Writings of Inequivalence. Rereading the "Culture Industry" in Theodor W. Adorno

Abstract

This paper proposes a reinterpretation of the concept of «culture industry» initially formulated by Horkheimer and Adorno, paying special attention to other interventions of Adorno. The preliminary hypothesis states the incorrectness of the usual interpretation that reduces it to be the conceptual tool of a hierarchical modernist affirmation, and argues the need to place it as the centerpiece of a dialectic of mass culture. Once cleared the modernist misunderstanding, and from a philosophical reading of it, we argue that the concept plays a key role in the project of a general critique of the equivalence of profound implications today. In that project are intertwined the critique of commodity and the critique of metaphysics in a same philosophical frame, of deep actuality. Finally, the montage is postulated as one of the privileged forms of inscription of inequivalence in the structure of the cultural industry, thus becoming not only an aesthetic device but in an eminent form of materialistic interpretation.