Theodor Adorno

Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno (September 11, 1903 – August 6, 1969) was a German sociologist, philosopher, musicologist and composer. He was a member of the Frankfurt School along with Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas and others. He was also the Music Director of the Radio Project.

Adorno's sociological methods

Because Adorno believed that sociology needs to be self-reflective and self-critical, he believed that the language the sociologist uses, like the language of the ordinary person, is a political construct in large measure that uses, often unreflectingly, concepts installed by dominant classes and social structures (such as our notion of "deviance" which includes both genuinely deviant individual and "hustlers" operating below social norms because they don't have the capital to operate above: for an analysis of this phenomenon, cf. Pierre Bourdieu's book The Weight of the World). In other words, Marx and Engels were concerned with physical dark satanic mills whereas Adorno's concern was with mental monstrosities.

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Thus Adorno felt that the men at the top of the Institute (and they were all men) needed to be the source primarily of theories for evaluation and empirical testing, as well as people who would process the "facts" discovered...including revising theories that were found to be false. For example, in essays published in Germany on Adorno's return from the USA, and reprinted in the Critical Models essays collection (ISBN 0231076355), Adorno praised the egalitarianism and openness of US society based on his sojourn in New York and the Los Angeles area between 1935 and 1955. Prior to going to the USA, and as shown in his rather infamous essay "On Jazz", Adorno seems to have thought that the USA was a cultural wasteland in which people's minds and responses were formed by what he, rather nastily, called "the music of slaves".

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Finally, some criticisms of Adorno come from those who feel forced to read his works, or the casual reader who expects to find a neutral commentator, usually on music issues. To some extent the problem is one of background: many have noted Adorno had little sympathy for readers without his extensive "mitteleuropäische" cultural background, which involved a thorough knowledge of German philosophy, the history of literature and music, as well as the ability to argue from first principles.

Related Topics:
Mitteleuropäische - First principles

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One example of the clash of intellectual culture and Adorno's methods can be found in Paul Lazarsfeld, the American (and Americanized) sociologist for whom Adorno worked in the middle 1930s after fleeing Hitler.

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As Rolf Wiggershaus recounts in The Frankfurt School, Its History, Theories and Political Significance (MIT 1995):

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Lazarsfeld was the director of a project, funded and inspired by David Sarnoff (the head of RCA), to discover both the sort of music that listeners of radio liked and ways to improve their "taste", so that RCA could profitably air more classical music...Sarnoff was, it appears, genuinely concerned with the low level of taste in this era of "Especially for You" and other forgotten hits, but needed assurance that RCA could viably air opera on Saturday afternoons. Lazarsfeld, however, had trouble both with the prose style of the work Adorno handed in and what Lazarsfeld thought was Adorno's habit of "jumping to conclusions" without being willing to do the scut work of collecting data.

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Adorno, however, rather than being arrogant, seems to have been a bit of a depressive sort, and Rolf Wiggershaus tells an anecdote which doesn't fit the image formed of an arrogant pedant: he noted that the typists at the Radio Research Project liked and understood what Adorno was saying about the actual effect of modern media. They may have responded to comments similar to that found in Dialectic of Enlightenment, written by Adorno with his close associate Max Horkheimer, that it appeared that movie-goers were less enthralled with the content even of "blockbusters" of the era, films that are now lauded by Hollywood mavens as "art", than by the air-conditioned comfort of the theaters. An observation reflected in movie business at the time by the expression that one found a good place to sell popcorn and built a theatre around it.

Related Topics:
Radio Research Project - Max Horkheimer

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