Adorno responded to student iconoclasm by reasserting art’s right to exist under prohibition

Evidence

Negative Dialectics began with the words Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed.' Similarly, Aesthetic Theory stated that The moment it is forbidden, the moment it is decreed that it should cease to exist, art regains, in the midst of the administered world, that right to existence whose denial itself resembles an administrative act.’ The iconoclasm that sprang up during the student movement drew on Western associations with the Chinese Cultural Revolution' and on the Dadaist and Surrealist traditions, as well as Marcuse's critique of the affirmative character of culture’ in his ZfS article of 1937 and Benjamin’s 1936 essay on the work of art. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2716

Categorization

• XREF: Adorno’s thesis that prohibition restores art’s right to exist resonates with the theme in the ‘On Sacrifice’ article about prohibition as valorization, and with the contemporaneous gay liberation ‘prohibition legitimizes’ logic.
• QUESTION: The sentence cuts off at ‘Dadaist and Surrealist’ — worth checking later paragraphs to see whether Adorno explicitly connects student iconoclasm to Dada and Surrealism.