German philosopher, sociologist, and musicologist who was the most uncompromising critical theorist of the Frankfurt School — developing a negative dialectics that refuses all affirmative synthesis.
Negative Dialectics: dialectics without synthesis — the resistance of the particular against all conceptual subsumption. The culture industry: mass culture is not popular but administered — it standardizes desire and prevents genuine aesthetic experience. Dialectic of Enlightenment (with Horkheimer): Enlightenment reason contains its own seeds of domination. Minima Moralia: aphorisms on damaged life — private resistance against totality.
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