Art’s impractical existence is itself a protest against commodification

Evidence

Culture - as that which goes beyond the system of self-preservation of the species - involves an irrevocably critical impulse towards the status quo and all institutions thereof. This is by no means merely a tendency embodied in many cultural structures, but rather a protest against integration which always violently opposes that which is qualitatively different; in a certain sense this criticism is directed against the idea of levelling unification itself. The fact that anything at all thrives which is different and which is not to be turned into cash illuminates the prevailing praxis in all its dubiousness. It is not only through its manifest practical intentions, but rather through its mere existence - indeed, precisely through its impractical nature - that art manifests a polemic, secretly practical character. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 158

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: This is the precise mechanism by which Adorno thinks art resists the culture industry: through impracticality rather than content.

Related

• Modernist art’s critical distance was purchased at the price of market subsumption. (similarity 0.82)
• Culture’s promise of happiness is equivocal because it exists only where freedom does not (similarity 0.81)
• Modern art’s very production is driven by a nominalist imperative (similarity 0.81)
• Culture industry products are commodities through and through, not merely commodified art (similarity 0.80)
• Defending culture requires indicting the reasons for its existence, not defending its fact (similarity 0.80)
• Autonomous art is itself a product of market commercialization, not its opposite. (similarity 0.79)
• Pre-modern art gained power by serving function rather than claiming autonomy (similarity 0.79)
• Art’s autonomy internalizes the very social domination it claims to escape (similarity 0.79)
• Even modernist art becomes infected by the schema of mass culture. (similarity 0.79)
• Culture industry commodities are useless yet disguise their uselessness as utility (similarity 0.79)