ABSTRACT
The contentious arguments surrounding the idea of an affirmative postmodernist culture have brought with them a persistent theoretical depreciation of the claims of high modernist art as well as a positive re-evaluation of the character and potentialities of popular (mass) culture. Both of these critical re-evaluations often take the form of a sustained criticism of the cultural theory of T. W. Adorno. While sociologically it would appear that with the decline of established religions, the growth of technological and social differentiation, and the dissolution of the last remnants of precapitalism that cultural chaos should reign, yet, this is not so. Never has culture been more unified or integrated: ‘Culture now impresses the same stamp on everything. Films, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part.’.
