This is sure to be a groundbreaking contribution to the scholarship on Adorno. Meticulously researched, carefully conceived, and lucidly written, Mariotti's book works through a series of neglected writings to unveil a surprising portrait of a principled and richly nuanced democratic theorist. Adorno and Democracy helps to advance the conversation about how an ethics of democratic engagement—our efforts to attend to the suffering of others—can be meaningfully interwoven with a more radical critique of liberal ideology and the capitalist mode of production.
In Adorno and Democracy the political theorist Shannon Mariotti turns to less familiar texts that Theodor W. Adorno wrote in English for an American audience while he was living in Californian exile and reveals a latter-day Tocqueville keenly evaluating the shortcomings and potentials of everyday American political life. Alongside his criticisms of 'pseudo-democracy' and the culture industry, this 'American Adorno' also advocated for the cultivation of the latent 'substantive forms of democracy' he witnessed in existing American culture. Moreover, by drawing on a wide range of Adorno's writings Mariotti successfully shows the connections between Adorno's concepts of experience, critique, autonomy and democracy. She elaborates Adorno's understanding of 'democratic leadership' as a kind of public pedagogy aimed at developing inchoate 'countertendencies' into 'vaccines' in order to strengthen democratic culture. Through judicious comparisons with affect theory, Freire's pedagogical theory, contemporary novelists and current alternative democracy researchers and praticioners Mariotti demonstrates the continuing relevance of Adorno's diagnoses, arguments and proposals for what he called 'democratic enlightenment.' While other recent books have argued for a political Adorno, Mariotti's study makes the case for the more controversial claim that Adorno's American writings are in fact those of a full-bore 'democratic theorist.' This study is certain to elicit great interest and discussion among political theorists, critical theorists, and intellectual historians.
"This is sure to be a groundbreaking contribution to the scholarship on Adorno. Meticulously researched, carefully conceived, and lucidly written, Mariotti's book works through a series of neglected writings to unveil a surprising portrait of a principled and richly nuanced democratic theorist. Adorno and Democracy helps to advance the conversation about how an ethics of democratic engagement our efforts to attend to the suffering of others can be meaningfully interwoven with a more radical critique of liberal ideology and the capitalist mode of production." Andrew J. Douglas, author of In the Spirit of Critique: Thinking Politically in the Dialectical Tradition
"In stark contrast to the commonly heard complaints about pessimism and elitism, Mariotti presents an account of Adorno as an engaged and concerned proponent of democratic citizenship. Thanks to this splendid book, it is possible to see that his famous critique of the enlightenment did not prevent him from being a deeply progressive thinker." Espen Hammer, author of Adorno's Modernism: Art, Experience, and Catastrophe
"In Adorno and Democracy the political theorist Shannon Mariotti turns to less familiar texts that Theodor W. Adorno wrote in English for an American audience while he was living in Californian exile and reveals a latter-day Tocqueville keenly evaluating the shortcomings and potentials of everyday American political life. Alongside his criticisms of 'pseudo-democracy' and the culture industry, this 'American Adorno' also advocated for the cultivation of the latent 'substantive forms of democracy' he witnessed in existing American culture. Moreover, by drawing on a wide range of Adorno's writings Mariotti successfully shows the connections between Adorno's concepts of experience, critique, autonomy and democracy. She elaborates Adorno's understanding of 'democratic leadership' as a kind of public pedagogy aimed at developing inchoate 'countertendencies' into 'vaccines' in order to strengthen democratic culture. Through judicious comparisons with affect theory, Freire's pedagogical theory, contemporary novelists and current alternative democracy researchers and praticioners Mariotti demonstrates the continuing relevance of Adorno's diagnoses, arguments and proposals for what he called 'democratic enlightenment.' While other recent books have argued for a political Adorno, Mariotti's study makes the case for the more controversial claim that Adorno's American writings are in fact those of a full-bore 'democratic theorist.' This study is certain to elicit great interest and discussion among political theorists, critical theorists, and intellectual historians." Henry W. Pickford, Duke University
" Adorno and Democracy offers a carefully researched, well-written, and long overdue rethinking of Adorno's contributions to political theory.
Mariotti's Adorno and Democracy makes a giant leap forward in demonstrating the importance of Adorno's critical theory for contemporary democratic politics [....]" Contemporary Political Theory