Asked why she participates, one young journalist says for example:
Although I am a journalist, first of all it was actually a very personal motivation. I have since my childhood really asked myself the questions: What is the Holocaust? What have the people there been capable of doing to others? And how could those, who had to sufer these atrocities, live on?2
The results have been published online, in newspapers, and have been broadcast on radio and television.3
This project involves both young people and survivors and makes use of media for the task of documenting the experiences of those whom the Nazis tried to exterminate. Confronting the public with the horrific reality of extermination is a necessary element of education after Auschwitz. Traditional media and social media platforms are very good means for documenting these experiences and making them available to a broader public. Adorno probably would not be a fan of commercial social media and would have detested targeted online advertising, but he probably would much welcome the use of social media in a project such as the Max-Kolbe-Werk’s international meetings. He would probably advise to upload resulting reports, such as videos, on noncommercial platforms because he would find it utterly distasteful if a report of an Auschwitz survivor were interrupted by advertisements on YouTube.
If one goes beyond a superficial and selective reading of Adorno, then one will find his deep belief in the possibility of emancipation and in the role that culture can play in this process. English translations of Horkheimer and Adorno’s works are imprecise because the language of the two philosophers is complex and not easily translatable. But besides the problem non-German speakers are facing when reading Horkheimer and Adorno, there seems to be a certain nonwillingness in media and cultural studies to engage thoroughly with the Frankfurt School’s and Critical Political Economy’s origins in order to set up a straw man.
Adorno’s criticism of Georg Lukács is alongside his writings on culture an important contribution to the critical theory of knowledge. It will be discussed next.
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Critical Theory of Communication