Dismissed as a miserable elitist who condemned popular culture in the name of 'high art', Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) is one of the most provocative and important yet least understood of contemporary thinkers. This book challenges this popular image and re-examines Adorno as a utopian philosopher who believed authentic art could save the world. Adorno Reframed is not only a comprehensive introduction to the reader coming to Adorno for the first time, but also an important re-evaluation of this founder of the Frankfurt School. Using a wealth of concrete illustrations from popular culture, Geoffrey Boucher recasts Adorno as a revolutionary whose subversive irony and profoundly historical aesthetics defended the integrity of the individual against social totality.

Geoff Boucher is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University, Australia. He is the author of number of books on continental philosophy, including Understanding Marxism (2012), Adorno Reframed (2012) and (with Matthew Sharpe) Zizek and Politics (2010).

1: Social Philosophy and the Culture Industries
2. Aesthetic Theory
3. Music and Literature
4. Art and Cinema
5. Reframing Adorno: Feminism and Postmodernism