nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic (Marx and Engels 1845, 53).
That Adorno argued for critical education shows that he was concerned with the question of how critique could be generalised as a participatory mechanism in society that acts as a bulwark against fascism.
3.2.4. Did Adorno Hate Popular Culture? He Hated the Commodity Form
Adorno profoundly opposed the commodity form and was convinced that wherever it is introduced, it damages human life in society. He did not hate popular culture, but hated the commodity form of any form of culture. In respect to music, Adorno (1991, 38) argued for example that ‘all contemporary musical life is dominated by the commodity form’. He also wrote that the ‘role of music in the social process is exclusively that of a commodity’ so that its organisation is ‘in the hands of powerful monopolies’ (Adorno 1932, 391). What Adorno calls musical fetishism becomes especially evident in the use of diferent types of music in advertising. Music would today serve ‘as an advertisement for commodities which one must acquire in order to be able to hear music’ (38). Because of ‘commodity listening’, the ‘diferences in the reception of oficial ‘classical’ music and light music no longer have any real significance’ (35).
3.2.5. Adorno’s Version of Fan Studies
It is certainly true that Adorno’s musical taste focused on twelve-tone music by composers such as Arnold Schönberg, Anton Webern or Alban Berg. Marisol Sandoval argues in this context that one must see that ‘Adorno was a fan of serious music. He enjoyed playing as well as listening to classical music’ (Sandoval 2015, 67). His fascination with fan studies becomes quite evident in his (1932) essay On the Social Situation of Music, in which he expresses his admiration for and analyses topics such as the music of Arnold Schönberg, Igor Stravinsky, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler and Alban Berg, the writings of Bert Brecht and Karl Kraus, and Adolf Loos’ architecture. To a certain extent his fandom may have influenced Adorno’s theory. So he is in an epistemological respect not so diferent from contemporary fan studies, in which scholars tend to analyse the forms of culture they personally like.
Theodor W. Adorno and the Critical Theory of Knowledge
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