For Adorno, artistic autonomy and commodity fetishism are mutually constitutive, not opposites.

Evidence

This fetishisation ‘expresses the paradox of all art that is no longer self-evident to itself: the paradox that something made exists for its own sake; precisely this paradox is the vital nerve of new art. By exigency, the new must be something willed; as what is other, however, it could not be what was willed’: ‘Autonomy and fetishism are two sides of the same truth’. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 432

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the counterintuitive Adornian claim that autonomy and fetishism are two sides of one truth, contesting the usual reading that autonomy opposes commodification.
• DEEPTHINKING: This inversion of the standard autonomy-vs-commodification binary is a genuinely paradigm-shifting formulation dense enough to sit with.
• XREF: connects to: Adorno repurposed Marx’s commodity fetish concept toward art reception rather than production relations. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 433; Autonomous art is itself a product of market commercialization, not its opposite. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 211

Broader Connections

• Autonomous art is itself a product of market commercialization, not its opposite. #corroborates (0.90) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 211
• Adorno repurposed Marx’s commodity fetish concept toward art reception rather than production relations. #expands (0.82) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 433