[FRA:] From Hegel to Madonna

[Ralph Dumain]

I don't know what to make of this, but I read that Adorno figures 
into this analysis.

 From Hegel to Madonna: Towards a General Economy of "Commodity 
Fetishism" (S U N Y Series in Postmodern Culture) (Paperback)
by Robert Miklitsch
http://www.amazon.com/Hegel-Madonna-Commodity-Fetishism-Postmodern/dp/0791435407/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232644149&sr=1-1

"From Hegel to Madonna presents a genealogical survey of the 
discourses of negation and affirmation associated with the work of 
Hegel, Adorno, Deleuze, and Guattari; then, rotating from the 
philosophical to the political-economic axis, turns to the problem of 
a general economy of "commodity-fetishism." Drawing on the work of 
Marx and Freud, Miklitsch mobilizes a new, renewed understanding of 
"commodity fetishism"--what he calls the commodity-body-sign--in 
order to examine received notions of consumption and commodification. 
The aim is to envision a dialectical mode of critique, at once 
critical and affirmative, that can account for the cultural 
contradictions of late capitalism. The author also analyzes the 
phenomenon of Madonna Studies, reading the interest in the pop star 
as a sign of the academic times, a symptomatic figure not only of 
cultural studies in all its celebratory, cultural-populist excess but 
of a critical discourse responsive to postmodern culture in all its 
politically complex mutability."