Adorno read Benjamin’s arcades project as a radicalization of Marx’s commodity fetish
Evidence
Adorno’s approval, therefore, stemmed from his fascination with a new variant of the response to the passage in Marx’s Capital which was always the most important for left intellectuals in the Weimar period: the section on the fetish character of commodities. To look at the world of commodities with the eyes of a philologist interpreting allegories, a philologist who was also linked to Baudelaire, the first representative example of aesthetic modernism: in Adorno’s eyes, this promised an interpretation of capitalism in which the theological category of a materially corrupted world was translated into the Marxist category of the commodity fetish. This interpretation did not contradict dialectical materialism, but rather radicalized it by deciphering the world of commodities as a mythical primeval landscape and as a hellish, negative image of the true world. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 794
Categorization
- DEFINE: Explains how Adorno understood Benjamin’s method: translating theology’s ‘corrupted world’ into Marxism’s ‘commodity fetish.’
- XREF: Connects to commodity fetishism literature and to Benjamin’s own writings on Baudelaire and allegory. — connects to: Adorno read the commodity fetish as translating theological corruption into Marxist terms.; Adorno faulted Benjamin for underestimating commodity-fetish power and dialectical mediations — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 869; Adorno demanded Benjamin ground his commodity-soul thesis in Marx’s Capital chapter on fetishism. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 290 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Adorno demanded Benjamin ground his commodity-soul thesis in Marx’s Capital chapter on fetishism.
#expands(0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 290 - Adorno faulted Benjamin for underestimating commodity-fetish power and dialectical mediations
#qualifies(0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 869 - Adorno rejected Benjamin’s equation of commodity with the archaic
#corroborates(0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 617