THEODOR ADORNO (1903-1969) AND IDENTITY Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno wrote their critique of the culture of Western civilization, Dialectic of Enlightenment during the Second World War. When the book was published in German in 1947, the full extent of the...
THEODOR ADORNO (1903-1969) AND THE CULTURE INDUSTRY Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) was born in the sun of Hollywood, beside the pools of Santa Monica, in the capital of mass culture designed to entertain and to (literally) stupefy the American public. It would...
CULTURE IN LOS ANGELES 1940-1950 The City of Angels has many names, or to be more correct, many variations of its Spanish name: El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula. The locals have their own names for the city: “L.A.” and the “City of...
Re-reading “The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by Walter Benjamin Part Two “What is aura actually? A strange weave of space and time: the unique appearance or semblance of distance, no matter how close it may be. Decades after the...
WALTER BENJAMIN (1892 -1940) Life and Work: Part One Like many Jewish intellectuals in Germany, Walter Benjamin considered himself “German”. His family was privileged and fully assimilated into the larger German society. It would be this stratum of German society...
