Reading Adorno: The Endless Road

✍ Scribed by Amirhosein Khandizaji

• Publisher: Springer International Publishing; Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 260
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book draws on core concepts coined by Adorno, such as identity thinking, the culture industry, and his critique of the autonomous and rational subject, to address the ills that plague neoliberal capitalist societies today. These ills range from the risk of a return to totalitarian tendencies, to the global rise of the far-right, and anti-feminist conceptions of motherhood. Subsequent chapters outline the ways in which Adorno's thought can also be seen to redress the challenges of modern societies, such as the critical function of artworks, and the subversive potential of slow-food and popular music. The important underlying concern of the book is to highlight the continuing relevance of Adorno, both in dealing with the failures of neo-liberal capitalist societies, and in his applicability to a wide range of disciplines.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter ....Pages i-xii
Two Critiques of Identity: Adorno and Castoriadis on the Capitalist Imaginary (Craig Browne)....Pages 1-35
Adorno, De Martino and the Adventures of the Self (Stefano Petrucciani)....Pages 37-52
The Truth-Potential (Wahrheitsgehalt) of the Culture Industry: On the Actuality of Horkheimer and Adorno’s Diagnosis (Haukes Brunkhorst)....Pages 53-73
Laughing at the Other: Toward an Understanding of the Alt-Right with Adorno (Claudia Leeb)....Pages 75-100
Bella Swan and Katniss Everdeen: The Expectation of Motherhood in the Culture Industry (Laci Hubbard-Mattix)....Pages 101-122
The Sensible and the Intelligible: Artistic Form and Testimony in Adorno’s Reflections (Giuseppe Di Giacomo)....Pages 123-150
Adorno and the Subversive Potential of Popular Music (Hans-Herbert Kögler)....Pages 151-181
Adorno and the Magic Square: Schönberg and Stravinsky in Mann’s Doctor Faustus (Geoff Boucher)....Pages 183-211
‘Idiot with a Spoon’: Adorno, Petrini, and the Oppositional Politics of Slow Food (Mary Caputi)....Pages 213-232
Functionalism Yesterday, Functionalism Tomorrow: Thoughts Inspired by Adorno’s Address to the Deutscher Werkbund, “Funktionalismus Heute,” Delivered in Berlin on October 3, 1965 (Barry M. Katz)....Pages 233-245
Back Matter ....Pages 247-253

✦ Subjects

Social Sciences; Social Theory; Political Theory; Political Sociology; Sociology of Culture; Critical Theory