ADORNO FOR BEGINNERS

[Ralph Dumain]

Thanks for the recommendations.

At 01:38 PM 3/20/98 GMT, L Spencer wrote:
>Martin Jay's little monograph on Adorno is the 
>only secondary work which gave me that satisfying feeling of being a 
>"really good read". 

Other than this, the book most recommended so far is Gillian Rose's THE
MELANCHOLY SCIENCE.

>Jameson's book is in its way very valuable. Jameson has continued 
>to remind us of how under-theorised capitalism (in its various 20th 
>century strands and phases) continues to be. He is somewhat selective 
>about the aspects of Adorno which he wishes to foreground and whose 
>urgent relevance he wishes to defend. But Jameson is very clear about 
>this selectivity and explains and defends the principles on which 
>that selection has taken place.

This very selectivity might be of relevance to me, esp. to compare to my own
selectivity.  Why Jameson thinks Adorno is relevant today and to what makes
me very curious, even though other people's warnings about him and my own
suspicions of him might otherwise induce hesitation.

>There is now a considerable body of literature on Adorno's 
>Aesthetic Theory and on Adorno as an aesthetician in a tradition as 
>influenced by Schlegel (Friedrich) as by Hegel.

I don't have Adorno's own work of this title, but I do have a book by MIT
Press (?) a van Zuider-something, can't remember the name.  I guess I will
need to learn about this one day.  It might help counterbalance my long-time
prejudice against Adorno due to my disagreements with his aesthetic
judgments esp. in music.

>He features in 
>this way in Andrew Bowie's books on Romanticism and on Critical 
>Theory 

I have Bowie's AESTHETICS AND SUBJECTIVITY.  Is this what you mean?

>I came across the remark a day or so ago that Benjamin and Adorno 
>are rather like Socrates and Plato. It makes no sense to study the 
>one without trying to get the figure of the other into some kind of 
>focus. 

People keep telling me I should read Benjamin, esp. colleagues in the CLR
James business.  I've read a few essays from ILLUMINATIONS, but that's it.
I can't make heads or tails of what Benjamin is about, and nobody has been
able to explain him to me while standing on one foot.  I know why I'm
interested in Ernst Bloch, but I don't know what I would want to seek out in
Benjamin.