A hidden agenda: Gender in selected writings by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer

In Dialektik der Aufklarung (1944-47), Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno cr iticizes the "bourgeois subject" as a perpetrator of the exploitation and d omination of "nature". Within the parameters of "bourgeois ideology", "woma n" functions as a representative of "nature". Although Horkheimer and Adorn o reflect critically on the utilization and misuse of "woman", this essay e xplores the extent to which the concepts "masculine" and "feminine" functio n as implicit theoretical categories in selected writings by these authors. Indeed, a close reading of selected passages in works by Horkheimer and Ad orno reveals that gendered categories in these texts carry with them a valu e judgment. While Horkheimer and Adorno describe the individual of late cap italism as "emasculated" and feminized ("castrated"), Adorno praises artist s such as Arnold Schonberg, who manifests a potent masculinity. In fact, Ad orno often writes about individuals and art works in terms which privilege "masculinity" as opposed to emasculating "femininity". Value judgments whic h employ gendered categories, then, stand in contradiction to the explicitl y critical project of Dialektik der Aufklarung.