Theoretical Cool

I began my PhD at Sydney University in 1996 and during a postgraduate seminar was stupid enough to mention the work of the Frankfurt School theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. To tell the truth, I didn't really know anything about them, but thought their names were fantastic and that I might be looked on favourably for at least being able to pronounce them. As it turned out, it would have been less embarrassing to have farted. I was later to find out that Adorno and Horkheimer were mentioned in seminars, but the circumstances in which their names were raised was similar to the way piñata are raised at children's parties: generic, silent victims dragged out for ceremonial beatings. This was all done in the name of a religion at the time we called 'cultural studies'. That day began a dawning realization that would take many years to coalesce: cool in the humanities isn't that different from cool in other areas of cultural life, like planking, hotdog-legs photography, mason jar rehabilitation, and novels whose main character is a city.