Adorno welcomed research designed so its findings would double as anti-fascist propaganda
Evidence
Sanford also suggested doing a study on criminals and prison officers, and I think it’s a splendid idea. Research would be able here to transform itself directly into propaganda, i.e. if it could be reliably established that a particularly high percentage of criminals were extreme anti-Semites, the result would as such already be propaganda. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1593
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: Adorno—the theorist of autonomous critical research and the culture industry’s instrumental rationality—here celebrates research whose persuasive effect is internal to its design, collapsing the very research/propaganda boundary his own theory insisted on. A genuine tension worth sitting with.
- QUESTION: How does this enthusiasm for research-as-propaganda square with Adorno’s later refusal to let the Authoritarian Personality findings serve short-term anti-fascist publicity?
- XREF: connects to: The Institute claimed to be America’s best anti-Semitism researchers while borrowing advertising-test methods — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1534; Adorno sought to repurpose empirical social research for critical theory. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1927; Adorno packed Frankfurt theory into the Berkeley study at proof stage — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1760
Broader Connections
- Adorno sought to repurpose empirical social research for critical theory.
#expands(0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1927 - Adorno packed Frankfurt theory into the Berkeley study at proof stage
#responds-to(0.70) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1760