Artistic precision advanced through an ambivalent, coercive form of social progress.

Evidence

Adorno’s interpretation was not really much more of a social one, since it was dominated by the idea from the Dialectic of Enlightenment that greater precision in the methods of artistic expression had been both forcibly introduced and made possible by an ambivalent form of social progress. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 550

Categorization

• XREF: Directly instantiates the Dialectic of Enlightenment thesis about domination enabling and constraining technical mastery.
• DEFINE: Clarifies what ‘social’ means when applied to Adorno’s literary readings — not topical sociology but historical-philosophical grounding.