“This is a brilliant and highly original investigation of how Cold War politics shaped the emergence of world literature and new forms of cultural authority, literary consecration, and political surveillance in the aftermath of the Second World War. Eye-opening and provocative, Archives of Authority is indispensable reading for all serious scholars of world literature, Cold War cultural politics, and globalization.”
“This volume reveals the dazzling range of Said’s oeuvre, spanning explorations of political, historical, and literary matters to the studies of humanism, secularism, and theories of intellectualism. . . . An indispensable resource for scholars of cultural studies, history and politics, literature, sociology, anthropology, Western classical music and the arts.”
“There is a kind of poetic justice in the fact that Adorno is the great survivor of the Frankfurt School, the only one whose thought retained its full actuality. However, the same thing he said for psychoanalysis - that its truth resides in its very exaggerations - goes for his own thought: he is at his most subversive when he gets involved in a deadlock. For this reason, this critical reader, focused on these deadlocks, is not just a commentary on his thought, but literally part of it . In short, this book is simply a must!”
“Against all odds, Adorno has emerged at the dawn of the twenty-first century as arguably the leading theoretical inspiration of our time. These stimulating essays, written by fresh as well as familiar commentators on his oeuvre, go a long way towards explaining the power of his ideas and demonstrating their abiding relevance.”