Overview

Theodor Adorno's critique of culture industry has been seen as a mechanical, linear and highly elitist way of thinking about culture and the media. We argue here against this stereotypical vision, which has became an academically ill-informed common sense since last decades. Opting for reconstruct the philosopher ideas about the subject, instead of revising or even restore them, we aim to illuminate the contemporaneity of his theories, concepts, and methods. We defend the thesis that, submitting them to continuous revision, they still are tools of a research programme capable to analyse in detail the functions and meaning of media processes from a critical and reflexive perspective.