture industry thesis of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer.
Employs the drive theory developed in the first three chapters toward a reinterpretation of the culture industry thesis of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer.
Suzanne Scott
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479838608
- eISBN:
- 9781479822966
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479838608.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This introduction briefly introduces the book’s topic and historical scope and establishes “the convergence culture industry” as an analytical framework. This portmanteau of Henry Jenkins’s ...
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This introduction briefly introduces the book’s topic and historical scope and establishes “the convergence culture industry” as an analytical framework. This portmanteau of Henry Jenkins’s “convergence culture” and Adorno and Horkheimer’s “the culture industry” is positioned as a polemic, but nonetheless one that can help us understand the gendered mainstreaming of fan culture and attempts to standardize fan identities and practices in the digital age. As the title of the introduction suggests, it also situates this moment within fan and geek culture (and the privilege of white, straight, cis-gendered men in it) within a broader array of antifeminist pushbacks against “political correctness” and “social justice warriors.” Accordingly, the introduction concludes with a consideration of whether systemic attempts to remarginalize female fans within both fan culture and fan studies might be productively, if allegorically, framed through the GOP’s “War on Women,” emergent “Men’s Rights” and alt-right movements, and nostalgia for a lost status quo.Less
This introduction briefly introduces the book’s topic and historical scope and establishes “the convergence culture industry” as an analytical framework. This portmanteau of Henry Jenkins’s “convergence culture” and Adorno and Horkheimer’s “the culture industry” is positioned as a polemic, but nonetheless one that can help us understand the gendered mainstreaming of fan culture and attempts to standardize fan identities and practices in the digital age. As the title of the introduction suggests, it also situates this moment within fan and geek culture (and the privilege of white, straight, cis-gendered men in it) within a broader array of antifeminist pushbacks against “political correctness” and “social justice warriors.” Accordingly, the introduction concludes with a consideration of whether systemic attempts to remarginalize female fans within both fan culture and fan studies might be productively, if allegorically, framed through the GOP’s “War on Women,” emergent “Men’s Rights” and alt-right movements, and nostalgia for a lost status quo.
John Carlos Rowe (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520098701
- eISBN:
- 9780520943797
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520098701.003.0010
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Global
This chapters explores the various ways in which U.S. cultural production, also known as the “the culture industry,” conditioned American citizens to accept the undisguised militarism and jingoistic ...
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This chapters explores the various ways in which U.S. cultural production, also known as the “the culture industry,” conditioned American citizens to accept the undisguised militarism and jingoistic nationalism driving U.S. foreign policy. The culture industry today encompasses a wide range of nominally different political positions, so that in many respects left, liberal, and conservative cultural works often achieve complementary ends. Exposures of U.S. military propaganda during the war have continued in news coverage of the supposed “rebuilding” of the political and economic infrastructure in Iraq. Public concern, regarding the federal government's veracity, is evident in the debate regarding who was actually responsible for the disinformation regarding the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” used as the principal justification for the invasion of Iraq. The chapter follows the capitalization of “cultural exports” ranging from Hollywood entertainment and television programming to digital technologies and their protocols for communication that aims towards rapid Americanization of the world.Less
This chapters explores the various ways in which U.S. cultural production, also known as the “the culture industry,” conditioned American citizens to accept the undisguised militarism and jingoistic nationalism driving U.S. foreign policy. The culture industry today encompasses a wide range of nominally different political positions, so that in many respects left, liberal, and conservative cultural works often achieve complementary ends. Exposures of U.S. military propaganda during the war have continued in news coverage of the supposed “rebuilding” of the political and economic infrastructure in Iraq. Public concern, regarding the federal government's veracity, is evident in the debate regarding who was actually responsible for the disinformation regarding the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” used as the principal justification for the invasion of Iraq. The chapter follows the capitalization of “cultural exports” ranging from Hollywood entertainment and television programming to digital technologies and their protocols for communication that aims towards rapid Americanization of the world.
Paul K. Jones
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781526123435
- eISBN:
- 9781526160966
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526123442.00013
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter directly addresses the issue of cultural populism which is often bracketed out in the orthodox literature. It opens with an extended discussion of the relationship between aesthetic ...
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This chapter directly addresses the issue of cultural populism which is often bracketed out in the orthodox literature. It opens with an extended discussion of the relationship between aesthetic movements, fascism and populism. The Institute’s critical discussion of Volksgemeinschaft, ‘community of the people’, and its links to the culture industry thesis, is included here. The chapter so moves ‘cultural populism’ beyond the confines of its recent critical application to the British cultural studies project, the latter being the source of many cultural populist charges of ‘cultural elitism’ against the Frankfurt School. The similar earlier critique of the Institute by Shils, based in the category of ‘mass culture’, is critically assessed. Cultural populism’s longer history and relevance to ‘political populism’ is examined, drawing on the final writings of Eugene Lunn. The little recognized role of ‘popular art’ within the Institute’s culture industry writings is elaborated and deepened in order to move beyond the instrumental role of ‘popular culture’ in most Gramscian conceptions of the counter-hegemonic towards the focus of the next chapter.Less
This chapter directly addresses the issue of cultural populism which is often bracketed out in the orthodox literature. It opens with an extended discussion of the relationship between aesthetic movements, fascism and populism. The Institute’s critical discussion of Volksgemeinschaft, ‘community of the people’, and its links to the culture industry thesis, is included here. The chapter so moves ‘cultural populism’ beyond the confines of its recent critical application to the British cultural studies project, the latter being the source of many cultural populist charges of ‘cultural elitism’ against the Frankfurt School. The similar earlier critique of the Institute by Shils, based in the category of ‘mass culture’, is critically assessed. Cultural populism’s longer history and relevance to ‘political populism’ is examined, drawing on the final writings of Eugene Lunn. The little recognized role of ‘popular art’ within the Institute’s culture industry writings is elaborated and deepened in order to move beyond the instrumental role of ‘popular culture’ in most Gramscian conceptions of the counter-hegemonic towards the focus of the next chapter.
Treva B. Lindsey
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252041020
- eISBN:
- 9780252099571
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252041020.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This chapter closely engages African American beauty culture. Advertisements for beauty products such as hair pomades and skin bleaches comprised a significant portion of advertisements in African ...
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This chapter closely engages African American beauty culture. Advertisements for beauty products such as hair pomades and skin bleaches comprised a significant portion of advertisements in African American newspapers throughout the early twentieth century. The advertisements for beauty products targeting African American women unveil a discourse and an industry that were instrumental to the materialization of a New Negro culture. Through advertisements and open discussions about African American beauty, self-presentation and adornment shifted from an individual/private sphere issue to a formidable public culture site of individual and collective expressivity during the New Negro era. African American beauty culture thrived as a site of reinvention and re-imagining for New Negro women. It also offered multiple authorial roles in which these women could partake, including: producer, consumer, and manufacturer. In Washington, this black women’s beauty culture was a thriving industry as well as a battleground and playground for black women actualizing themselves as New Negro women.Less
This chapter closely engages African American beauty culture. Advertisements for beauty products such as hair pomades and skin bleaches comprised a significant portion of advertisements in African American newspapers throughout the early twentieth century. The advertisements for beauty products targeting African American women unveil a discourse and an industry that were instrumental to the materialization of a New Negro culture. Through advertisements and open discussions about African American beauty, self-presentation and adornment shifted from an individual/private sphere issue to a formidable public culture site of individual and collective expressivity during the New Negro era. African American beauty culture thrived as a site of reinvention and re-imagining for New Negro women. It also offered multiple authorial roles in which these women could partake, including: producer, consumer, and manufacturer. In Washington, this black women’s beauty culture was a thriving industry as well as a battleground and playground for black women actualizing themselves as New Negro women.
John Lie
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780520283114
- eISBN:
- 9780520958944
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520283114.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
Chapter 2 delineates the rise of K-pop and explores its political-economic background, South Korea’s export-orientated innovation economy, and finally the aesthetics of K-pop.
Chapter 2 delineates the rise of K-pop and explores its political-economic background, South Korea’s export-orientated innovation economy, and finally the aesthetics of K-pop.
Samuel Weber
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823224159
- eISBN:
- 9780823235841
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823224159.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Language
This chapter attempts to summarize an array of Adorno's works and analyses of various concepts as a critique of Kierkegaard's texts or as a comparison with a Hegelian line of ...
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This chapter attempts to summarize an array of Adorno's works and analyses of various concepts as a critique of Kierkegaard's texts or as a comparison with a Hegelian line of thought. Adorno shares his thoughts on concreteness and a conception of knowledge as an active process of self-constituting rather than a passive medium. Among some of the concepts discussed in this chapter is that which concerns reading: Hegel requires repeated reading, but one could easily fool someone who relies on repeated reading. Adorno also gives focus to Hegel's concept of reading as an art. Adorno analyzes the “Culture Industry” and associates this with the critique of the “Critical Theory”. Lastly, Adorno turns his attention to the importance of the use of language and pseudonyms and their philosophical implications.Less
This chapter attempts to summarize an array of Adorno's works and analyses of various concepts as a critique of Kierkegaard's texts or as a comparison with a Hegelian line of thought. Adorno shares his thoughts on concreteness and a conception of knowledge as an active process of self-constituting rather than a passive medium. Among some of the concepts discussed in this chapter is that which concerns reading: Hegel requires repeated reading, but one could easily fool someone who relies on repeated reading. Adorno also gives focus to Hegel's concept of reading as an art. Adorno analyzes the “Culture Industry” and associates this with the critique of the “Critical Theory”. Lastly, Adorno turns his attention to the importance of the use of language and pseudonyms and their philosophical implications.
John Lie
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780520283114
- eISBN:
- 9780520958944
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520283114.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
The introductory chapter provides a genealogy of popular music in South Korea and charts a series of rifts that separates traditional Korean music from K-pop. In particular, Japanese and American ...
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The introductory chapter provides a genealogy of popular music in South Korea and charts a series of rifts that separates traditional Korean music from K-pop. In particular, Japanese and American influences are significant, as are the changing political-economic context of South Korea, including the salience of censorship.Less
The introductory chapter provides a genealogy of popular music in South Korea and charts a series of rifts that separates traditional Korean music from K-pop. In particular, Japanese and American influences are significant, as are the changing political-economic context of South Korea, including the salience of censorship.
Peter Uwe Hohendahl
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801452369
- eISBN:
- 9780801469282
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801452369.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book reexamines Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory along with his other writings on aesthetics in light of the unexpected return of the aesthetic to today's cultural debates. Is Adorno's ...
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This book reexamines Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory along with his other writings on aesthetics in light of the unexpected return of the aesthetic to today's cultural debates. Is Adorno's aesthetic theory still relevant today? This question is answered with an emphatic yes. As the book shows, a careful reading of the work exposes different questions and arguments today than it did in the past. Over the years Adorno's concern over the fate of art in a late capitalist society has met with everything from suspicion to indifference. In part this could be explained by relative unfamiliarity with the German dialectical tradition in North America. Today's debate is better informed, more multifaceted, and further removed from the immediate aftermath of the Cold War and of the shadow of postmodernism. Adorno's insistence on the radical autonomy of art has much to offer contemporary discussions of art and the aesthetic in search of new responses to the pervasive effects of a neoliberal art market and culture industry. The book shows how radically transformative Adorno's ideas have been and how thoroughly they have shaped current discussions in aesthetics. Among the topics considered are the role of art in modernism and postmodernism, the truth claims of artworks, the function of the ugly in modern artworks, the precarious value of the literary tradition, and the surprising significance of realism for Adorno.Less
This book reexamines Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory along with his other writings on aesthetics in light of the unexpected return of the aesthetic to today's cultural debates. Is Adorno's aesthetic theory still relevant today? This question is answered with an emphatic yes. As the book shows, a careful reading of the work exposes different questions and arguments today than it did in the past. Over the years Adorno's concern over the fate of art in a late capitalist society has met with everything from suspicion to indifference. In part this could be explained by relative unfamiliarity with the German dialectical tradition in North America. Today's debate is better informed, more multifaceted, and further removed from the immediate aftermath of the Cold War and of the shadow of postmodernism. Adorno's insistence on the radical autonomy of art has much to offer contemporary discussions of art and the aesthetic in search of new responses to the pervasive effects of a neoliberal art market and culture industry. The book shows how radically transformative Adorno's ideas have been and how thoroughly they have shaped current discussions in aesthetics. Among the topics considered are the role of art in modernism and postmodernism, the truth claims of artworks, the function of the ugly in modern artworks, the precarious value of the literary tradition, and the surprising significance of realism for Adorno.
David Gilbert
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469622699
- eISBN:
- 9781469622712
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469622699.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter explores how, by embracing and selling racial difference, black musicians were able to become leading cultural innovators, symbols of modern black representation, and central players in ...
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This chapter explores how, by embracing and selling racial difference, black musicians were able to become leading cultural innovators, symbols of modern black representation, and central players in the formation of modern American culture. This emerging racial formation was essentially strengthened by its diversity within the Manhattan marketplace. The popularity of ragtime empowered African American musicians to intervene in the city's local—but nationalizing—commercial culture industries with new and inventive musical commodities that, in turn, further propelled black innovators to the top of Manhattan markets. This reflexive, mutually propelling circuit promoted the increase of black artistry alongside the expansion of New York culture industries such as song publishing, musical theater, and vaudeville. It reinforced the idea that African American entertainers were some of the best in New York City and, increasingly, throughout America.Less
This chapter explores how, by embracing and selling racial difference, black musicians were able to become leading cultural innovators, symbols of modern black representation, and central players in the formation of modern American culture. This emerging racial formation was essentially strengthened by its diversity within the Manhattan marketplace. The popularity of ragtime empowered African American musicians to intervene in the city's local—but nationalizing—commercial culture industries with new and inventive musical commodities that, in turn, further propelled black innovators to the top of Manhattan markets. This reflexive, mutually propelling circuit promoted the increase of black artistry alongside the expansion of New York culture industries such as song publishing, musical theater, and vaudeville. It reinforced the idea that African American entertainers were some of the best in New York City and, increasingly, throughout America.
Ulf Olsson
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520286641
- eISBN:
- 9780520961760
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520286641.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
During their thirty years of existence, the Grateful Dead produced a musical as well as a cultural heritage that invites and rewards exploration and evaluation. This book engages critical theory in ...
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During their thirty years of existence, the Grateful Dead produced a musical as well as a cultural heritage that invites and rewards exploration and evaluation. This book engages critical theory in order to understand the band’s status and achievement, and what the cultural and political significance of the music as well as the wider phenomenon was, and is. The band and its music are studied in the tension between culture industry and self-organization. The first chapter looks at the dialectic of avant-garde and tradition in the mass cultural phenomenon that the Grateful Dead became. The second chapter builds on that analysis by directly engaging the political importance and legacy of a self-declared ”apolitical” band, assessing what ”politics” could mean in both the practices of the band and its audience as well as in the way mainstream America and law enforcement saw the band. The third and final chapter listens to the Grateful Dead improvising, presenting improvisation as the key element for any understanding both of the band’s music as well as its socio-political profile. A short coda summarizes the argument in a discussion of the band as an example of ”charismatic authority.”Less
During their thirty years of existence, the Grateful Dead produced a musical as well as a cultural heritage that invites and rewards exploration and evaluation. This book engages critical theory in order to understand the band’s status and achievement, and what the cultural and political significance of the music as well as the wider phenomenon was, and is. The band and its music are studied in the tension between culture industry and self-organization. The first chapter looks at the dialectic of avant-garde and tradition in the mass cultural phenomenon that the Grateful Dead became. The second chapter builds on that analysis by directly engaging the political importance and legacy of a self-declared ”apolitical” band, assessing what ”politics” could mean in both the practices of the band and its audience as well as in the way mainstream America and law enforcement saw the band. The third and final chapter listens to the Grateful Dead improvising, presenting improvisation as the key element for any understanding both of the band’s music as well as its socio-political profile. A short coda summarizes the argument in a discussion of the band as an example of ”charismatic authority.”
Graham Huggan
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781781382967
- eISBN:
- 9781781384084
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382967.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter reprints the introduction to The Postcolonial Exotic to set the stage for all of the Bourdieu-inspired approaches to postcolonial studies that will follow. Huggan shows how the ...
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This chapter reprints the introduction to The Postcolonial Exotic to set the stage for all of the Bourdieu-inspired approaches to postcolonial studies that will follow. Huggan shows how the oppositional ethos of postcolonial studies runs up against the commodifying apparatus of postcoloniality. The emerging “alterity industry” and its exoticizing processes threaten the potentiality for critique that postcolonial studies seeks to offer. Yet Huggan also steers clear of reductive attacks on postcolonialism as therefore contaminated and complicit; in a context where the global market aspires to commodify all forms of resistance and opposition, there is no uncontaminated stance. Bourdieu offers Huggan conceptual tools to call attention to this tenuous positioning within which postcolonial studies is located in order to explore the possibilities for critique still offered by this contaminated space.Less
This chapter reprints the introduction to The Postcolonial Exotic to set the stage for all of the Bourdieu-inspired approaches to postcolonial studies that will follow. Huggan shows how the oppositional ethos of postcolonial studies runs up against the commodifying apparatus of postcoloniality. The emerging “alterity industry” and its exoticizing processes threaten the potentiality for critique that postcolonial studies seeks to offer. Yet Huggan also steers clear of reductive attacks on postcolonialism as therefore contaminated and complicit; in a context where the global market aspires to commodify all forms of resistance and opposition, there is no uncontaminated stance. Bourdieu offers Huggan conceptual tools to call attention to this tenuous positioning within which postcolonial studies is located in order to explore the possibilities for critique still offered by this contaminated space.
Ulf Olsson
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520286641
- eISBN:
- 9780520961760
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520286641.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
The introduction provides with basic facts about the band, as well as the book’s basic theoretical perspective, inspired by the work of Theodor W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. Their theories make it ...
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The introduction provides with basic facts about the band, as well as the book’s basic theoretical perspective, inspired by the work of Theodor W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. Their theories make it possible to see the band as simultaneously part of and opposed to the culture industry. “Self-organization” is introduced as a flexible concept, applicable to many aspects of the band. Polarized representations of the band, by Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion, respectively, serve as a background to the book’s critical discussion and evaluation of the band and its culture. Even the Grateful Dead, symbols of the counterculture, worked within a cultural market, but challenged it in different ways. The introduction argues that the band actually produced music with an aesthetic value, and thus political significance.Less
The introduction provides with basic facts about the band, as well as the book’s basic theoretical perspective, inspired by the work of Theodor W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. Their theories make it possible to see the band as simultaneously part of and opposed to the culture industry. “Self-organization” is introduced as a flexible concept, applicable to many aspects of the band. Polarized representations of the band, by Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion, respectively, serve as a background to the book’s critical discussion and evaluation of the band and its culture. Even the Grateful Dead, symbols of the counterculture, worked within a cultural market, but challenged it in different ways. The introduction argues that the band actually produced music with an aesthetic value, and thus political significance.
David Brackett
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520225411
- eISBN:
- 9780520925700
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520225411.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter explores how the idea of country music emerged through a confluence of forces, focusing on the case of Hank Williams. It comments on Chet Flippo's controversial 1981 biography of ...
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This chapter explores how the idea of country music emerged through a confluence of forces, focusing on the case of Hank Williams. It comments on Chet Flippo's controversial 1981 biography of Williams. It investigates how voices, lyrics and music create the effect of authenticity in country music and how this effect emerges and shifts historically. It also considers how the association of country music with the culture industry affects the production of authentic effects and how images of resistance and marginality may contribute to the popularity of artists and songs in country music.Less
This chapter explores how the idea of country music emerged through a confluence of forces, focusing on the case of Hank Williams. It comments on Chet Flippo's controversial 1981 biography of Williams. It investigates how voices, lyrics and music create the effect of authenticity in country music and how this effect emerges and shifts historically. It also considers how the association of country music with the culture industry affects the production of authentic effects and how images of resistance and marginality may contribute to the popularity of artists and songs in country music.
Paul K. Jones
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781526123435
- eISBN:
- 9781526160966
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526123442
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Critical theory and demagogic populism provides a detailed analysis of the relevance of the Frankfurt School’s work to understanding contemporary populism. It draws on the research that the Institute ...
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Critical theory and demagogic populism provides a detailed analysis of the relevance of the Frankfurt School’s work to understanding contemporary populism. It draws on the research that the Institute for Social Research conducted concerning domestic demagogues during its period of ‘exile’ in the USA. The book argues that the figure of the demagogue has been neglected in both orthodox ‘populism studies’ and in existing critical approaches to populism such as that of Ernesto Laclau. Demagogic ‘capture’ of populist movements and their legacies is thus a contingent prospect for ‘left’ and ‘right’ populist movements. An account of ‘modern demagogy’ is thus detailed, from the Institute’s own dedicated demagogy studies through to their dialogue with Weber’s work on charismatic leadership, the US liberal critique of demagogy and Freud’s group psychology. The Institute’s linkage of ‘modern demagogy’ to the culture industry speaks to the underestimation in ‘populism studies’ of the significance of two other ‘modern phenomena. The first is ‘cultural populism’ – the appeal to a folkloric understanding of ‘the people’ and/or ‘their culture’. The second is the pivotal role of modern means of communication, not only in the recent prominence of social media but demagogic exploitation of all media since the rise of literacy and the widening of the suffrage in the nineteenth century. The dialectical dimensions of these processes are also highlighted in reconstructing the Institute’s work and in extending these analyses through to the present. The book so concludes by weighing up potential counter-demagogic forces within and beyond the culture industry.Less
Critical theory and demagogic populism provides a detailed analysis of the relevance of the Frankfurt School’s work to understanding contemporary populism. It draws on the research that the Institute for Social Research conducted concerning domestic demagogues during its period of ‘exile’ in the USA. The book argues that the figure of the demagogue has been neglected in both orthodox ‘populism studies’ and in existing critical approaches to populism such as that of Ernesto Laclau. Demagogic ‘capture’ of populist movements and their legacies is thus a contingent prospect for ‘left’ and ‘right’ populist movements. An account of ‘modern demagogy’ is thus detailed, from the Institute’s own dedicated demagogy studies through to their dialogue with Weber’s work on charismatic leadership, the US liberal critique of demagogy and Freud’s group psychology. The Institute’s linkage of ‘modern demagogy’ to the culture industry speaks to the underestimation in ‘populism studies’ of the significance of two other ‘modern phenomena. The first is ‘cultural populism’ – the appeal to a folkloric understanding of ‘the people’ and/or ‘their culture’. The second is the pivotal role of modern means of communication, not only in the recent prominence of social media but demagogic exploitation of all media since the rise of literacy and the widening of the suffrage in the nineteenth century. The dialectical dimensions of these processes are also highlighted in reconstructing the Institute’s work and in extending these analyses through to the present. The book so concludes by weighing up potential counter-demagogic forces within and beyond the culture industry.
Carol A. Hess
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199919994
- eISBN:
- 9780199345618
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199919994.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, History, American
This chapter examines the climax of north-south sameness-embracing, the period following the outbreak of war in September 1939. One manifestation of Pan Americanist culture was Latin American–themed ...
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This chapter examines the climax of north-south sameness-embracing, the period following the outbreak of war in September 1939. One manifestation of Pan Americanist culture was Latin American–themed music by U.S. composers, much of which verged on the commercial. Virgil Thomson, who reviewed Villa-Lobos’s music (and whose antinationalist barbs parallel the sentiments of many Latin American composers and critics), laid the groundwork for Brazilian universalism. Villa-Lobos’s reputation in the United States also gained luster from the alliance between the Brazilian strongman Getúlio Vargas and the United States, cemented in 1942 after a long courtship and touted by art music critics and the U.S. music industry. Reflecting the commercial bent of much Pan Americanist culture, Villa-Lobos was also bound to Hollywood and the culture industry, as corroborated by his foray into the American musical, Magdalena, read here in the context of Pan Americanism’s abrupt deterioration during the early years of the cold war.Less
This chapter examines the climax of north-south sameness-embracing, the period following the outbreak of war in September 1939. One manifestation of Pan Americanist culture was Latin American–themed music by U.S. composers, much of which verged on the commercial. Virgil Thomson, who reviewed Villa-Lobos’s music (and whose antinationalist barbs parallel the sentiments of many Latin American composers and critics), laid the groundwork for Brazilian universalism. Villa-Lobos’s reputation in the United States also gained luster from the alliance between the Brazilian strongman Getúlio Vargas and the United States, cemented in 1942 after a long courtship and touted by art music critics and the U.S. music industry. Reflecting the commercial bent of much Pan Americanist culture, Villa-Lobos was also bound to Hollywood and the culture industry, as corroborated by his foray into the American musical, Magdalena, read here in the context of Pan Americanism’s abrupt deterioration during the early years of the cold war.
