Abstract

Giuseppe Di Giacomo, Enrico Donaggio and Elena Tavani discuss the recent, new Italian edition of Theodor W. Adorno’s Prisms. The authors present and critically analyze Adorno’s essays on Veblen, Huxley, Benjamin, Bach, Proust, Schoenberg, Spengler and Kafka. Di Giacomo focuses his attention on Adorno’s aesthetics and its main theoretical assumptions. Donaggio analyzes Adorno’s essays in relation with the history and the most recent developments of the tradition of the critical theory of society. Tavani sheds light on the critical radicalism that inspires Adorno’s critique of culture in each of the essays of the volume.