Called “the most important critic of his time” by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin has only become more influential over the years, as his work has assumed a crucial place in current debates over the interactions of art, culture, and meaning. A “natural and extraordinary talent for letter writing was one of the most captivating facets of his nature,” writes Gershom Scholem in his Foreword to this volume; and Benjamin's correspondence reveals the evolution of some of his most powerful ideas, (...) while also offering an intimate picture of Benjamin himself and the times in which he lived. Writing at length to Scholem and Theodor Adorno, and exchanging letters with Rainer Maria Rilke, Hannah Arendt, Max Brod, and Bertolt Brecht, Benjamin elaborates on his ideas about metaphor and language. He reflects on literary figures from Kafka to Karl Kraus, and expounds his personal attitudes toward such subjects as Marxism and French national character. Providing an indispensable tool for any scholar wrestling with Benjamin’s work, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940 is a revelatory look at the man behind much of the twentieth century’s most significant criticism. (shrink)

Each had met his match, and happily, in the other. This book is the story of an elective affinity.

The minutes of Adorno’s aesthetics seminar, held during the summer term of 1932 at the university of Frankfurt, are a rare trace of the early philosophical reception of Walter Benjamin’s opus magnum, The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1928). Showcasing his critical spirit and pedagogy, Adorno and his students attempt a clarification, as well as a problematization, of this dense and difficult text, touching on such problems as the historicity of ideas or the concept of a ‘constellation’. This document (...) is thus both a valuable aid for reading Benjamin’ Trauerspiel-Buch and an important document for understanding the sources of Adorno’s own philosophy. (shrink)

The correspondence between the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno and his politically active graduate student Elisabeth Lenk offers fresh insights into both Adorno's view of surrealism and its relation to the student uprisings of 1960s France and Germany. Written between 1962, when Lenk moved to Paris and persuaded an initially reluctant Adorno to supervise her sociology dissertation on the surrealists, and Adorno's death in 1969, these letters reveal a surprisingly tender side of the distinguished professor. The correspondence is accompanied by (...) a selection of documents that bring additional depth and context to the letters and their engagement with the art and politics of the period. Filling in the background of Adorno and Lenk's lively exchange, the volume includes new translations of classic essays by Walter Benjamin ("Surrealism: Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia") and Adorno ("Surrealism Reconsidered"), along with a collection of short prose readings by Adorno and the writer-scholar Carl Dreyfus and three original essays by Lenk: her afterword to Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon, her Introduction to the German edition of Charles Fourier's The Theory of the Four Movements and the General Destinies, and her incisive essay "Critical Theory and Surreal Practice." An Introduction by Lenk's student, the contemporary writer and critic Rita Bischof, points to the continuing challenge of surrealist politics. This remarkable body of correspondence appears here in English for the first time, as do Adorno and Dreyfus's surrealist readings and the essays by Lenk. Together, they provide a rich mine of critical material for reassessing the significance of the surrealist movement and its successors. (shrink)

Called “the most important critic of his time” by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin has only become more influential over the years, as his work has assumed a crucial place in current debates over the interactions of art, culture, and meaning. A “natural and extraordinary talent for letter writing was one of the most captivating facets of his nature,” writes Gershom Scholem in his Foreword to this volume; and Benjamin's correspondence reveals the evolution of some of his most powerful ideas, (...) while also offering an intimate picture of Benjamin himself and the times in which he lived. Writing at length to Scholem and Theodor Adorno, and exchanging letters with Rainer Maria Rilke, Hannah Arendt, Max Brod, and Bertolt Brecht, Benjamin elaborates on his ideas about metaphor and language. He reflects on literary figures from Kafka to Karl Kraus, and expounds his personal attitudes toward such subjects as Marxism and French national character. Providing an indispensable tool for any scholar wrestling with Benjamin’s work, _The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940_ is a revelatory look at the man behind much of the twentieth century’s most significant criticism. (shrink)

Adorno’s lectures on ontology and dialectics from 1960–61 comprise his most sustained and systematic analysis of Heidegger’s philosophy. They also represent a continuation of a project that he shared with Walter Benjamin – ‘to demolish Heidegger’. Following the publication of the latter’s magnum opus Being and Time, and long before his notorious endorsement of Nazism at Freiburg University, both Adorno and Benjamin had already rejected Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. After his return to Germany from his exile in the United States, (...) Adorno became Heidegger’s principal intellectual adversary, engaging more intensively with his work than with that of any other contemporary philosopher. Adorno regarded Heidegger as an extremely limited thinker and for that reason all the more dangerous. In these lectures, he highlights Heidegger’s increasing fixation with the concept of ontology to show that the doctrine of being can only truly be understood through a process of dialectical thinking. Rather than exploiting overt political denunciation, Adorno deftly highlights the connections between Heidegger’s philosophy and his political views and, in doing so, offers an alternative plea for enlightenment and rationality. These seminal lectures, in which Adorno dissects the thought of one of the most influential twentieth-century philosophers, will appeal to students and scholars in philosophy and critical theory and throughout the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary EntertainmentTheodore GracykNeo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment, by Angela Ndalianis. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 2004, 323 pp., $34.95 cloth.Like the cliché about not judging a book by its cover, the prominence of the term "aesthetics" in a book's title is no indication of what one will find inside. Has the term become so elastic that it will now cover everything cultural? Or is (...) it the case, as in Angela Ndalianis's discussions of theme park rides and computer games, that the term applies to anything that has a parallel in earlier practices covered by this rubric? Ndalianis may be stretching it too far, for the book in question emphasizes parallels with baroque practices that predate Alexander Baumgarten's 1735 proposal to use "aesthetics" as the name of an emerging discipline concerned [End Page 115] with perception. We are alternately informed that the book explores the poetics, semiotics, and the "logic of contemporary media." But because Ndalianis holds that recent visual media involve a "specific system of perception" that arises from a "radical cultural transformation" (22-23), the term "aesthetics" may be as good as any other in conveying her purposes. For she is not concerned with artistic style—presumably the province of art historians. She is theorizing broadly about visual media by examining an assortment of media strategies found in the two eras and aims to identify their common "morphology" (19). Her sources are Fredric Jameson, Walter Benjamin, and Gilles Deleuze rather than, say, Kendall Walton, Noël Carroll, or Gregory Currie.Ndalianis's main idea is that there is a strong but not exact parallel between our own times and the visual forms favored in the seventeenth century. (For Ndalianis, the baroque period stretches from 1492 to the 1680s.) The two epochs involve similar cultural sensibilities and artistic practices, so if we understand baroque art and visual media, we will better understand what is going on in contemporary media. In short, the framing assumption is Shelley's dictum that art is the expression of the spirit of its time. More specifically, the design of modern entertainment media is argued to be very similar to a wide range of baroque entertainment and representational practice. But the similarity is not due to either awareness or imitation of baroque style. Each "logically emerged as a result of systemic and cultural transformations" peculiar to its own time (17). The similar "logic" of each period is thus seen as evidence that there are parallels in the "general tendencies" and consequent "dominant cultural sensibilities" of the two periods (17-21). Because hindsight is more reliable than precognition, a backward glance at the baroque may help us to better grasp our own historical and cultural context.Having outlined these proposals in a lengthy introduction, Ndalianis offers five chapters, each devoted to a specific parallel. All five chapters share a similar strategy. A different aspect of neo-baroque communication is highlighted, and one type of baroque art or entertainment is compared and contrasted with its neo-baroque counterpart, with at least one neo-baroque example explored in considerable detail.The introduction focuses on Jurassic Park (both the film and the theme park ride). Chapter 1 focuses on neo-baroque "narrative strategies," as first Don Quixote and its sequel and then the palace at Versailles are compared to the various Alien films and comic books. The main focus is "serial" art as an outgrowth of capitalism, generating "an aesthetics of repetition" enriched by its "rampant self-reflexivity" (69). Chapter 2 shifts to the baroque love of labyrinthine structure, with its "enforced circuitousness, planned chaos, choice among paths, intricacy, complexity, and an invitation to the audience to engage reflexively" in exploring the labyrinth (84). Ndalianis's baroque case is Pietro de Cortona's elaborate painted ceiling for the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. The neo-baroque counterpart is the Doom video game and its sequel, Doom II. Inexplicably, for a book with numerous illustrations, there are no visuals to display Doom for those unfamiliar with such games. Chapter 3 examines baroque cartography as a background for discussing geographic discovery and colonization, leading to the neo-baroque... (shrink)

The most common approach in writings on music and Jugendstil has been to isolate several aspects of the visual art, either of technique or of subject matter, and to seek parallels in music of the fin de siècle. Historians of art and design seem to agree on at least three basic elements of Jugendstil: the primacy of the dynamic, flowing line; flatness or two dimensionality ; and the profuseness of ornament. All these features are neatly embodied in a 1900 drawing (...) by Theodor Heine , in which the ostensible subject matter, the dancing lady, is dissolved in the undulating linearity of her dress and the swirling smoke or incense. In this example, as in the celebrated "Cyclamen" tapestry by the Munich artist Hermann Obrist , line and ornament are largely liberated from their representational obligations and are manipulated in an almost abstract fashion. As Robert Schmutzler has remarked, the tapestry is "on the borderline dividing the symbol and the ornament, between abstract dynamism and the representation of a distinctive organism."4This aspect of Obrist's tapestry was realized as early as 1895 by the critic Georg Fuchs, who wrote in the journal Pan, "'These embroideries do not intend to "mean" anything, to say anything.'" Fuchs went on to describe the dynamic motion of the image in terms that have nothing to do with cyclamens per se: "'This racing movement seems like the abrupt, powerful convolution of the lash of a whip. One moment it appears as the image of a forceful outburst of natural elements; it is a lightning bolt. Another moment it resembles the defiant signature of a great man, a conqueror, an intellect who decrees new laws through new documents.''"5 Fuchs's metaphor of the whiplash or Peitschenhieb, has stuck; Obrist's tapestry is today known principally by that name.4. Robert Schmutzler, Art Nouveau , p. 193.5. Georg Fuchs, quoted in Peg Weiss, Kandinsky in Munich: The Formative Jugendstil Years , p. 33; hereafter abbreviated KM; translation modified. Walter Frisch is associate professor of music at Columbia University and author of Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation . He is presently completing a book on the early tonal works of Arnold Schoenberg. (shrink)

This is an exploration of how the narratives people construct during everyday living are shaped by certain limitations and regular patterns in individual memory. The book draws on themes in Walter Ong's analysis of memory and oracy. It also explores the relations between memory aids/supports and memory itself. The recognition of records as playing a role in memory adds a collective dimension and raises questions about the nature of historical truth. The ethical theme is based on the thesis that (...) the past can be redeemed or changed not just on the level of narrative, but also on the level of additional actions that can be related to prior actions in such a way as to justify a new narration of the events taken together. This means that the past can be changed, and this notion of redeeming the past is inspired by Christian thought. (shrink)

Like the cracking of the genetic code and the creation of the atomic bomb, the discovery of how the brain's neurons work is one of the fundamental scientific developments of the twentieth century. The discovery of neurotransmitters revolutionized the way we think about the brain and what it means to be human yet few people know how they were discovered, the scientists involved, or the fierce controversy about whether they even existed. The War of the Soups and the Sparks tells (...) the saga of the dispute between the pharmacologists, who had uncovered the first evidence that nerves communicate by releasing chemicals, and the neurophysiologists, experts on the nervous system, who dismissed the evidence and remained committed to electrical explanations. The protagonists of this story are Otto Loewi and Henry Dale, who received Nobel Prizes for their work, and Walter Cannon, who would have shared the prize with them if he had not been persuaded to adopt a controversial theory (how that happened is an important part of this history). Valenstein sets his story of scientific discovery against the backdrop of two world wars and examines the fascinating lives of several scientists whose work was affected by the social and political events of their time. He recounts such stories as Loewi's arrest by Nazi storm troopers and Dale's efforts at helping key scientists escape Germany. The War of the Soups and the Sparks reveals how science and scientists work. Valenstein describes the observations and experiments that led to the discovery of neurotransmitters and sheds light on what determines whether a novel concept will gain acceptance among the scientific community. His work also explains the immense importance of Loewi, Dale, and Cannon's achievements in our understanding of the human brain and the way mental illnesses are conceptualized and treated. (shrink)

Tras la lectura de esta obra, reconocemos que su autora, Stephanie Graf, mantiene una signatura o estilo constante en cada parte, capítulo y subtítulo, pues le interesa plantear una trama, un tablero para dialogar con el trabajo de Walter Benjamin y de Theodor W. Adorno, ante uno de los desafíos más urgentes de nuestro tiempo: ¿Cómo entender la supervivencia de la teología en un mundo secular? En específico, ¿de qué forma el escándalo del mal, sobre todo del mal (...) excesivo en Auschwitz, nos remite inevitablemente a la metafísica, a la creación, la revelación, la redención, aun cuando estos pensadores judíos se ubican en el campo del materialismo histórico y la sola responsabilidad humana? De ahí el llamado a la inversión. (shrink)

This article postulates that the criticality of epistemology elaborated by Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno is based not so much on the reformulation of a philosophical praxis against modern reason, but mainly on the metamorphosis of the concept of truth. Specifically, it is affirmed that the critique of modern reason carried out by both thinkers is associated with the determination of the temporal nucleus of truth as negativity and mourning. In the context of a rational crisis, Benjamin (...) and Adorno open the possibility of a relationship with objectivity in the form of a critical interpretation of that temporal nucleus. This, linked to the dialectic of modern catastrophe, deals with exposing the fragments produced by the subjectivist super-determination governed by the logic of identity. To justify this, first, we explain the identification made by both philosophers between the temporal nucleus of truth and the concept of sad-negative truth; imbrication that tries to condense the consequences of the subjectivist constitution of reason. Then, we point out the conjugation of this definition of truth with the production of suffering. Next, we determine in what sense the negativity of the truth opens up the dialectical character of the modern catastrophe. Finally, we indicate the necessary association of such a critical epistemology with the historical apocatastasis. (shrink)

In this article I analyze the connection between the concepts of “actuality”, “upcoming” and “origin” found in the early reflections of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno to expose some of the defining borders of the transposition of criticisms made by both philosophers. Through the identification of “actuality” as a reflection on the conditions in which philosophy is legitimate, “upcoming” as a requisite for self-justification of philosophical knowledge, and “origin” as the claim of the historically unfinished, I show (...) in what sense a critical horizon is recovered by Benjamin and Adorno as an inexorable exercise of philosophical praxis. (shrink)

Este trabajo muestra una concurrencia patente en la resonancia de las categorías ‘industria cultural’ [Kulturindustrie] –empleada por Theodor Adorno para indicar ciertas zonas de la dialéctica subjetiva– e ‘industria de recreo’ [Vergnügungsindustrie] –referida por Walter Benjamin en relación a la dialéctica objetiva–. Me detengo en esta poco explorada concomitancia para determinar por qué Adorno evidencia una dialéctica de la subjetividad administrada en la renuncia sacrificial y Benjamin elabora una dialéctica de la objetividad fetichizada signada por su carácter de (...) fantasmagoría cadavérica. Así, señalo una dimensión de la incardinación entre la veta expansiva de la racionalidad moderna y la instrumentalización de sujetos y objetos. (shrink)

En este trabajo se pretende hacer una pequeña correlación, a manera de homenaje, entre el pensamiento de Theodor W. Adorno y el de su amado maestro, Walter Benjamin. Los vínculos que unen a ambos pensadores, pueden encontrarse en el peso de las palabras que comparten, en medio de un contexto propio de la crítica filosófica alemana y de las raíces judaicas que los unen. Bajo la figura alegórica del ángel de la historia, se tejen nexos entre una selección (...) de citas tomadas de la Dialéctica negativa de Th. W. Adorno y de algunos conceptos expuestos en El origen del drama barroco alemán de W. Benjamin. (shrink)

RESUMEN Walter Benjamin y Theodor W. Adorno elaboran una reflexión en torno a la actualidad y porvenir de la filosofía a raíz de la desavenencia entre verdad y conocimiento que eclosiona en el seno de la modernidad. En este trabajo nos proponemos, en consecuencia, rastrear de qué manera Adorno y Benjamin dirigen sus reflexiones sobre la praxis filosófica hacia la inquietud epistemológica sobre la interpretación de lo inconcluso. El recorrido que proponemos nos permite mostrar, en primer lugar, que (...) ambos pensadores desarrollan una crítica de la racionalidad filosófica atravesada por la advertencia dialéctica acerca de la presencia de lo inacabado. En segundo lugar, que la Teoría crítica gestada por ellos encuentra en la interpretación la vía práctica de la que depende la actualidad filosófica, pues, según exponemos en nuestro análisis, interpretar constituye la posibilidad teórica de reparar lo despreciado en el despliegue dialéctico de la modernidad. ABSTRACT Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno elaborate a reflection on the actuality of philosophy as a result of the disagreement between truth and knowledge that hatches in the bosom of modernity. Consequently, in this work we propose to trace how Adorno and Benjamin direct their reflections on philosophical praxis towards the epistemological concern about the interpretation of the unclosed. The route that we propose allows us to show, first of all, that both thinkers develop a critique of philosophical rationality crossed by the dialectical warning about the presence of the unfinished. Secondly, that the Critical Theory conceived by them finds in interpretation the practical way on which philosophical actuality depends, because -as we expose in our analisis- to interpret constitutes the theoretical possibility of repairing the despised in the dialectical deployment of modernity. (shrink)

L’industrie de la culture qui est apparue en parallèle avec l’affaiblissement du dipôle travail social – art contemporain, a en même temps affaibli la possibilité des avant‐gardes de constituer une activité purement intellectuelle et artistique. C’est clair que l’apparition de cette culture de masse vient se lier avec l’évincement de l’art moderne authentique et la disparition quasi-totale de la culture populaire. Je pense que c’est indispensable de mentionner les points de vue des philosophes allemands, Theodor Adorno et Walter (...) Benjamin car je considère que malgré leurs limites historiques, ils exercent une influence déterminante sur la pensée contemporaine qui se relate à l’art dans le cadre de la société moderne postindustrielle. (shrink)

Theodor W.Adorno was one of the towering intellectuals of the twentieth century. His contributions cover such a myriad of fields, including the sociology of culture, social theory, the philosophy of music, ethics, art and aesthetics, film, ideology, the critique of modernity and musical composition, that it is difficult to assimilate the sheer range and profundity of his achievement. His celebrated friendship with Walter Benjamin has produced some of the most moving and insightful correspondence on the origins and objects (...) of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. This unprecedented collection, devised and assembled by one of Europe's rising social theorists, distills the best from published assessments and responses to Adorno's oeuvre. The collection is divided into 4 volumes: Volume 1: Philosophy, Ethics and Critical Theory Part 1: Negative Dialectics Included here are contributions on the concept of totality in the writings of Adorno and Lukacs; Adorno and Bourgeois Philosophy; the relationship between Adorno and Kierkegaard; Adorno's Critique of Idealism; Adorno and Linguistics; Adono and Habermas. Part 2: Ethics and Redemption This is comprised of contributions on Adorno and Truth; Adorno's Inverse Theology; and Adorno and the Ineffable Part 3: Critical Theory, Ideology Critique and Social Science Included here are contributions on Adorno's relation to the Positivist Dispute; the Popper-Adorno Controversy; Adorno and Empirical Research; and Hermeneutics and Critical Theory. Volume 2: Aesthetic Theory Part 1: Art and Politics in 'Aesthetic Theory' This includes material on the De-Aestheticization of Art; Adorno, Utopia and Mimesis; Adorno and autonomous art; Adorno and Dialectics; Adorno, Marxism and Art; Art and Criticism in Adorno's Aesthetics; Adorno's concept of the Avant-Garde. Part 2: Philosophy of Music This includes contributions on Adorno's music and social criticism; Adorno and nostalgia; Adorno, Heidegger and the meaning of music; Adorno and Wagner. Part 3: On Jazz The material included here addresses questions of Adorno and Popular Music; Adorno's encounter with jazz; Adorno, Jazz and Society; and the reasons for Adorno's apparent hatred of jazz. Volume 3: Social Theory & The Critique of Modernity Part 1: On 'The Dialectic of Enlightenment' Included here are chapters on the dialectic of enlightenment and post-functionalist thought; dialectic of enlightenment as genealogy critique; the relationship between the dialectic of enlightenment, modernity and postmodernity; Adorno's critique of progress; Adorno and theories of subjectivity; and the dialectic of enlightenment and rationality. Part 2: Anti-Semitism This consists of material on Adorno and Horkheimer; and Adorno and Public Sphere Part 3: Popular Culture and Capitalism Included here are contributions on Adorno and Sport; Adorno's alleged left-wing elitism; Adorno's critique of astrology and the Occult; Benjamin and Adorno on Disney; Adorno, Totalitarianism and the Welfare State; and Adorno and Mass Society. Volume 4: Cultural Theory and the Postmodern Challenge Part 1: 'Damaged Life': Exile in America This section includes Leo Lowenthal's insightful recollections of Adorno; Adorno and the primal history of subjectivity; Adorno and Los Angeles; Adorno's relation to American culture; and Adorno's exile in England. Part 2: Film Theory This section includes chapters on Adorno and the Culture Industry; Benjamin, Adorno and Contemporary Film Theory; Adorno, Aesthetics and the Social. Part 3: Wellmer and Adorno Included here are papers on Aesthetic, Psychic and Social Synthesis in Adorno and Wellmer; and New German Aesthetic Theory after Adorno. Part 4: Jameson on Adorno Included here are papers on Jameson, Adorno and the persistence of the Utopian; and a Marxism for Postmodernism Part 5: Modernism and Postmodernism This section contains papers on Adorno, Foucault and the Modern Intellectual; Adorno, Foucault and Two forms of the Critique of Modernity; Adorno and the Habermas-Lyotard Debate; Adorno, Postmodernism and Edward Said; Adorno, Heidegger and Postmodernism; Adorno and the Decline of the Modern Age; The literary process of modernism; Adorno, Tradition and the Postmodern Part 5: The Feminist Response Included here are contributions on Adorno and Judith Butler; Adorno, Art Theory and Feminist Practice; and Gender in the writings of Adorno and Horkheimer. The collection comes with a superb Introduction to Adorno by Gerard Delanty which elucidates the main contributions of this penetrating and enduring thinker. Comprehensive and consistently illuminating, the collection includes the thought on Adorno from some of the most distinguished commentators on social theory. Included here are selections from the writings of Susan Buck-Morss, Martin Jay, Agnes Heller; David Frisby; Johann Arnason; Richard Wolin; Andrew Bowie; Robert Hulnot-Kentor; Leo Lowenthal; Richard Rorty Axel Honneth; Albrecht Wellmer; and Jurgen Habermas. The result is a peerless research resource allowing readers to delve into all aspects of Adorno's extraordinary accomplishments in social thought, philosophy and cultural criticism. It will be required reading for students of the Frankfurt School, Marxism, Critical Theory, Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics and Social Theory. (shrink)