Understanding Adorno, Understanding Modernism

Description

Adorno is central to our understanding of Modernism. Having studied philosophy at a time when its traditions were being seriously uprooted by the atrocities of World War II, Theodor Adorno had an enormous impact on thinking about aesthetics at a transitional historical moment when the philosophy of science and leftist politics were looking for new ground. Moreover, with his focus on the rise of commercial culture and its effects on identity-construction, Adorno can be said to have reinvigorated modernist concerns by introducing the prevailing terms in our contemporary versions of cultural politics and cultural studies. Understanding Adorno, Understanding Modernism traces Adorno’s social and aesthetic ideas as they appear and reappear in his corpus. As per other volumes in the series, this book is divided into three parts. The first, “Adorno’s Keywords,” is organized by the aesthetic terms around which Adorno’s philosophy circulates. The second section is devoted to “Adorno and Aesthetics.” While Adorno’s philosophical viewpoints influenced modernism’s evolution into the 21st century, the history of modernist aesthetics also shaped his philosophical approaches. The third and final part, “Adorno’s Constellations,” discusses how aesthetic form in Adorno’s thinking underlies the terms of his social analysis. Cover Half title Series Title Copyright Series preface Contents Series Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Understanding Adorno, Understanding Modernism PART ONE Adorno’s Keywords 1 Adorno and Beyond: The Modern as Critique of Modernism 2 Under the Skin of Modernity: The Subcutaneous 3 Mimesis unto Death PART TWO Adorno’s Aesthetics 4 Adorno on Vinyl 5 Critique, Complexity, Content: Adorno and Musical Modernism since 1970 6 Between the Culture Industry and Art: Adorno’s Approach to Film 7 How It Is (after Auschwitz): Adorno and Beckett 8 Thinking through and beyond Modernism: Adorno and Contemporary Performance 9 Rereading Adorno’s Reading of Eichendorff in the Context of 1957 10 Adorno and the Ethics of Camp PART THREE Adorno’s Constellations 11 Art and Animals in Adorno 12 The Art of Dehumanization: Adorno’s Animals 13 Social Labor and the Work of Art, According to Adorno 14 Conspiracy against Theory: Superagents, Conspirators, and the Educational Legacies of Positivism Kenneth J. Saltman 15 Aspects of Adorno’s Critical Theory of Culture Notes on Contributors Index