The hobby, an oasis of unmediated life, is itself reified

Evidence

If we suppose with Marx that in bourgeois society labour power has become a commodity in which labour is consequently reified, then the expression ‘hobby’ amounts to a paradox: that human condition which sees itself as the opposite of reification, the oasis of unmediated life within a completely mediated total system, has itself been reified just like the rigid distinction between labour and free time. The latter is a continuation of the forms of profit-oriented social life. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 259

Categorization

• DEFINE: The core mechanism: reification extends into the very sphere that claims to be its opposite.
• XREF: Directly supplies the analytical engine for the reader’s project of running Adorno on post-1969 culture. — connects to: Mass recreation dilutes what it seeks, making the search self-defeating — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 576
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that the escape from reification is itself reified — the whole essay’s engine in a single structure.