Adorno: A political biography
Yale University Press, $69.95 hb, 239 pp
Survivor in a lesser world
In the winter of 1968–69 the buildings of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt – the symbolically resonant home of what had come to be known as the Frankfurt School – were occupied by students. The police were called in, and Theodor W. Adorno, one of the great radical theorists of the twentieth century, pressed charges against a young man whose doctoral work he was supervising. Two months later, a group of women forced their way into Adorno’s lecture, handed out leaflets proclaiming that ‘Adorno as an institution is dead’, and ‘surrounded him, strewing flowers, performing a dumb show and … baring their breasts’. In action after action, the contempt of the students for the radical theorists of an older generation was made clear.
Continue reading for only $10 per month. Subscribe and gain full access to Australian Book Review. Already a subscriber? Sign in. If you need assistance, feel free to contact us.
Leave a comment
If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.
If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.
Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.