Question: The work of philosophy and social criticism known as the "Dialectic of Enlightenment" was written, in part, by Theodor W. Adorno, a philosopher, sociologist, and composer know for for his critical theory of what?

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Deborah Cook (philosopher): Deborah Cook (born October 12, 1954) is a Canadian philosopher specializing in phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, and post-structuralism.  Cook is the author of several books and numerous articles, with special emphasis on the work of Theodor W. Adorno.

Max Horkheimer: Max Horkheimer (February 14, 1895 – July 7, 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist who was famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the 'Frankfurt School' of social research.  Horkheimer addressed authoritarianism, militarism, economic disruption, environmental crisis, and the poverty of mass culture using the philosophy of history as a framework.  This became the foundation of critical theory.  His most important works include "Eclipse of Reason" (1947), "Between Philosophy and Social Science" (1930–1938) and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, "Dialectic of Enlightenment" (1947).  Through the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer planned, supported and made other significant works possible.

Theodor W. Adorno Award: The Theodor W. Adorno Award "(Theodor-W. -Adorno-Preis)" is a German award intended to recognize outstanding achievement in philosophy, theatre, music and film.  It was established by the city of Frankfurt in 1977 to commemorate the sociologist and philosopher Theodor Adorno, who had taught at the University of Frankfurt for twenty years.  The award is conferred every three years on 11 September, Adorno's birthday.  The prize money is 50,000 Euro.

Theodor W. Adorno: Theodor W. Adorno ( ; ] ; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; September 11, 1903 – August 6, 1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, and composer known for his critical theory of society.

Minima Moralia: Minima Moralia: Reflections From Damaged Life (German: "Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben" ) is a 1951 book by Theodor W. Adorno and a seminal text in Critical Theory.  Adorno started writing it during World War II, in 1944, while he lived as an exile in America, and completed it in 1949.  It was originally written for the fiftieth birthday of his friend and collaborator Max Horkheimer, who had co-authored the earlier book "Dialectic of Enlightenment" with Adorno.

Culture industry: The term culture industry (German: "Kulturindustrie" ) was coined by the critical theorists Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), and was presented as critical vocabulary in the chapter "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception", of the book "Dialectic of Enlightenment" (1944), wherein they proposed that popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods—films, radio programmes, magazines, etc.—that are used to manipulate mass society into passivity.  Consumption of the easy pleasures of popular culture, made available by the mass communications media, renders people docile and content, no matter how difficult their economic circumstances.  The inherent danger of the culture industry is the cultivation of false psychological needs that can only be met and satisfied by the products of capitalism; thus Adorno and Horkheimer especially perceived mass-produced culture as dangerous to the more technically and intellectually difficult high arts.  In contrast, true psychological needs are freedom, creativity, and genuine happiness, which refer to an earlier demarcation of human needs, established by Herbert Marcuse.  (See "Eros and Civilization", 1955).

Dialectic of Enlightenment: Dialectic of Enlightenment (German: "Dialektik der Aufklärung" ) is a work of philosophy and social criticism written by Frankfurt School philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno and first published in 1944.  A revised version appeared in 1947.

Culture Industry Reconsidered: Culture Industry Reconsidered (German: "Résumé über Kulturindustrie" ), was written in 1963 by Theodor W. Adorno, a German philosopher who belonged to the Frankfurt School of social theory.  The term "cultural industry" first appeared in "Dialectic of Enlightenment" (1947), written by Adorno and Max Horkheimer.

Lene Auestad: Lene Auestad is an author and a philosopher from the University of Oslo.  She has written on the themes of prejudice, social exclusion and minority rights, and has contributed to public debates on hate speech.  The book Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice combined critical theory with psychoanalysis and psychosocial studies, examining the underlying unconscious forces and structures that make up the phenomena of xenophobia, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia and sexism.  It provides a nuanced, detailed overview of how social prejudices, and the discrimination and violence that often tend to accompany the latter, come into being.  At the same time the author demonstrated that in order to fully understand how a complex phenomenon such as prejudice works, we need to alter our traditional Western philosophical understanding of the subject as a supposedly fully rational, autonomous and individual agent.  Auestad argues that we need a more situated and relational understanding of subjectivity and the subject, as prejudice and acts of discrimination always take place in a contextualized setting between subjects whose thoughts and actions influence each other.  Unlike more conservative forms of philosophy, Auestad examines the processes that make up prejudice from both a theoretical and practical point of view.  This becomes especially clear in the book’s seventh chapter, in which she reads critical theorist Theodor W. Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality (1950)—together with some of Adorno’s other work—along the lines of object-relations theory.  This attachment to critical theory—and to the work of for instance queer theorist Judith Butler and political theorist Hannah Arendt, and Butler’s thoughts about hate speech, and in Arendt’s case, perspectivism and pluralism, in particular— reveals how much Auestad is invested in analysing prejudice and discrimination not as isolated but societal phenomena that need to be critically examined and also fought against.  The work navigates between subjectivism in psychoanalysis and situationism in sociology that would each in its own way deny how psychic and emotional interiority and sociocultural exteriority become mutually complicit from setting to setting in buttressing the specific inter-subjective molds around which prejudices form as social forces.  Auestad shows how the self-conceptions of those subjected to it become maimed, but she also illustrates the societal costs that must be paid as a consequence of distorted human relationships.  In doing so, she demonstrates how contingent conceptions of social status and group standing permeate and secure what becomes misconstrued as “reality.”  Auestad shows how unconscious fantasy and representations form, combine, and recombine in ways directly relevant to a theoretical interpretation of the psychodynamics of prejudice.  The import is to reveal how silent codes of social consensus and cultural conviction

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (German: "Der Philosophische Diskurs der Moderne: Zwölf Vorlesungen" ) is a 1985 book by Jürgen Habermas, in which the author reconstructs and deals in depth with a number of philosophical approaches to the critique of modern reason and the Enlightenment "project" since Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche, including the work of 20th century philosophers Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Cornelius Castoriadis and Niklas Luhmann.  The work is regarded as an important contribution to Frankfurt School critical theory.  It has been characterized as a critical (largely negative) evaluation of the concept of world disclosure in modern philosophy.

Supporting paragraphs: Dialectic of Enlightenment Theodor W. Adorno
Answer: society