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Things Beyond Resemblance – Collected Essays on Theodor W Adorno
Author(s): Robert Hullot–kentor (Author)
- Publisher: Columbia University Press
- Publication Date: 22 Sept. 2006
- Language: English
- Print length: 320 pages
- ISBN-10: 0231136587
- ISBN-13: 9780231136587
Book Description
Theodor W. Adorno was a major twentieth-century philosopher and social critic whose writings on oppositional culture in art, music, and literature increasingly stand at the center of contemporary intellectual debate. In this excellent collection, Robert Hullot-Kentor, widely regarded as the most distinguished American translator and commentator on Adorno, gathers together sixteen essays he has written about the philosopher over the past twenty years. The opening essay, “Origin Is the Goal,” pursues Adorno’s thesis of the dialectic of enlightenment to better understand the urgent social and political situation of the United States. “Back to Adorno” examines Adorno’s idea that sacrifice is the primordial form of human domination; “Second Salvage” reconstructs Adorno’s unfinished study of the transformation of music in radio transmission; and “What Is Mechanical Reproduction” revisits Adorno’s criticism of Walter Benjamin. Further essays cover a broad range of topics: Adorno’s affinities with Wallace Stevens and Nabokov, his complex relationship with Kierkegaard and psychoanalysis, and his critical study of popular music. Many of these essays have been revised, with new material added that emphasizes the relevance of Adorno’s thought to the United States today. Things Beyond Resemblance is a timely and richly analytical collection crucial to the study of critical theory, aesthetics, continental philosophy, and Adorno.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Things Beyond Resemblance is a book Adorno scholars will appreciate… [and] should prove to be a valuable resource.–Thomas Wheatland “H-German “
Although each section was written independently and can stand on its own, an exhilarating effect is produced by situating them together-much in the same way that an individual painting is transformed when thoughtfully incorporated into an exhibit.–Thomas Wheatland, Assumption College
Here, under the optic of the artist, Adorno’s philosophy once again begins to breathe…–Rolf Tiedemann, director emeritus of the T.W. Adorno-Archiv, Frankfurt, and editor of
T.W. Adorno’s Collected WritingsI urge anyone who entertains doubts about the emperor’s attires to read Hullot-Kentor’s brilliant and definitive deconstruction of Jameson in
Things Beyond Resemblance.–Mike Davis, University of California, IrvineAbout the Author
Robert Hullot-Kentor has taught philosophy, literature, and the arts at Harvard, Boston University, Stanford, and Long Island University. He has translated several of Adorno’s major works, including Aesthetic Theory, and has recently published Current of Music, a reconstruction of Adorno’s unfinished study of radio broadcast music.
