Adorno

Book Abstract: This collection of essays explores the conflictual history of two important traditions of twentieth-century European thought: the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno and the ontology of Martin Heidegger. As is well known, there has been little productive engagement between these two schools of thought, in large measure due to Adorno’s sustained and unanswered critique of Heidegger. Stemming from this critique, numerous political and philosophical barriers have kept these traditions separate -- barriers that have rarely been submitted to scrutiny, let alone questioned. The essays making up this collection are fresh and original attempts at coming to terms with the nuances and difficulties that these two towering figures have bequeathed to the history of European thought. The volume’s authors deal with a variety of issues ranging from epistemology to aesthetics, to ethics, to intellectual history and modernity, providing the reader with detailed insight into a thorny debate in the history of recent European thought.

Enclosed is the syllabus and course notes from the upper division course I teach in PostModernism and Post-Marxist Critical Theory. It occurs to me that some of these essays--ranging from Horkheimer and Adorno, Baudrillard, Foucault, and the feminist post-modern theorist Donna Haraway may offer some insight and some tools for comprehending the dark times in which we live. While these essays may not be directly aimed at understanding the rise of phenomena like the Alt-Right, toxic masculinity, and particularly violent forms of patriarchy, I think they can show us something about the ideological trends that set us on out current morally troubling path.

Puts 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' in an historical context and shows hows the concept of 'mimesis' prefigures more recent cognitive interest in the emotional foundations of human knowledge and human interaction. The paper builds bridges between the critical legacy of the Frankfurt School and recent more empirically-oriented work on cognition, using Nietzsche and Winnicott as a bridge. It suggests we shouldn't be too attached to Adorno and Horkheimer's dialectical form of argument, and should focus instead on their early interdisicplinary analyses of embodied forms of knowledge.

[fr] Ce texte est un chapitre à peine remanié de ma thèse de doctorat consacrée à l’histoire de l’idée de littérature. La thèse est une enquête historique sur la littérature telle qu’inventée par le premier romantisme allemand. J’y défends l’idée qu’au XXe siècle, à « l’heure fatale de l’art », des réflexions théoriques et des pratiques littéraires et artistiques créent un schisme, construisant un rapport critique et dialectique à l’idée de littérature romantique, déterminant un nouveau mode d’être de la littérature. Ce chapitre étudie comment, sur le plan théorique, une tradition de « critique de la culture » (Kulturkritik) forge le concept de kitsch de façon à caractériser ce qui, dans l’art et la littérature, rend possible qu’un document de culture soit « en même temps un document de barbarie » (Benjamin).

[en] This text is a hardly modified chapter from my thesis on the history of the idea of literature. The thesis is a historical enquiry into the idea of literature as invented by early German Romanticism. I promote the idea that, in the twentieth century, at a time when the fate of art hangs in the balance, theoretical inquiry and literary and artistic practice bring about a schism, creating as they do a critical and dialectical relation to the Romantic idea of literature and determining a new mode of being for literature. This chapter focuses on how, in the theoretical inquiries, a tradition of Kulturkritik elaborates the concept of kitsch so as to characterize what, in art and literature, makes possible that a document of culture is “at the same time a document of barbarism” (Benjamin).

Der Rezensent hat schon mehrfach Gelegenheit gehabt, darauf hinzuwei-sen, daß Adornos Vorlesungen eine ausgesprochen gute Möglichkeit bie-ten, sich mit dessen Denken zu beschäftigen. 1 Da man so virtuell die Chance erhält, sich nachträglich als Hörer zu fühlen, ist allein deswegen die Edition zu begrüßen, 2 auch wenn es freilich nicht zu erwarten steht, daß Ador-no für die aktuelle Diskussion der Erkenntnistheorie im eigentlichen Sinne von großem Gewicht sein dürfte. 3 Adorno bezieht sich von vornherein auf

Cet article propose un panorama du rapport ambivalent qu’adoptent les principaux auteurs de l’École de Francfort vis-à-vis de la conception kantienne des Lumières. En passant par Habermas, Marcuse, Horkheimer et Adorno, nous nous proposons de montrer en quoi c’est à la fois avec et contre Kant que s’articule la Théorie critique. Nous tâcherons de montrer par ailleurs en quoi la première génération de l’École de Francfort reconduit en un sens l’aporie qu’elle soulignait déjà au sein de la posture kantienne quant à l’articulation entre théorie et pratique émancipatrice.

Lässt sich die politische Problemlage unserer Zeit literarisch erfassen? Was ist die Rolle von Literatur im globalen Kapitalismus? Lässt sich ein dauerhafter Arbeitszusammenhang von Autorinnen und Autoren organisieren? Diesen Fragen widmete sich im April 2015 eine Schriftstellertagung unter dem Titel „Richtige Literatur im Falschen?“, die im Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus stattfand. In Zentrum stand die Frage nach dem Verhältnis zwischen Literatur, Engagement und kapitalistischer Gesellschaft. Der Band „Richtige Literatur im Falschen?“ zeichnet die Tagung dokumentarisch nach und präsentiert darüber hinaus aktuelle Statements der Beteiligten. Mit Beiträgen von Ann Cotten, Annett Gröschner, Joachim Helfer, Jan Loheit, Thomas Meinecke, Norbert Niemann, Helmut Peitsch, Monika Rinck, Kathrin Röggla, David Salomon, Stefan Schmitzer, Erasmus Schöfer, Ingo Schulze, Ingar Solty, Enno Stahl, Thomas Wagner, Michael Wildenhain und Raul Zelik.

Beginning classical social theory introduces students and educated general readers to thirteen key social theorists by way of examining a single, exemplary text by each author, ranging from Comte to Adorno. It answers the need for a book that helps students develop the skill to critically read theory. Rather than learning how to admire the canonical theorists, readers are alerted to the flow of their arguments and the texts' contradictions and limitations. Having gotten 'under the skin' of one key text by each author will provide readers with a solid starting point for further study.
Contents:
1 Introduction: If it is not mysterious, it is not social theory
2 The well-planned reorganisation of society: Auguste Comte
3 If you can't beat democracy, join it: Alexis de Tocqueville
4 Pariahs of the world, unite!: Flora Tristan
5 Capitalist modernity is the real savagery: Karl Marx
6 The conflict of community and society: Ferdinand Tönnies
7 There is some Thing out there: Emile Durkheim
8 The double consciousness: W. E. B. Du Bois
9 From good to bad capitalism and back: Max Weber
10 Strangers who are from here: Georg Simmel
11 Love, marriage and patriarchy: Marianne Weber
12 Critical versus traditional theory: Max Horkheimer
13 What is a woman, and who is asking anyway: Simone de Beauvoir
14 Society as mediation: Theodor W. Adorno

Herbert Spencer’s grave faces Marx’s at Highgate Cemetery in London. What would the 19th century liberal, utilitarian and social Darwinist, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who was perhaps the most prominent, widely read and popular philosopher in the world during his lifetime - that is, in Marx’s lifetime - have to say to Marxists or more generally to the left, when such liberalism earned not only Marx’s own scorn but also Nietzsche’s criticism? We cannot assume as Marx did that we are already past Spencer’s classical liberalism, but are driven back to it, ineluctably, whether we realize it or not. Only by returning to the assumptions of classical liberalism can we understand Marx’s critique of it. The glare of Marx’s tomb at Highgate stares down upon a very determinate object. If one disappears, they both do.

Form und Satz in Adornos Ästhetischer Theorie Bemerkenswert viele Sätze in Adornos Ästhetischer Theorie finden schon im weitgespannten Spektrum seiner früheren Schriften wiederholten Aus-druck. Kann man das Buch also als Kulminationspunkt seines Lebens-werks lesen? In gewissem Sinne ja. Mit seiner posthumen Veröffentlichung hat es ein Eigenleben angenommen, obwohl es zum Zeitpunkt des unzeiti-gen Todes seines Verfassers unvollendet war. Es steht viel, ja, zu viel in der Ästhetischen Theorie. Auch wenn die ersten Herausgeber die Aufgabe, ei-nen kohärenten Text herzustellen, hervorragend gelöst haben (wobei Ko-härenz eines der Themen des Buches ist), bleibt das Gefühl, dass eine wei-tere Überarbeitung von Adornos eigener Hand ihm jene Art von Klarheit verliehen hätte, die er in den Büchern erreichte, die er zu seinen Lebzeiten veröffentlichte. Ich denke hier weniger an die gedankliche Deutlichkeit je-ner wunderbaren universitären Vorlesungen, die er als Vorbereitung auf die Abfassung des Buches hielt, sondern mehr an die expressive Prägnanz, die mit der Form des Essays verbunden ist, einer Form, mit der Adorno be-trächtliche Erfahrung hatte. Die Essayform passt gut zu dem Eindruck, dass er die Kapitel der Ästhetischen Theorie aus mehr oder weniger in sich geschlossenen Passagen erarbeitet hat, die manchmal als aphoristisch be-zeichnet werden-ein Hinweis darauf, dass jede von ihnen, wie in Benja-mins Passagenwerk oder Adornos eigener Minima Moralia, ein gedankli-ches Abbild der Welt enthält oder dass, in ihrem Oszillieren zwischen Gedrängtheit und Anmerkungscharakter, jede von ihnen sich dem enigma-tischen Wesen der Paralipomena Schopenhauers, der Diapsalmata Kier-kegaards und der fröhlichen Abschnitte Nietzsches nähert. Als nächstes möchte ich fragen, ob es vielleicht gerade Adornos spezi-fische Art und Weise der Auseinandersetzung mit ästhetischer Theorie war, die es ihm unmöglich machte, eben dieses Buch endgültig fertigzustellen. Es hat mir lange zu denken gegeben, dass es Adorno, obwohl er sich drei-ßig Jahre lang mit der Absicht trug, nie gelang, jenes Buch zu vollenden, in dem er Beethoven in den Mittelpunkt seiner Philosophie der Musik gestellt hätte. Bücher über Wagner, Mahler und Berg, aber warum nicht dieses? Für Adorno deutet bereits die Idee einer ästhetischen Theorie, die Art und Weise, wie die beiden Begriffe ästhetisch und Theorie zwangsläufig in ei-nem produktiv-destruktiven Widerspruch zueinander stehen, darauf hin, Brought to you by | Columbia University Libraries

Composing  for  the  Films,  written  by  Theodor  W.  Adorno  and  Hanns  Eisler  in  1947,  seems  to  have  been  consigned  to  a  fate  of  oblivion.  The  reasons  could  be  related  to  the  controversy  about  the  authorship  of  the  work  or  to  the  fact  that  it  contains  condensed  theses  that  some  consider  outdated  or,  again,  to  the  preference  given  to  themes  such  as  dodecaphonic  music,  fetishism  in  music,  jazz  or  pop  music  considered  more  relevant.  On  closer  examination,  however,  this  essay  reveals  a  tendentially  underestimated  importance  that  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  summarizes  the  theses  that  Adorno  elaborates  in  relation  to  mass  music  (pop  music  and  jazz)  and  those  related  to  the  cultural  industry.  It  is  then  interesting,  fifty  years  after  Adorno’s  death,  to  restore  dignity  and  centrality  to Composing  for  the  Films,  also  by  virtue  of  the  attempt,  which  perhaps  elsewhere  does  not  appear  with  equal  sincerity,  to  mediate  between  music  and  technology

This essay first contextualizes Adorno's essays in literary criticism in relation to his historico-philosophical account of modern rationalization and late capitalism, his dialectical theory of culture, and his return to postwar Germany. It then presents the neo-Marxist and formalist principles that inform his literary criticism, emphasizing the artwork's critical relationship to society on the one hand, and the theory of aesthetic experience undergone by the artwork's recipient on the other. These principles are exemplified in selective readings of Adorno's essays on Heinrich Heine and Friedrich Hölderlin. The essay concludes by polemically juxtaposing Adorno's practice of literary criticism with that of neo-Aristotelian "ethical criticism."

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

There are three important points contained in this part of the book. The first is about the work of Adorno on the culture industry and popular music as well as the background, the second is the argument about the difference in popular music with other music, and the third is about the position of popular music in society. Firstly, it discusses more focused on the work of Adorno on the culture industry and popular music as well as the background. The key importance of the work on music of Adorno, "The culture industry is central agency in contemporary capitalism for the production and satisfaction of false needs and Adorno's analysis is a challenge to those who seek to recognize some value in pop music " (as cited in Fifth, p.4). The background of the analysis is a critique of Marxist theory about capitalism which not only cause changes in social life but also impact on the industry, for example the culture industry. The culture industry makes the "culture" as a valuable commodity that can be sold to the market and have the prospect of becoming profit. When something has become a commodity and entered the market, it means the commodity has been made in accordance with the wishes of the market and this led to the standardization of commodities. It also let to the standardization of products of the culture industry. Secondly, it discusses the argument about the difference of popular music with other music. Adorno said that, " The popular music is a part of culture industry" (p.4, para.4). Pop music in his view is a standardized product either type of songs, songs and parts of songs Themselves (p. 5). He also added that the part of piece of popular music are interchangeable. It is based on his analysis by comparing popular music with serious music. He emphasized that the difference between the two relates to issues of the market and the context in the which music is produced and consumed.

This book examines the role of Samuel Beckett in contemporary philosophical aesthetics, primarily through analysis of both his own essays and the various interpretations that philosophers (especially Adorno, Blanchot, Deleuze, and Badiou) have given to his works. The study centres around the fundamental question of the relationship between art and truth, where art, as a negative truth, comes to its complete exhaustion (as Deleuze terms it) by means of a series of ‘endgames’ that progressively involve philosophy, writing, language and every individual and minimal form of expression. The major thesis of the book is that, at the heart of Beckett’s philosophical project, this ‘aesthetics of truth’ turns out to be nothing other than the real subject itself, within a contradictory and tragic relationship that ties the Self/Voice to the Object/Body. Yet a number of questions remain open. ‘What’ or ‘who’ lies behind this process? What is left of the endgame of art and subjectivity? Finally, what sustains and renders possible Beckett’s paradoxical axiom of the ‘impossibility to express’ alongside the ‘obligation to express’? By means of a thorough overview of the most recent criticism of Beckett, this book will try to answer these questions.

Contents: Beckett’s philosophy as a discourse on ‘exits’ – Beckett as Essayist – From Dante to Proust: Beckett’s Literary Criticism Years – In Dialogue with Van Velde: Painting and Philosophy – Theodor Adorno and Beckett – Beckett’s Aesthetics of truth – Exhausting the Possible Field of Narrative: Deleuze and Beckett – Beckett with Jerzy Grotowski – Thinking Differently from Thinking: The Body in Beckett’s Later Theatre – Beyond the Stalemate of Subjectivity.

Early academic article on McCartney's songs during/after the Beatles. This focuses on themes of time and nostalgia alongside musical innovation in a selection of McCartney songs, 1963-2001. Some of my later publications on McCartney (and Lennon) are also available on my academia.edu page.

Im Mittelpunkt des Beitrags steht die Frage, inwiefern Strukturen und Praxen der stationären Behindertenhilfe mit Adornos „Erziehung nach Auschwitz“ (1966/1971a) (neu) verstanden werden können. Dabei soll problematisiert werden, inwiefern pädagogisches Handeln in der Behindertenhilfe – hier vergegenständlicht am Beispiel des stationären Wohnens von Menschen mit geistiger Behinderung – sich oftmals in totalen Strukturrahmen, fremdbestimmenden Praxen sowie einer drohenden Institutionalisierung und Bürokratisierung vollzieht (siehe u.a. Trescher, 2017a, S. 161-162). Diese Strukturmerkmale können im Lichte dessen gelesen werden, was Adorno als „Prinzip von Auschwitz“ (Adorno, 1966/1971a, S. 93) charakterisiert und als  Ermöglichungsbedingungen totaler Herrschaft versteht. Hierdurch sollen
selbstredend keinesfalls die Praxen der Behindertenhilfe mit den nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen gleichgesetzt werden. Vielmehr sollen die Fremdbestimmung und tiefgreifend verflochtenen, oft subjektiv wirkmächtig werdenden Abhängigkeiten benannt werden, denen Menschen mit geistiger Behinderung im Alltag immer wieder gegenüberstehen. Dabei entsteht – auch wenn nicht intendiert bzw. gegenteilig intendiert – oft allein durch politischbürokratisch-formalisierte Abläufe ein Prinzip von (für das Subjekt) fremder
Herrschaft. Strukturen und Praxen der stationären Behindertenhilfe werden durch unterschiedliche Inanspruchnahmen und Interessen hervorgebracht, die sich teils ambivalent zueinander verhalten können.

Reading the Modernist Bildungsroman. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. ix + 336 pp.

"Reading the Modernist Bildungsroman" is both a literary history of genre and an exploration of the modern, gendered subject. It focuses on James Joyce, Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, Oscar Wilde, and Virginia Woolf. My inclusion of English and Irish texts underscores the transnational dimension of modernism even as it calls our attention to important differences in the reception of the Bildung concept. Drawing on Theodor W. Adorno’s theory of “negative dialectics,” I argue that the modernist Bildungsroman stages the failure of its own narrative telos (the dialectical harmony of social responsibility and personal desire) – a failure that does not prevent the modernist hero from perfecting (or trying to perfect) what Johann von Goethe and Wilhelm von Humboldt called “inner culture” (Bildung). Bildung meant for these thinkers an ideal of self-formation that entailed the harmonious development of an individual’s emotional, ethical, intellectual, artistic and spiritual faculties. For the protagonists of modernist Bildungsromane, this process is often disharmonious, due as much to self-reflection on the Bildung concept as to any kind of repressive function. Adorno’s negative dialectics theorizes this disharmony, in which the negative term of the dialectic, rather than being subsumed into the positive term (of self-identity), asserts its own presence and thereby creates new, sometimes disturbing, contexts for Bildung. Modernist Bildungsromane critique classical dialectical narratives of harmonious self-formation, even as they reclaim a classical conception of Bildung. This transformation of Bildung exemplifies modernism’s radical conservatism, which paradoxically creates alternatives to socially pragmatic educational systems and the ideal of the “subject” they seek to reproduce.

If spirit is constituted through recognition, then the fact that recognition somehow depends on (first) nature – as I will argue in the first part of this paper – will have deep consequences on how we are to conceive the genesis and the structure of the social and historical world, and the very notion of social freedom that participating in this world makes possible. Secondly, I will argue that even at the spiritual level recognition cannot be conceived on its own terms, but must rather be thought by means of the notions of second nature and habit. The move from recognition to second nature implies a dialectical embodied notion of freedom.  Finally, in the third part of the paper I will argue that, once we understand recognition in terms of embodied second nature, then we have to take into account how much the contingency, the fragility and the plurality of second nature affect our notion of freedom.

My thesis here is two-fold. First, that Adorno’s critique of conceptual rationality (in its Hegelian form) misconstrues its critical potential and forces a lapse into epistemic and ethical solipsism. Second, that a reconsideration of Hegel’s doctrine of the concept as an ontological category can help us utilize negative thinking in a more compelling and politically relevant way. Adorno’s project for a negative dialectics leads us not toward a critical form of reason with political (and hence, transformative) potential, but, rather, toward a retreat from the actual mechanisms that prop up defective forms of social reality. In addition, in his radical skepticism of the doctrine of the concept, Adorno also misses the chance to develop a critical theory of the good and a kind of critical practical reason that has the power to re-shape our sociality and social reality.

Is it trivial, or perhaps even irresponsible, to explore aesthetic themes at a time when the world is engulfed by war, genocide, terrorism, poverty, climate change and financial turmoil? Why indulge in painting, poetry or music when lives and livelihoods are at stake? Can we really afford to entertain questions of taste while concrete political action is urgently required?

This book offers a passionate but systematically sustained defence of an aesthetic engagement with world politics. It argues that aesthetic sources can offer alternative insight: a type of reflective understanding that emerges not from applying the analytical skills that are central the social sciences, but from cultivating a more open-ended level of creativity and sensibility about the political. We then might be able to appreciate what we otherwise cannot even see: perspectives or people excluded from prevailing purviews, for instance, or the emotional nature and consequences of political events. Drawing on detailed case studies that range from Stalinist Russia to Cold War Germany and contemporary Korea, the author compellingly demonstrates how the poetic imagination can help us understand – and perhaps even shape - some of the most difficult political challenges.

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

This paper defends the (admittedly non-Nietzschean) conclusion that a non-liberal egalitarian society is superior in two ways: first, as a moral ideal, it does not rest on questionable claims about essential human equality and, second, such a society would provide the optimal psychological and political conditions for individual wellbeing, social stability, and cultural achievement. I first explain Nietzsche’s distinction between forms of egalitarianism: noble and slavish. The slavish form promotes equality, defined negatively as the elimination of privilege. It is non-liberal in its prioritization of equality over the interests of the advantaged. Nietzsche rejects both slavish egalitarianism and liberalism for the same reasons: they questionably assume the equal value of all persons, and they harm cultural achievement, sacrificing the potential of those who are most valuable to cultural development to the interests of the majority. Noble egalitarianism, in contrast, exemplifies Nietzsche’s conception of justice as ‘equality among equals’. It demands that individuals of equal worth or power (such as members of an artistic or political elite) treat each other as what they, in fact, are: equals. It avoids asserting essential equality, demanding instead—against both slavish and liberal forms—respect on the basis of shared superiority. And it escapes the charge of harm to cultural development, commanding respect only where equality already exists. Although Nietzsche quickly assumes that ‘noble egalitarianism’ requires the rejection of all forms of universal egalitarianism, concluding that we should ‘never make equal what is unequal’, in fact it only entails the rejection of slavish methods: equalization through harm to the advantaged. However, non-liberal forms of egalitarianism can be ‘noble’, promoting equality without harm to the advantaged—through, for example, unequal distribution of resources, the equalization of economic opportunities, and economic regulation to prevent the creation of substantial wealth disparities. If egalitarianism can ‘make equal’ without slavish methods, then Nietzsche’s demand for ‘equality for equals’ applies to the newly equal, too.
More importantly, his moral psychology of power—the view that our source of happiness and incentive to self-development is the feeling of power in relation to equal resistance or ‘opponents who are our equals’ —supports the superiority of a nobly-achieved, non-liberal egalitarian society. For achieved, practical equality of wealth and opportunity would optimize conditions for the feeling of power: a balance of equal, oppositional powers serving as mutual limitation and resistance. Such a society is superior in three ways. First, it maximizes social happiness by promoting and maintaining the feeling of power in all. Liberal and aristocratic societies, in contrast, allow radical inequalities that not only diminish the power of the disadvantaged, but diminish the opportunities of the advantaged to encounter equal resistance, thus undermining the happiness of all. Second, it promotes social stability by preserving a balance of powers that prevents domination and exploitation, in contrast to the inevitable class conflicts of aristocratic and liberal societies. Finally, it promotes cultural achievement, since the feeling of power in relation to proportional resistance is the psychological incentive for self-development and cultural achievement.""""

The book makes a critical comparison of fundamental trends in modern epistemology with the epistemological concerns of critical theory of the Frankfurt School. It comprises five chapters, which refer to phenomenology, structuralism and poststructuralism, modernism and postmodernism, systems’ theory and critical realism.
It follows the course of development of modern epistemology, considering basic conceptions such as dialectics, theory and practice in science, and the potential for a political epistemology based on the arguments of critical theory. It can certainly be used as a textbook because each chapter tallies with a major trend in modern epistemology, and provides a concrete analysis of the comparison it draws with the work of leading figures of the Frankfurt School such as Horkheimer, Adorno and Habermas.
The present volume addresses the reader of political theory, epistemology, social theory and it also raises key questions on methodology in science and research. Therefore, it can prove beneficial for students, researchers and academics that deal with issues of theory, practice, and method in science. The contents of the volume were meticulously constructed in order to be of practical use both for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and each chapter includes basic graphs  that condense the basic argument for each thematic circle on modern epistemology and methodology.
The book contains unpublished critique and information provided to the writer in recent interviews she conducted with Jürgen Habermas (providing analysis on systems theory), William Outhwaite and Stefan Müller-Doohm (both the latter clarified issues and contributed valuable information on critical realism and the Frankfurt School, respectively).

The Aalborg Project may be interpreted as a metaphor of modern politics, modern administration and planning, and of modernity itself. The basic idea of the project was comprehensive, coherent, and innovative, and it was based on rational and democratic argument. During implementation, however, when idea met reality, the play of Machiavellian princes, Nietzschean will to power, and Foucauldian rationality-as-rationalization resulted in the fragmentation of the project.

“This is a brilliant and highly original investigation of how Cold War politics shaped the emergence of world literature and new forms of cultural authority, literary consecration, and political surveillance in the aftermath of the Second World War. Eye-opening and provocative, Archives of Authority is indispensable reading for all serious scholars of world literature, Cold War cultural politics, and globalization.”
—Anne McClintock, Simon de Beauvoir Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“Examining the period after World War II, when the United States took on an imperial role previously played by Britain, this remarkable book shows the ways in which Western cultural policies, in opposition to Soviet cultural-political efforts, helped literary culture establish certain authors, while excluding others from attention, leading to a new phase of world literature. The research is extensive and impressive.”
–——Jonathan Arac, Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh

“Enacting a kind of literary archaeology, Rubin’s illuminating and necessary book traces the administration of literary culture and its shift from Anglo to American imperial power. Systematic without being sensationalistic, Rubin’s journey through the archive allows us to see the epochal changes of Cold War culture that are still with us in ever greater relief.”
—Ammiel Alcalay, CUNY Graduate Center


"His new book Archives of Authority, in addition to being a groundbreaking and original piece of research and scholarship, is a further illustration of this. Refusing all the mystification and obfuscation of so much that passes for literary or cultural studies, Professor Rubin rolls up his sleeves and delves deeply, more deeply I would claim than anyone before him, into the interstices of one of our culture’s most neglected legacies: the literary and cultural archive of the national security state." —Ammiel Alcalay, CUNY Graduate Center

“This is an exciting exploration of important categories in world literature, a lucid explanation for its rise and fall, and an excellent argument for its careful reconsideration.”
—Paul Bové, Distinguished Professor, University of Pittsburgh

“Rubin reminds us how the insights of a literary way of thinking to the assessment of geopolitical history are inimitable. This meticulously researched and broad-minded book reopens the terrain of oppositional criticism embedded in a humanist pedagogy during an epoch that perversely fetishizes its own catastrophic anti-intellectualism as resistance.”
—Stathis Gourgouris, Professor of Comparative Literature, Columbia University

“This rigorous and intrinsically interesting book is the academic equivalent of a Cold War spy novel, replete with intriguing archival findings and the implication of its author in the bureaucratic Kafkaesque structure of CIA document censorship. It is sure to appeal to a wide audience in literature, Cold War history, political science, and law.”--Emily Apter

The concept of the subject is at the core of many social movements that attempt to empower disadvantaged groups by identifying a basic subjectivity underlying and uniting such groups. Though otherwise supportive of such movements, recent continental philosophers and social theorists such as Althusser, Derrida, and Butler have criticized such notions of subjectivity, arguing that they presuppose false and harmful ideas of unity and substantiality as the ‘true’ essence of these groups. In this paper, I propose that one possibility for resolving this debate can be found in the work of Western Marxists such as Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin. I argue that they ground an authentically subjective selfhood on the distinct meaningfulness of individual consciousness. Identifying phenomenological motifs in the way they describe consciousness, I suggest that they define meaning by the way different particular experiences recall or relate to one another. By interpreting the many possible meanings of experience, subjects are able to build up an image of themselves, while collective subjectivity can be grounded on the exegesis of shared experiences. Because such meaningfulness is genuinely sui generis, emerging within consciousness, action in accordance with such images counts as autonomous; at the same time, meaning is sufficiently fluid that there can never be one single correct interpretation of it. Ultimately, the Western Marxists suggest, it is in the constant formulation and reformulation of images of oneself through reinterpretation of one’s experience that constitutes subjective selfhood.

At the same time that case studies are widely used and have produced canonical texts, it may be observed that the case study as a methodology is generally held in low regard, or is simply ignored, within the academy. For example, only 2 of the 30 top-ranked U.S. graduate programs in political science require a dedicated graduate course in case study or qualitative methods, and a full third of these programs do not even offer such a course. In contrast, all of the top 30 programs offer courses in quantitative methods and almost all of them require training in such methods, often several courses. In identifying this paradox of the case study’s wide use and low regard, Gerring rightly remarks that the case study survives in a “curious methodological limbo,” and that the reason is that the method is poorly understood. In what follows, we will try to resolve Gerring’s paradox and help case study research gain wider use and acceptance.

Elinizdeki çalışma, Theodor Adorno’nun eleştirel yaklaşımı ışığında bir yandan kültür endüstrisini açımlamaya ve sorgulamaya çalışırken, diğer yandan okuru beğenilerimizi tartışmaya çağırıyor. Kültür endüstrisinin kıskacında yaratılan kültürün, bireyin özgün beğenilerini yansıtamayacağını savunarak, bir başka seçeneğin mümkün olduğu sonucuna da varıyor.

Günümüzde kültür endüstrisinin internet ve dijital oyunlar aracılığıyla kazandığı etki ve yaygınlaşma, dahası endüstriyel kültürün tüketicilerinin aynı zamanda üreticileri haline gelmeleri Adorno tarafından tahayyül bile edilemezdi. Elbette, bunlar televizyonun ulaştığı nokta gibi Adorno’nun düşüncelerini doğrulamakta ama aynı zamanda çizdikleri sınırları zorlamaktadırlar. Bundan dolayı, Adorno’nun felsefesinin bahsedilen değişimler ve yeni formlar bakımından tekrar değerlendirilmesi son derece elzemdir.

Önder Kulak’ın çalışması, kültür endüstrisi fenomenine dair Adorno’nun eleştirileri üzerine bir rehber kitap olma niteliği taşıyor.