Paleoconservatism

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sun Aug 8 03:24:09 PDT 1999


On Sun, 8 Aug 1999, Dennis R Redmond wrote:


> Adorno has lots and lots of good things to say about radical
> modern art, bourgeois art from the 19th century
> and even Hegel and Kant

In other words, he has some good things to say about the taste of the elite and nothing but loathing for the taste of everyone else. Can you think of a counter-example? I've always thought that was his main accomplishment -- to synthesize snobbism with leftism, and thereby resolve a common conflict of the German junior professoriat.

I'm not saying he's all bad. But he's just as much a disapproving highbrow in German. Difficulty is good, fun is bad, and it's all going to hell in a handbasket if it isn't already there.

But you're the Adorno expert, and if anyone can dig out a text of him saying something good about the tastes or proclivities of normal people in the 20th century (*after* that fabled golden age of capitalist individuals in the 19th) I'm sure you're the man. And I'd love to read it.

Michael

__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com



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