Adorno on Knowledge

Power and Work

P L CONO Y U L T U E
T I C
"Social Structures are based on the
dialectic of human agency and
structure"
Dialectic of human agency and structure is at the heart of society
and all social systems

 Modern society is a society that is based on the

accumulation of money (that mediates the production of
use values) in the
 Social structures become subsumed under the logic of
accumulation
Guess the brand/logo!
The Dialectic Of
Individual And
Social Knowledge
• Workplace as an illustration
• MAGIS
• Based on your context
• Concrete human beings acting
socially in their social
environment and physically in
the natural environment produce
and reproduce general social
structures
The Individual and the
Species-Being
There’s a dialectic of the individual and social
• People with individual knowledge enter social
systems through communication processes, they create
and reproduce individual knowledge.

Communication > results in production and reproduction

of social knowledge:
• 1) collective knowledge products in the economy,
• 2) collective political worldviews in the political
system
• 3) and collective identities in the cultural system.
Dominative and Emancipatory
Knowledge
 “Modern society is inherently
competitive and based on structures
of accumulation, so general social
structures and knowledge structures
become tools for the accumulation of
money, political influence, and
reputation.”
- Fuchs, 2016, Critical Theory of Communication
Recall:

What are the 3

social
structures of
power in
modern
society?
MODERN DOMINATIV CLASS

SOCIETY E SOCIETY

 Inherently competitive
 Based on structures of
accumulation
(capitalism)
 social structures and
knowledge structures are
instruments to accumulate
money, political influence,
and reputation.
 creates conflict
between power holders
and non-power holders
Emancipatory Knowledge

Habermas - Fuchs –
“emancipatory “Emancipatory power
knowledge is struggles question
constituted in social structures of
struggles that
question dominant accumulation and
powers in the domination that
political system” benefit one group at
the
expense of others.”
What do you call the term for
the government operations
wherein officers knock on a
suspected drug trafficker or
drug addict's home to persuade
them to surrender and stop
their illegal activities.?
 Have you heard about the
controversy on Coleen Garcia
and Billy Crawford’s Prenup
photos?
 Chapter 3 in Brief

01 • Maintains that Adorno’s theory of

knowledge is not, as popularly
claimed in media and cultural
studies, a form of media and
cultural pessimism

02 • In modern society, there is a

dialectic of general social
structures and structures of
accumulation
03 • Based Hegel’s work, Adorno builds a
a dialectical model of knowledge
that involves diaectics of the
subject and the object, agency and
structures, society and nature,
etc.
04 • Aside from foregrounding the power
of ideology (dominative knowledge)
Adorno stresses the importance that
one can learn from Hegel’s anti-
positivist, dialectical language