Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Adorno in America
ISBN: 9780816654192
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of Minnesota Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Adorno Theodor W. 1903–1969; Popular culture -- United States; Germany -- Intellectual life -- 20th century;

The German philosopher and cultural critic Theodor W. Adorno was one of the towering intellectual figures of the twentieth century, and between 1938 and 1953 he lived in exile in the United States. In the first in-depth account of this period of AdornoOCOs life, David Jenemann examines AdornoOCOs confrontation with the burgeoning American OC culture industryOCO and casts new light on AdornoOCOs writings about the mass media. Contrary to the widely held beliefOCoeven among his defendersOCothat Adorno was disconnected from America and disdained its culture, Jenemann reveals that Adorno was an active and engaged participant in cultural and intellectual life during these years. From the time he first arrived in New York in 1938 to work for the Princeton Radio Research Project, exploring the impact of radio on American society and the maturing marketing strategies of the national radio networks, Adorno was dedicated to understanding the technological and social influence of popular art in the United States. Adorno carried these interests with him to Hollywood, where he and Max Horkheimer attempted to make a film for their Studies in Prejudice Project and where he befriended Thomas Mann and helped him craft his famous novel Doctor Faustus. Shuttling between insightful readings of AdornoOCOs theories and a rich body of archival materialsOCoincluding unpublished writings and FBI filesOCoJenemann paints a portrait of AdornoOCOs years in New York and Los Angeles and tells the cultural history of an America coming to grips with its rapidly evolving mass culture. Adorno in America eloquently and persuasively argues for a more complicated, more intimate relationship between Adorno and American society than has ever been previously acknowledged. What emerges is not only an image of an intellectual in exile, but ultimately a rediscovery of Adorno as a potent defender of a vital and intelligent democracy."