Critical Models
Interventions and Catchwords
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by Theodor Adorno,
Translated by Henry W. Pickford
Columbia University Press
Due/Published
October 1999, 400 pages,
paper
ISBN
0231076355
New in paper! (F99) This volume combines two volumes of Adorno's essays--Interventions: Nine Critical Models, published in 1963; and Catchwords: Critical Models II from 1968. These essays reveal a surprisingly public side of Adorno, as well including passionate examples of his postwar commitment to unmasking the culture that engendered Nazism and its antihumanist nightmare. Critical Models includes new translations of such classic late pieces as "Why Still Philosophy," "Note on the Human Sciences and Culture," and "Scientific Experiences of a European Scholar in America" (a memoir of his exile in the United States), along with Adorno's practical recommendations for reform in primary and higher education, his explanation for the enduring therapeutic value of psychoanalysis, and his appeal to raise public awareness of "propaganda tricks" that exploit prejudice and chauvisism. "[A] collection of essays that offers a view of Adorno in his role as . . . public intellectual. . . . Adorno's essays are truly urgent. His writing continues, as he once wrote, to protect us 'from the chatter of culture and the abracadabra of worldviews."--The Nation "Contrary to the caricature of Adorno as an aloof mandarin unwilling to descend into the public sphere, these essays, elegantly translated and abundantly annotated by Henry Pickford, reveal the range and power of his contributions to the fragile German democracy he helped build after returning from exile. Without sacrificing his critical rigor, Adorno shows that even the most negative of dialectics can address practical problems and provide suggestive answers."--Martin Jay "It is great news that this superb collection of Adorno's polemical, political, and thoroughly contemporary interventions--on television, teaching, nationalism, his years as an exiled scholar in the United States and much more--is finally available in a rigorous, very readable, and in every way exemplary translation."--Thomas Levin "Critical Models presents Adorno at his most philosophically stunning--'Progress' and 'On Subject and Object' are among his finest essays--and at his topical best. Even an Adorno radio talk can be critically chilling. This volume is the ideal entry into the expanse of Adorno's thought."--Jay Bernstein SERIES: European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism |
