{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","title":"Critical Theory of Communication New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781911534044","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","id":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","uuid":"dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","title":"Critical Theory of Communication New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet","normalized_title":"criticaltheoryofcommunicationnewreadingsoflukácsadornomarcusehonnethandhabermasintheageoftheinternet","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781911534044","isbns":["9781911534044","9781911534051","9781911534068","9781911534075"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":236,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Critical%20Theory%20of%20Communication%20New%20Readings%20of%20Luk%C3%A1cs%2C%20Adorno%2C%20Marcuse%2C%20Honneth%20and%20Habermas%20in%20the%20Age%20of%20the%20Internet","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611/search"},"page":{"printed_page":87,"pdf_page":91,"physical_index":91,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"9296ab10b796fd0ae902586cb001f5845267e0fd19a99447b2323dcf98d51021"},"chapter":"C H R I S T I A N F U C H S CRITICAL THEORY OF COMMUNICATION","content":"becomes social by its opposition to society, and it occupies this position only as autonomous art. By crystallizing in itself as something unique to itself, rather than complying with existing social norms and qualifying as “socially useful”, it criticizes society by merely existing, for which puritans of all stripes condemn it (225–226).\n\n‘Insofar as a social function can be predicated for artworks, it is their functionlessness’ (227). If an artwork becomes instrumental to and a function of something, then for Adorno it loses its truth. Functionlessness is for Adorno the symbol of freedom beyond capitalism and class. So his search for elements that are functionless and his critique of how the commodity form tries to functionalise almost everything is a dialectical anticipation of a free society and the ascertainment of the need of such a society.\n\nFor Adorno, the criteria that Lukács’ aesthetics advance are therefore already a form of instrumentalism. He argues that although Lukács tried to broaden the concept of socialist realism, it remained rather dogmatic, rejecting most of modern literature as decadent, sick, or reactionary. ‘Art exists within reality, has its function in it, and is also inherently mediated with reality in many ways. But nevertheless, as art, by its very concept it stands in an antithetical relationship to the status quo’ (Adorno 1958, 224). Art can display and create illusions and fictitious reality, which for Adorno does not make it bad art. There is an ‘“aesthetic diference” from existence’ (225), a non-immediacy with established facts (227). The ‘work of art does not have something immediately real as its subject matter’ (232). Lukács’ later aesthetic theory would be too close to the catechism of socialist realism, ‘the ideologically sanctioned copy theory of knowledge’ (236). Comparable to Adorno, Ernst Bloch also criticises Lukács’ aesthetics for assuming the existence of a ‘closed […] reality’ and the equation of experimental art ‘with a condition of decadence’ (in: Adorno et al. 1980, 22). Bertolt Brecht also commented that dogmatic art critics like Lukács or Alfred Kurella ‘want to play the apparatchik and exercise control over other people. Everyone of their criticisms contains a threat’ (in: Adorno et al. 1980, 97).\n\n3.3.5. Adorno on Jazz\n\nBut isn’t Adorno’s assessment of jazz quite comparable to Lukács’ contempt for anti-realistic literature? Some observers think so. So for example Robert W. Witkin (2000, 145) argues: ‘At best Adorno’s attack on jazz seems to be out of sympathy with informed opinion on the subject; at worst it appears to be reactionary and possibly racist’. Jazz originated in the context of black experiences of slavery and segregation. The argument that some make is that Adorno is racist and argues that jazz is problematic because of its black origins and because it lacks ‘whiteness’.\n\nTheodor W. Adorno and the Critical Theory of Knowledge\n\n87","previous_page":86,"next_page":88}