Adorno deliberately kept his spoken improvisations separate from his printed work

Evidence

On the question of the relationship between his spontaneous utterances and written work, Adorno stated unambiguously that it would be ‘impossible to make something printed out of a free improvisation, unless the standards involved were lower than mine’: ‘As much as I know about their mediation, I keep the genres strictly separate, and I mean, not without reason’. That being said, for the purpose of the present study, both ‘genres’ appear indispensable. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 46

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the methodological status of the seminar transcripts this book leans on — they are a distinct genre Adorno himself policed.