hair products for the critical theorist....

 Look what I found at the pound shop! I honestly didn't tamper with it at all, it was exactly like that when i picked it up, really. It's clearly exactly what Adorno would have wanted...

incidentally, rumours of Being and Tim's death have been much exaggerated. plans are being made, things are in the pipe line, shadows are stirring in the east.

prepare thyself [and send me any ideas you might have, i am never to busy to steal jokes and claim them as my own ;-)]

becca x

'Promotes Maximum Hold & Control for the culture industry, Provides super long lasting hold without weighing down hair with human suffering, maximum control without build up of alienation... everything you would expect from Adorno''

theoLOLgians

Simone Weil

While doing some ''research'' I stumbled upon the blog http://theololgians.wordpress.com/, which describes itself as ''The LOLCATZ meme, but for nerdy theology types''. Pretty self-explanatory, and also pretty darn funny. Check out augustine and tillich for starters, and bonhoffer is pretty funny too.

Theodor Adorno (sort of a theologian)

Paul Tillich

I submit these 3 for your comments....
becca x

Being & Tim's Holiday: Day 4

Chillin' at the Grand Hotel Abyss with Adorno

I've not read the Theory of the Novel, and my current favourite thing about Georg Lukacs is the inescapable link to another, more contemporary philosopher. So I can't comment much on the specific context of the following quotation:

'A considerable part of the leading German intelligentsia, including Adorno, have taken up residence in the ‘Grand Hotel Abyss’ which I described in connection with my critique of Schopenhauer as ‘a beautiful hotel, equipped with every comfort, on the edge of an abyss, of nothingness, of absurdity. And the daily contemplation of the abyss between excellent meals or artistic entertainments, can only heighten the enjoyment of the subtle comforts offered.’ (Die Zerstörung der Vernunft, Neuwied 1962, p. 219)'

----Georg Lukács 1962 : Preface to The Theory of the Novel at  http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/theory-novel/preface.htm

 

Nevertheless, I think there might be something quite keen in his criticism of Adorno, whose philosophy, as compelling and formidable as it is, offers (by Adorno's own standards I think it should be added) very little in the way of 'bridge' over the abyss which is the inherent self-contradictions of capitalism. Rather the activity of Negative Dialectics seems to involve precisely dwelling on these contradictions: that in writing and attending to them we bear witness to a future in which these contradictions are no longer apparent: where the objects we speak of, and particularly the subjects, can exist as ends in themselves rather than as means towards profit.

If anything compels me to return to University for a phD it's the tension between thinkers like Adorno (and Simone Weil) on one side who seem to value contemplation, and perhaps more ACTION-BASED philosophers, like Nietzsche perhaps. Or Gillian Rose.  Something like this anyway.

Last holiday snap tomorrow, hope to see you then.

becca xo

ps. new cartoon here too!

Alvin, Simon and Theodor W. Adorno

i only just realised how long it's been since i put up a post: sorry about that, it's partly cos i've been busy, partly because I've  been doing this cartoon in COLOUR which always takes ages...

The idea of this cartoon began with changing Alvin, Simon and Theodor (the chipmunks) into Alvin, Simon and Fyodor Dostoyevsky: but it ends up working better with neo-Marxist thinker Theodor W.Adorno, not only because he does look a little like a chipmunk, but also because you can change the words of the Chipmunk's classic Alvin's Harmonica to incorporate a reference to Adorno's co-author Max Horkheimer, AND a quotation from Adorno's Minima Moralia!:                 
                                                                   

  'Every visit to the cinema, despite the utmost watchfulness, leaves me dumber and worse than before. Sociability itself is a participant in injustice, insofar as it pretends we can still talk with each other in a frozen world, and the flippant, chummy word contributes to the perpetuation of silence, insofar as the concessions to those being addressed debase the latter once more as speakers.' S. 5             

                                                        Statements like these often do just seem a bit opposed to common-sense, but i think his idea is actually pretty interesting, although my understanding of his work is not very deep. The  general idea seems to be that our language originated under different economic conditions, and the objects it referred to then, no longer exist under the economic conditions of capitalism. Most importantly, when we attempt to identify the 'free subject' described by our language, we cannot point to a real example of such a subject. Capitalism, as an economic totality, already structures our choices, so we cannot make a choice that is totally free. Either we work to pay the rent or we go and live in a squat and risk continual eviction, but we stand in relation to capitalism, not outside it.

The idea that we can't escape a legal or economic system but that we always stand in relation to it is a common one: what is interesting for Adorno is that this is a problem rooted in language. As such, we can't truthfully even describe an alternative: this is why Adorno sees the 'chummy word' as participating in injustice. Our language itself separates us from each other, because it does not really refer to the world we experience, or the person we are attempting to address.

So he would probably hate the chipmunks... oops.

beccaxo