Adorno on Popular Culture

ISBN-13: 9780415268240 / Angielski / Twarda / 2002 / 208 str.

Robert W. Witkin; W. Witkin Robert

Opis

In the decades since his death, Adorno's thinking has lost none of its capacity to unsettle the settled, and has proved hugely influential in social and cultural thought. To most people, the entertainment provided by television, radio, film, newspapers, astrology charts and CD players seem harmless enough. For Adorno, however, the culture industry that produces them is ultimately toxic in its effect on the social process. He argues that it manufactures under conditions that reflect the interests of the producers and the market, both of which demanded the domination and manipulation of mass consciousness. Here Robert W. Witkin unpacks Adorno's notoriously difficult critique of popular culture in an accessible style, looking first at the development of the overarching theories of authority, commodification and negative dialectics within which Adorno's work needs to be seen. He then goes on to consider Adorno's writing on specific aspects of popular culture such as radio, film, popular music and jazz. This book should be of interest to students of the sociology of culture, of cultural studies and of critical theory more generally.

Recenzje

'a highly misanthropic but very funny and true analysis of the power and effect of the mass media' Alain de Botton, Telegraph

Spis treści

Preface 1. Cultural Nemesis 2. The theory of Pseudo-Culture 3. The Dialectic of Enlightenment and the Ring of the Niebelungen 4. The Decay of Aura and the Schema of Mass Culture 5. Star Power 6. Situating Music Socially 7. On Popular Music 8. Adorno's Radio Days 9. Film and Television 10. Woody Allen's Culture Industry 11. Walking a Critical Line Home

O autorze

Witkin, Robert W.