Culture atrophies under administration yet cannot survive unadministered

Evidence

As Eduard Steuermann once formulated it, the more that is done for culture, the worse it fares. This paradox could be developed as follows: culture suffers damage when it is planned and administrated; when it is left to itself, however, everything cultural threatens not only to lose its possibility of effect, but its very existence as well. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 149

Categorization

• QUESTION: The double-bind is the sharpest analytical tool here—where does a given contemporary cultural artifact sit on this spectrum in the reader’s posthumous test?