Theodor W. Adorno: The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, creative industries, critical media studies, critical theory, cultural production, culture industry, Frankfurt school, mass media, popular culture
“The creation of the Frankfurt School of critical theory in the 1920s saw the birth of some of the most exciting and challenging writings of the twentieth century. It is out of this background that the great critic Theodor Adorno emerged. His finest essays are collected here, offering the reader unparalleled insights into Adorno’s thoughts on culture. He argued that the culture industry commodified and standardized all art. In turn this suffocated individuality and destroyed critical thinking. At the time, Adorno was accused of everything from overreaction to deranged hysteria by his many detractors. In today’s world, where even the least cynical of consumers is aware of the influence of the media, Adorno’s work takes on a more immediate significance. The Culture Industry is an unrivalled indictment of the banality of mass culture.”
Editor J. M. Bernstein
Publisher Routledge, 2001
ISBN 0415253802, 9780415253802
210 pages
Key terms: fascist, mass music, virme, culture industry, mass media, Dialectic of Enlightenment, mass culture, ego ideal, Adorno, acmally, critical theory, jazz, reified, psychoanalysis, astrology, Simone Weil, Freud, Erich Fromm, Gillian Rose
PDF (updated on 2013-6-11)
Comment (1)Richard Barbrook: The Class of the New (2006–) [English, German]
Filed under book | Tags: · creative industries, cultural production, netizens, sociology
“Netizens, elancers, cognitarians, swarm-capitalists, hackers, produsumers, knowledge workers, pro-ams… these are just a few of the monikers that have been applied to the new social class emerging from the networked workplace.
In this short book, Richard Barbrook presents a collection of quotations from authors who in different ways attempt to identify an innovative element within society: ‘the class of the new’. Announcing a new economic and social paradigm, this class constitutes a ‘social prophecy’ of the shape of work to come. From Adam Smith’s ‘Philosophers’ of the late 18th century, down to the ‘Creative Class’ celebrated by sociologist Richard Florida today, the class of the new represents the future of production within and beyond capitalism.”
Publisher Openmute, London, 2006
A Creative Workers in a World City project
ISBN 0955066476
115 pages
Book website (archived)
The Class of the New (English, 2006, PDF, updated on 2015-6-21)
Die Klasse des Neuen (German, trans. Valie Göschl, 2009, added on 2018-12-22)