Customer Reviews

The Actuality of Adorno: Critical Essays on Adorno and the Postmodern (SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

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This is the best book I know that treats Adorno's relationship to postmodernism (esp aesthetics). Certainly written for experts, it presupposes strong familiarity with Adorno and some of the posty folk (esp Derrida).

(Non-)structurally speaking, Pensky's commentary on Adorno is an attempt to isolate the isomorphic tensions present in later works by Adorno. The parallel here, as is the case with much of Pensky's work, is to the later episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. But isn't that the point?

It is probably harsh to say of Pensky, "The parallels are with Star Trek", since surely they lie elsewhere, near the Bay of Fundy. When the villagers arrived to tell us that the basilica's southern tip had submerged we finally got it, Adorno had an acutality, but one very different than what we previously had assumed.