[…] pinpoints the interconnections between economy and culture and how cultural texts and artifacts are produced in an industrial process. Cultural products, it was argued, were made in the same way as other items of consumption from soap to cigarettes […] (Smith Reinventing 44).
Particularly within the realm of a scientific debate about popular culture and its political significance, Adorno repeatedly emphasizes that listeners to popular music were nothing but mere consumers, stultified and not at all able to think in terms of political opposition (see also Kellner Critical Theory 73). The main platform for artifacts of popular culture are the mass media, which—in Adorno’s diction—“[…] had, in effect, prevented history from working out the way it should have, in Marxist terms, by subverting the masses […]” (Berger 43). The Culture Industry has extended organizational methods of monopoly and state capitalism into the arts (see also Paddison 202) and popular culture stands at the top of this development. This fundamental point of view only seemingly does not allow critics to voice at least some of their doubts about Adorno’s theoretical elaborations. Fortunately, not every scholar is as easily convinced by the radical concept of the Culture Industry in all terms (see also Docker 40-50). Docker, for example, exemplifies his doubts about Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s approach regarding the way people are dealing with their relationships to each other in the United States of America:
Not only do Adorno and Horkheimer know what true art must always involve, but they also know that the culture industry denies ‘truth’, for example, the ‘true kind of relationships’ human beings should have, but can’t, in democratic America […] (Docker 40).
This exemplary quote no longer offers a satisfactory conclusion when it comes to simple questions: How could they possibly know? How did they analyze the relationships of all American citizens? Is it possible to boil a discussion down on a simple statement: every single relationship of every single American has been a lie! Such—lightly ironic—questions are supposed to depict an element of criticism towards Adorno, which clouds the Frankfurt School’s aim to overcome totalitarian mechanisms in society. Docker supports my argument when he senses a certain elitist premise, which Adorno and Horkheimer assume, while descanting on the doubtful state of culture:
[…] in a monologic way, readers are positioned by the Culture Industry essay as passive, as having automatically to accept as received truths their totalising judgements […] (Ibid. 41).
The accusation of such a form of passiveness, which seems to be expected by the reader of Adorno’s texts, can be juxtaposed to the passive process of consuming artifacts of popular culture, a passiveness which for Adorno, on the other hand, is such an incisive reason for his passionate cultural criticism. Criticizing and at the same time expecting passive acceptance puts a big question mark on Adorno’s own credibility. Apart from the above-mentioned general passive position, which is forced upon Adorno’s readers, the subsequent pages briefly point out other important aspects which question Adorno’s aesthetic theory. Adorno, for example, does not take matters of categories all too seriously. This kind of looseness in treating musical categories is particularly interesting in regard to the musical background of Joan Baez.
1.5.2.2 On the Credibility of Hazy Categories
Adorno’s aesthetic theory challenges even the most sophisticated experts among his readers because of its combination of a dense philosophical discourse and a chaotic composure of technical musical terms (see also Rampley 150). A closer analysis of this kind of intellectual challenge, which he forces upon his readers, however, exposes Adorno’s hazy treatment of special terms for musical categories. Adorno points out his skepticism towards categories in general by locating the danger of simplification in the way aesthetic genres are defined according to the common characteristics they share with each other:
The universal aesthetic genre concepts, which ever and again established themselves as norms, were always marked by a didactic reflection that sought to dispose over the quality, which was mediated by particularization, by measuring them according to common characteristics even though these common characteristics were not necessarily what was essential to the works (Adorno 201).
This argument can not a priori be negated. The claim of always appropriate clear-cut artistic categories might include the risk of limiting the analysis to an unsatisfying surface. Nevertheless, the total ignorance of categories in a debate about music (and its relationship to society) contains the risk of argumentative incredibility. One example in his theoretical work, which eloquently depicts this kind of risk, is the way Adorno deals with the term ‘folk’. Paddison points out this critical aspect regarding Adorno’s doubtful way of distinguishing between musical categories:
Related to the increasingly ‘sociological’ writings are those on aspects of folks music, ‘popular music’ and jazz. There are, of course, very different categories of music involved here—categories which Adorno sometimes distinguished between, but often did not […] (Paddison 26).
This analysis points out that Adorno’s treatment of different musical categories indicates a great level of vagueness. My argument is: such a blurred usage of terms can be interpreted as a weakness of his theory, more than once forcing the reader to ask: which category does he mean? His all too loose and relaxed treatment of the musical category of ‘folk music’ exemplifies this kind of doubtfulness, which his theory has to be treated with, particularly when it comes to the work of a folk singer like Joan Baez:
‘Folk music’ as a category increasingly tends in the later writings to blur into a general concept of ‘popular music’ which is itself very hazy, and Adorno sometimes seems to make little distinction between popular songs (Schlager), jazz, and ‘light music’ (leichte Musik) […] (Ibid.).
The fourth chapter of this present study outlines the relevance of folk music, the famous Folk Music Revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s and the artistic role of Joan Baez in this musical movement. It contradicts Adorno’s philosophy, who wrongfully predicted in 1932 that there was no ‘folk’ left anyway (Ibid. 26-27). Baez and other artists during the beginning years of her career up until today falsify Adorno’s predictions about the doubtful existence of folk music. All in all, Baez’s efforts differ from Adorno’s theoretical point of view not only in regard to the falsification of his negation of folk music or the authenticity in the political impetus of popular artists, who are trying to mould the boundaries between art and politics: The most relevant dimension of my doubts about Adorno’s theory is the fact that any kind of theory about society and the question of how to change it for the better necessarily has to stay limited to the passive boundaries of words. This juxtaposition emphasizes the significance which a politically active singer like Joan Baez personifies in the combination of her artistic with her political accomplishments. Adorno harshly (and often rightfully) criticizes problems of society and, all the same, is not willing to do more than write complex philosophical explanations about it.
1.5.2.3 On the Passiveness of Theories
The most incisive juxtaposing element in the comparison of Adorno’s philosophical work with Baez’s work as a singer and activist is that a theoretician always has to stay passive when it comes to criticism towards society. Adorno and his colleagues at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research more than once emphasize the exclusiveness of the work of thought, ignoring the fact that good intentions to change society stay mere intentions as long as they are limited to theory only. Particularly during the last years of his life (which were also the first decade of Baez’s career), Adorno had had to face this kind of dilemma when he came under serious attack from the New Left for refusing to take part in political activities (see also Paddison 11) during the socially troubled times of the 1960s. He and other outstanding figures of the Frankfurt School were considerably confused about this new interpretation