Theodor Adorno..I don't get it...

Kevin, have you ever gotten the feeling, reading Adorno, that he thought that people might earnestly enjoy music which he himself couldn't find any enjoyment in? And that their enjoyment of that music was, basically, ok?

I actually think he himself derived some pleasure from jazz and Hollywood movies and whatever else he was picking on. In general, though, he was critiquing much larger structures than just, say, the demon jazz. He was asking: how much of our lives are untainted by capitalist rationalization? And if we can uncover an untainted portion, has that been brought into existence the labors of others operating within capitalist rationalization?

So I think the problem is less the enjoyment of music than enjoying it earnestly. I would imagine he would find earnestness a suspect concept in a capitalist economic system.

Basically, there's no escape. "Only by subordinating all branches of intellectual production equally to the single purpose of imposing on the senses of human beings, from the time they leave the factory in the evening to the time they clock on in the morning, the imprint of the work routine which they must sustain throughout the day, does this culture mockingly fulfill the notion of a unified culture which the philosophers of the individual personality held out against mass culture."

So, like, indie fans who think they are expressing something unique about themselves by listening to Panda Bear aren't escaping this hegemony either. It is total and all-encompassing (and I personally see this as relating to his Understanding Endgame). There's a depressing finale when you realize that this is everything.

has that been brought into existence THROUGH the labors of others operating within capitalist rationalization?
xxpost or something

And yeah, I agree. Maybe he enjoyed some of this stuff, but the hegemony is the problem. It's not doing anything courageous. And I haven't read anything where he moved past that.

Personally, I disagree with Adorno. A part of my thesis is that while Adorno was looking at the production and distribution of pop culture, we need to look at its reception and performance. Look at how people take it and use/reuse it. Not at how it's originally intended. How do people subvert the hegemony with the pop culture it produces.

OK, good answer(s --xpost). In that I'm having a difficult time phrasing where I want to go from there.

I guess I want to start by saying: I find his worry about being "tainted by capitalist rationalization" to be similar to, and about as misguided as, worries over "selling out".

(I used "earnest" because in "Fetish-character" he specifically makes the [ridiculous?] claim that people don't actually *like* the "light music" they're being "forcefed".)

Right. The "no escape" part is crucial. Is NOT listening to Panda Bear an option? And by this, I don't mean, listening to Animal Collective or Britney Spears or whatever instead. IS there a different relationship to music besides listening to records (mp3s or whatnot), going to live shows, posting on ILM, etc.?

some xposts

XP Well, I think he's talking about two different kinds of "like." I'm sure he'd say those people think they like the music their being forcefed, but honestly how could they?

And I don't think "selling out" is similar. Adorno doesn't think anyone is outside the reach of the Capitalist hegemony. Nirvana was just as much a product of the Capitalist structure before they were signed to a major label as after. When Kurt was writing music in his living room, he was writing it in the context of the structure. Selling Out may have anti-Capitalist connotations, but I suspect Adorno would say that the term is misguided in that it only critiques the individual, not the system.

If anything, the term "Selling Out" actually feeds into the hegemony by creating safe rebellions for people. They can rebel from certain personifications of Capitalism (the big bad, evil record label) while safely remaining within the structure. It's a red herring.

Yes, exactly. Selling out would have meant nothing to Adorno.

I find his worry about being "tainted by capitalist rationalization" to be similar to, and about as misguided as, worries over "selling out".

Forget music for a bit and think of your own life. Are there areas of your life untainted by capitalist rationalization? Even something as intimate as the sex you have. Is it really all that intimate and unique?

You don't have to actually answer these, of course.

Actually, your problem without "selling out" might be Adorno's problem. You (I'm assuming) think it's silly because there's no difference before selling out and afterward. And Adorno would say the same.

But I think that if you think there's no difference because Capitalism doesn't do anything to art, so it doesn't matter if you're selling out, that you should relook at Adorno's argument. Because I think it's pretty clear that Capitalism does something to art. The question is what, and whether Adorno is actually correct that it can't be subverted.

Why would sex be unique? And why would that have more to do with "capitalism" rather than, say, "genetics"? And do you [does Adorno] really want to suggest that pre-capitalist sex was more intimate, more unique? Because, uh.

"Something".

I left it intentionally vague. Adorno has his argument for what Capitalism does to art. I'm asking whether you think it has any effect or not. Your equally vague anti"selling out" argument implies that you don't think it has any effect.

I'm not even convinced it's a grammatical question! (In the Wittgensteinian sense.)

To ask plainly, do you, Casuistry, believe that there's a relationship between Capitalism and art. And if there is one, what is it?

Like I said, Adorno gives his answer. You need to decide whether you agree with it.

I think that those are both far too vague ideas to tie together systematically. I think art exists in a wide, wide variety of different contexts, and that capitalism manifests itself in a wide variety of different ways, and that suggesting there is any direct connection between one megaconcept "capitalism" and one megaconcept "art" is -- well, I want to say willfully naive and detached from messiness of individual lives, but, ok, that's much too strongly phrased.

"Vague" isn't the word I wanted there. "Broad".

Why would sex be unique?

"Unique" was probably a poor word choice. But most people tend to think of sex as an intimate, private, um, exchange carrying no suggestions of an "outside," public world or economic system or whatever.

And why would that have more to do with "capitalism" rather than, say, "genetics"?

When do you have sex? Where do you have it? With whom? And do any of your answers bear absolutely no trace of capitalist rationalization?

And do you [does Adorno] really want to suggest that pre-capitalist sex was more intimate, more unique? Because, uh.

Actually, Adorno's views on pre-capitalist life are some of the things that piss me off the most because it sometimes seems he would have preferred, say, serfdom to being a pawn of the culture industry.

Again, there are no right or wrong answers here and I'm certainly not demanding answers from you. They're just thinking points.

And I'm not exempting myself from these questions either. I ask them all the time.

XXP Well, for Adorno, and for many, many, many post-Marxist scholars, a Capitalist society occurs as a sort of hegemony for the people living in it. They live their lives differently because the hegemony is in place. Maybe they devalue humanity and see things in terms of value/worth. Or maybe art becomes devalued as art and becomes only its economic worth. I mean, there are a lot of Marxist and post-Marxist scholars and lots of discussion about this. Saying peoples lives are "messy," doesn't really speak to this hegemony. Maybe you don't believe there's a hegemony. Maybe you think that the economic structure doesn't matter at all. But to just dismiss it suggests that you just aren't familiar with the arguments involved.

I'm sorry if this seems vague. If you're looking for texts to look at, I could recommend some.

I think there are always many hegemonies, of varying scales, and with varying effects, etc. But, always! Capitalism isn't special in that regard.

This is my favorite pic of Adorno:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3409/527/1600/adorno_c.jpg

Assuming that the headphone wire rests naked in his pocket, attached to nothing, I think this photo perfectly sums up the probably doomed position of Adorno in a capitalist society.

Well, Cas, you're trying to argue against Adorno when you're really arguing against the entire premise. Adorno feels there /is/ something special about Capitalism and that it creates this particular kind of hegemony. And he's not alone.

It's sort of like arguing against Freud because you don't believe there's a subconsciousness. Like, okay? This is the model Adorno is using.

I'm not saying you're not entitled (or whatever). I mean, like I said above, my thesis is directly taking aim at a number of Adorno's premises. But if you want to discuss Adorno, to an extent you need to speak in his language. He's a tool to use (like Deleuze, or Foucault, or whomever).

Well, I agree that he's a tool.

</cheap shot>

Kevin, maybe you can help with this. I was talking to a friend who was telling me that most Adorno scholars today (like Zuidervaart maybe, or Habermas) see Adorno's radical critique - like in MM - as the first step to a restoration of damaged life. That's not actually total dystopia, but that in acknowledging the dystopia, a road will open up. The first question is 'how,' but I'm sorta confused about this works with Adorno's reading of Endgame (which seems hopelessly dystopian to me - with no possibility of redemption).

(I'm off to bed now; thanks for the discussion.)

I haven't read Adorno's reading of Endgame. Where does it appear?

But I can definitely see MM as a series of attempts to restore a damaged life. I'm pulling this out of my ass but:

I haven't read Endgame itself in eons. But IIRC, the duration of the play is pointless in the sense that the characters (and the audience, presumably) already know the outcome. But you have to endure to get to that outcome. So yes, very dystopic. Where Adorno and MM might come in his theorizing a different way to endure, to not play the game the way it's always been played.

And here I'm thinking of 36. "The Health Unto Death" and 38. "Invitation to the dance" from MM. Both critique "healthy" outlooks on life and suggest a kind of anti-socialization as an open road through dystopia. And given the very little I know about Beckett's personality, I'd say he embodied anti-socialization quite effectively.

P.S. "Totalitarianism and homosexuality belong together." Minima Moralia, p. 46.

P.P.S. I was reading Minima Moralia on the bus and a guy asked me about its style (apparently he saw it over my shoulder). Cruising?

Where Adorno and MM might come in IS his theorizing

P.P.S. I was reading Minima Moralia on the bus and a guy asked me about its style (apparently he saw it over my shoulder). Cruising?

lol.

And yeah, I considered that myself; that refusing to endure Endgame in the regular ways leads to redemption. But apparently that's not exactly it. Apparently Adorno would say you need all of Endgame to see how bad things are, and in recognizing that, after the play is over, you can begin to redeem. I just don't understand how/why that works.

And I'm not sure where else it is, but you can read Understanding Endgame on Jstor.

I'm not smart enough for this thread, but my main objection to Adorno and the Frankfurt School is their belief in a top-bottom model of cultural production and reception, giving consumers little to no agency in being able to define or transform what they receive.

Oh wait, I only skimmed the last few posts and didn't see that Mordy said basically the same thing here:

Personally, I disagree with Adorno. A part of my thesis is that while Adorno was looking at the production and distribution of pop culture, we need to look at its reception and performance. Look at how people take it and use/reuse it. Not at how it's originally intended. How do people subvert the hegemony with the pop culture it produces.

Are you familiar with studies like Ien Ang's Watching Dallas and Janice Radway's Reading the Romance? Those effectively demonstrate the limits of Adorno's theories on culture.

I'm not, jay, but I'll check them out. Should I read both of them?

I've read both but know the Radway very well. I think it's an absolutely brilliant, gawd-I-wish-I-wrote-it book. That said, I have no doubt Adorno would have laughed both of them off. Because at the end of the day (itself a phrase Adorno would have questioned), the one option people watching Dallas or reading the romance never exercise is to not watch/read at all. So it matters not a whit if people are reading against the grain or reusing culture in a way not originally intended. They're using the products of the culture industry. In fact, in these two instances, they're using products that spotlight the assembly line nature of industrial capitalist culture production.

Also, the women Radway studied aren't so much reading against the grain as they are making articulate choices amongst the books available to them. But again, for Adorno, the problem precedes the choice making anyway.

The Ang is much more about reading against the grain.

Hmmm. The Ang seems a bit more relevant to what I'm doing tho. I'm assuming that in both cases, tho, the audience is not challenging the actual production system in their reception/performance? (That's my argument in my thesis - that there's a way of using/reusing these productions that actually subverts and challenges the system that produced them.)

You're assuming correctly. And wow! I'd love to read your thesis when you're done.

I'll post a link when it's done. It's very relevant to ILM, actually. I'm using contemporary music as the model.

Personally, I disagree with Adorno. A part of my thesis is that while Adorno was looking at the production and distribution of pop culture, we need to look at its reception and performance. Look at how people take it and use/reuse it. Not at how it's originally intended. How do people subvert the hegemony with the pop culture it produces.

i dont know that much about this end of whatever-you-want-to-call-it (continental philosophy? 'theory'?) but this sounds a lot like the 70s cult-studies stuff from britain--dick hebdige and stuart hall.

i might be wrong tho.

Yeah... that stuff was subculture studies. And I'm doing Pop Culture. In some ways, cult-studies has the same problems that the "selling out" argument does. It doesn't really engage with the overwhelmingness of Adorno's argument.

This is my favorite pic of Adorno:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3409/527/1600/adorno_c.jpg

Assuming that the headphone wire rests naked in his pocket, attached to nothing, I think this photo perfectly sums up the probably doomed position of Adorno in a capitalist society.

According to a prof I worked with in grad school the image is a forgery — he was considering using it as the cover to this book, but then apparently the publisher discovered the original without the headphones. Producing an image that attaches Adorno to a technology of which he must undoubtedly have had suspicions (even if he liked his stereo opera LPs) seems like an attempt to induce that sense of futility.

Really interesting thread. Good luck with the thesis, Mordy.

I'm pretty sure I've seen that photo of Adorno but without the headphones. it looks totally fake to me.

But it would make perfect sense if the headphones were attached to nothing.

So, Minima Moralia, the section Tough Baby (#24), Adorno systematically connects totalitarianism with homosexuality, homosexuality with passivity, passivity with femininity, homosexual pleasure with sadomasochism. He suggests that people (well, men) (well, men gaining power, though also Oxford students) become "polarized" between macho tough guy (secret homosexual totalitarians) and intellectuals who are not macho and thus read as homosexual (but are secret heterosexual freedom-lovers). Homosexuality is read as performed by a "strong man" onto a "compliant youth". And he maps this onto tough guy tastes, such as cigars or whiskey, which are repugnant at first, but whose pleasures he can only interpret as a remembrance of getting past that initial repugnance [read: the pleasure in getting fucked anally must only come from the thrill of having made it past the pain of getting fucked].

So, OK, this seems plenty homophobic, designed to create a category of abomination (the homosexual) and suggest that the wrong people have been assigned to this category.

But perhaps more damning than that: This doesn't map up to how people talk about enjoying cigars, or whiskey, or for that matter receptive anal sex (though there was less discourse on this pleasure at the time -- though not none!). The types of pleasures that those who enjoy such things describe don't match up to a model where pleasure only comes from remembering past triumphs over unpleasantness; the actual pleasures taken are too nuanced, and make distinctions in quantity and quality that are very difficult to account for under this model.

And it seems like if he'd only listened to how other people were describing their pleasures, he wouldn't have thunk his way into this mess, into this gross inaccuracy! Which, as I tried to get at above, is the feeling whenever I read Adorno.

Are you familiar with studies like Ien Ang's Watching Dallas

Very nice book but it let me down a tiny bit. :-( I agree with most of what she said, but in a sense it lacked...The writing seemed a bit wishwashy. :-(

"I'll post a link when it's done"

YES PLEASE. I had a printed out thesis (from some link) which dealt with the same things but I lost it. :-((((((((

So, Minima Moralia, the section Tough Baby (#24),

But Casuistry, I already quoted from "Tough Baby" above. No one's denying the man wrote some repugnant shit nor that he had no feel for reception studies. And right, equating passivity with femininity with negativity is waaay problematic. But really, is his argument here ALL that different from the "homophobic jocks are really repressed homosexuals" arguments we've all made at times?

Maybe you should set Adorno aside and if you haven't already, read Attali's Noise: The Political Economy of Music, particularly the chapter on "Repetition." That's Adorno-lite which means not that the arguments are watered-down but rather they're more calmly stated, e.g. he doesn't call people "organisms."

(You weren't one the people arguing that homophobia wasn't there.)

But all right, is his argument that different? Well, for one thing, that argument is a bullshit argument, used as a blunt weapon or perhaps as wish-fulfillment. It's one of those arguments you can throw around for funsies but -- I dunno, I guess some people believe it; it seems obviously wrong and unworkable.

So maybe you're saying I'm misreading Adorno, and he's just being funsies here?

I don't really have any problem with calling people "organisms".