Today I received a response to my letter from the Editor of 19th-Century Music Journal about their publication of a rather dubious essay which centred on the charge that Adorno was attracted to the Nazis’ utopian project:
Dear Jacob Bard-Rosenberg,
Thanks for taking the trouble to write in such detail about the Molnars’ article on Adorno. Every so often we publish an article primarily because we think it will provoke debate, and that certainly seems to have happened in this case. But of course we’re not perfect, and that may have happened in this case as well. You certainly marshall some serious arguments in that direction. Please be assured, though, that the text was read by two preeminent Adorno scholars, both of whom made suggestions but both of whom recommended publication. We would not have published the article otherwise.
Yours,
Lawrence Kramer
Distinguished Professor of English and Music
Fordham University
Editor, 19th Century Music
Website: Musicbylawrencekramer.com
Sent from my iPad
I imagine this will be as far as it goes. It’s not an adequate response given that the piece they published is full of really enormous errors and falsehoods, and the fact that their journal is a place that people go for serious academic discussion. And particularly worrying is that it is a resource that many undergraduates use – people who can’t be expected to know their way around these discussions and do need to be able to trust these sources to develop their thinking. I’m not sure who the two preeminent Adorno scholars who recommended the work for publication were, or what exactly they were thinking either. This is also a case in point for the problems with the monopoly in publication – and it is also why I am posting this response here. Editors of big humanities journals can publish what they like, and when they are called on it, they are able make conciliatory noises in private. That 19th-Century Music Journal are unwilling to retract the article or make any public apology is very worrying indeed.