Adorno educatore e ''fisionomo della radio": il Radio Research Project

The main topic of the article is the reconstruction of Adorno’s claims on education through the parallel consideration of his analyses of media such as radio and television in their immanent logic. His participation to the Radio Research Project (1938-1939) about radio music is also considered with its “dramatic” outcome: the clash of Adorno’s theoretical views and Lazarsfeld’s “educational” program’s empirical impact. I suggest that Adorno’s priority was not to just resist to authoritarian and impositional aspects of the socio-psychological experiments standing behind the project’s attempt to produce educational effects, but to analyze the technological medium itself in its “physiognomy”. My further claim is that Adorno’s critical “mediological” at- tempts to catch the internal qualities of media are analogous to his strategy to “understand” artworks in their specific technique and articulation. In both cases the analysis must also dwell with “historical forces” and “anthropologi- cal changes” in perception and behavior. One of these change is the 'Halbbildung' (half-culture) which has historically replaced the 'Bildung' (culture). The article points out that Adorno does not simply insist on themes such as the standardization of mass media products stressing the ideological presuppositions of their “ubiquity”, but looks for the determination, through fundamentally pedagogical means, of a change in the audience’s way to address and experience media, i.e. with a more responsible and free attitude.