Theodor Adorno’s (1903–1969) work keeps attracting renewed interest and fresh perspectives. This issue approaches Adorno through his cultural criticism, aesthetic theory and musical philosophy as well as his personal history and private life.
Text: Petteri Enroth and Irmeli Hautamäki Theodor Adorno’s (1903—1969) work forms an acknowledged body of cultural theory and criticism of the thoroughly administrated capitalist culture, and as such it is today perhaps more acute than ever. In this volume we wish to offer new insights into Adorno, not only as a theoretician but as a […]
Text and photos: Petteri Enroth In February 2015 I escaped the weather and political climate of Finland into one of the best fantasy-scenarios there is: planning a trip. However, no single European city appeared attractive enough over the others as to prompt a decision about the destination. Finally, like a decent humanist, I decided to […]
Text: Jussi Suortti In Minima Moralia (1951), Theodor Adorno rejects the idea of cinema as art, criticising films for being merely well-planned products of the industrial machine. [1] Further, he argues that the culture industry’s totality entails a serious threat to human subjectivity: social delusion consists of thinking that individual producers actually have a say […]
Text: Petteri Enroth It was not today, but more like yesterday. Apparently, I had invited him over since he arrived promptly just when everything was ready. I offered him a glass of Bavarian Riesling, and we sat down at the table. His dark grey suit hung awkwardly from his narrow shoulders. I looked at him […]
Text: Irmeli Hautamäki In Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) Adorno and Max Horkheimer criticized the state of affairs wherein art has been systematically separated from modern rationality, while the entire modern society is at the same time controlled by instrumental reason and scientific administration to the point where rationality turns into its opposite, irrationality. In his […]
Text and analytical image: Timo Laiho I The paradox of analysis In his last public lecture on February 24, 1969, a few months before his death, Adorno encapsulated the problem of musical analysis as follows: “Indeed, all ‘Becoming’ in music is in fact illusory, insofar as the music, as text, is really fixed and thus […]