Cultural formation and semi-formation: Theodor Adorno’s contributions to a reflection on contemporary education

Abstract

This paper seeks to reflect on today’s education based on Theodor Adorno’s thought. It examines the cultural formation concept (Bildung) from the Enlightenment period to what contemporarily Adorno calls semi-formation (Halbbildung). The basis for the consolidation of Adorno’s semi-formation process occurs when symbolic production, a characteristic of the cultural process, distances itself from popular knowledge and approaches market interests, turned into a commodity by the cultural industry. In this process, the subjective conditions that enable the consolidation of the emancipatory character of formation are broken. The great challenge for contemporary education, from an adornian point of view, is the criticism of semiformation as it appears in contemporary society, bringing up the possibility of a social formation that may contribute to the widening of formative horizons.