Culture that fails to de-barbarize man without violent suppression is a total failure.
Evidence
In truth, culture itself is expected to pay the bill. Even when culture is viewed as something removed from reality, it is in no way isolated from reality, but rather involved instructions for actual realization, no matter how distant and mediated this might be. If culture is totally deprived of this impulse, it becomes invalid. Within culture administration only repeats the offences committed by culture itself in that it ever degraded itself to an element of representation, to a field of activity, and, finally, to a sector of mass action, of propaganda and of tourism. If culture is defined as the de-barbarization of man, elevating him beyond the state of simple nature, without actually perpetuating this state through violent suppression, then culture is a total failure. It has not been able to take root in man as long as he has lacked the prerequisites for an existence marked by human dignity. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 171
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Adorno’s positive-normative definition of culture: genuinely de-barbarizing elevation that doesn’t perpetuate violent suppression — and his verdict that it has to date totally failed. Essential to run his analysis honestly.
Related
- Defending culture requires indicting the reasons for its existence, not defending its fact (similarity 0.80)
- Culture must be negated determinately as reconciliation with nature (similarity 0.79)
- Culture is the perennial claim of particularity against unreconciled generality. (similarity 0.79)
- Culture means suspending objectification, yet criticism re-objectifies what it studies (similarity 0.79)