Jonathan Emmesedi<p>🧵 1/5<br>A few weeks ago, I picked up Theodor Adorno's "Minima Moralia", started it, but was then distracted, and so put it aside. </p><p>Being distracted from Adorno is easily explicable, as I don't think even his admirers would describe him as an easy read.</p><p>Nevertheless, I have struggled through some Adorno before, so I went back to "Minima Moralia" more recently and read the collected essays and aphorisms from cover to cover.</p><p>I am aware, of course, that were Adorno to be alive today, he would point to my beliefs and preoccupations as evidence of the "damaged life" he describes and deplores. For critical theorists, my reformist social democracy, my belief in the possibility of a science of society, and the joy I take in Richard Strauss, Jean Sibelius, and Kpop are all signs of a pitiful enslavement to a naive positivism and the kitsch culture of capitalism.</p><p>Nevertheless, I found "Minima Moralia" rewarding, if at times frustrating, reading. I read the Verso edition; I have heard criticisms of older translations of Adorno, of which this is one, it having been first published in 1974 by New Left Books. In this thread, I'm going to link to a newer translation by Dennis Redmond.</p><p>Overall, Adorno puts forward a number of arguments about culture, intellectuals, and commodification under capitalism. For many years from the mid seventies onwards, he was regarded a grouchy elitist whose high modernist cultural critique could, in the light of Birmingham School cultural studies, be seen as at best guilty of a simplistic, uninformed by Gramsci, and demobilisingly moralistic approach to popular culture and at worst of a marxisant high toryism.</p><p>These criticisms are not without foundation. Reading "Minima Moralia" can be at times the trying experience of being subjected to page upon page of western marxist curmudgeonry.</p><p>Yet some of thoughts on the culture of capitalism struck me as meriting my renewed consideration, even though....</p><p><a href="https://www.versobooks.com/products/1035-minima-moralia?srsltid=AfmBOoqFv94K1G91IPlOuAP1ZbMfVnqa-PjpM5dR3FFq2tleYY0p-viE" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">versobooks.com/products/1035-m</span><span class="invisible">inima-moralia?srsltid=AfmBOoqFv94K1G91IPlOuAP1ZbMfVnqa-PjpM5dR3FFq2tleYY0p-viE</span></a></p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/TheodorAdorno" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>TheodorAdorno</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/MinimaMoralia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MinimaMoralia</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/CriticalTheory" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>CriticalTheory</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/CulturalCritique" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>CulturalCritique</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/CulturalStudies" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>CulturalStudies</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Marxism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Marxism</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/FrankfurtSchool" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>FrankfurtSchool</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Adorno" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Adorno</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Philosophy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Philosophy</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/SocialTheory" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>SocialTheory</span></a></p>