Jim’s Journal
Why?
Critical Theory, as outlined and practiced by members of the Frankfurt School, has proven to be widely influential in modern and contemporary thinking of popular culture and the “culture industry.” Contemporary linguistics, structuralism, post-structuralism, postmodernism, and many other forms of current thought can trace portions of their DNA back to Critical Theory. Please make sure you grasp the concepts in the readings, lecture, and discussions because this will help you understand much of what comes later in this course.
Required
Marxisms: The Frankfurt School, Althusserianism, Hegemony, and Post-Marxism, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture
I know this is a long slog for this one, but there is a really good and succinct (despite its length) overview of the different facets of Marxism. Stick with it and do your best to understand the different terms and ideas.
Supplementary Readings
- The Frankfurt School & Critical Theory
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The Naysayers: Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and the Critique of Pop Culture, The New Yorker
“The worst that one Frankfurt School theorist could say of another was that his work was insufficiently dialectical. In 1938, Adorno said it of Benjamin, who fell into a months-long depression. The word ‘dialectic,’ as elaborated in the philosophy of Hegel, causes endless problems for people who are not German, and even for some who are. In a way, it is both a philosophical concept and a literary style. Derived from the ancient Greek term for the art of debate, it indicates an argument that maneuvers between contradictory points. It 'mediates,’ to use a favorite Frankfurt School word. And it gravitates toward doubt, demonstrating the 'power of negative thinking,’ as Herbert Marcuse once put it. Such twists and turns come naturally in the German language, whose sentences are themselves plotted in swerves, releasing their full meaning only with the final clinching action of the verb.”ENGL 300: Introduction to Theory of Literature: Lecture 17 – The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory
“This first lecture on social theories of art and artistic production examines the Frankfurt School. The theoretical writings of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin are explored in historical and political contexts, including Marxism, socialist realism, and late capitalism. The concept of mechanical reproduction, specifically the relationship between labor and art, is explained at some length. Adorno’s opposition to this argument, and his own position, are explained. The lecture concludes with a discussion of Benjamin’s perspective on the use of distraction and shock in the process of aesthetic revelation.” - Theodor Adorno
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The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture
“The creation of the Frankfurt School of critical theory in the 1920s saw the birth of some of the most exciting and challenging writings of the twentieth century. It is out of this background that the great critic Theodor Adorno emerged. His finest essays are collected here, offering the reader unparalleled insights into Adorno’s thoughts on culture. He argued that the culture industry commodified and standardized all art. In turn this suffocated individuality and destroyed critical thinking. At the time, Adorno was accused of everything from overreaction to deranged hysteria by his many detractors. In today’s world, where even the least cynical of consumers is aware of the influence of the media, Adorno’s work takes on a more immediate significance. The Culture Industry is an unrivalled indictment of the banality of mass culture.”Aesthetic Theory
“Perhaps the most important aesthetics of the twentieth century appears here newly translated, in English that is for the first time faithful to the intricately demanding language of the original German. The culmination of a lifetime of aesthetic investigation, Aesthetic Theory is Theodor W. Adorno’s magnum opus, the clarifying lens through which the whole of his work is best viewed, providing a framework within which his other major writings cohere.” - Walter Benjamin
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ENGL 300: Introduction to Theory of Literature: Lecture 17 – The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory
“This first lecture on social theories of art and artistic production examines the Frankfurt School. The theoretical writings of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin are explored in historical and political contexts, including Marxism, socialist realism, and late capitalism. The concept of mechanical reproduction, specifically the relationship between labor and art, is explained at some length. Adorno’s opposition to this argument, and his own position, are explained. The lecture concludes with a discussion of Benjamin’s perspective on the use of distraction and shock in the process of aesthetic revelation.”The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media
“Benjamin’s essay ‘Work of Art’ sets out his boldest thoughts on media and on culture in general. It is collected here with other essays, as he tackles film, radio, photography, and the modern transformations of literature and painting.” - Max Horkheimer
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Dialectic of Elightenment
“One of the core texts of Critical Theory, Dialectic of Enlightenment explores the socio-psychological status quo that had been responsible for what the Frankfurt School considered the failure of the Age of Enlightenment. Together with The Authoritarian Personality (1950; also co-authored by Adorno) and Frankfurt School member Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man (1964), it has had a major effect on 20th-century philosophy, sociology, culture, and politics, inspiring especially the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s” (text from Wikipedia) - Herbert Marcuse
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One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
“One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society is a 1964 book by the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, in which the author offers a wide-ranging critique of both contemporary capitalism and the Communist society of the Soviet Union, documenting the parallel rise of new forms of social repression in both these societies, as well as the decline of revolutionary potential in the West. He argues that 'advanced industrial society’ created false needs, which integrated individuals into the existing system of production and consumption via mass media, advertising, industrial management, and contemporary modes of thought.” (text from Wikipedia)
Response Questions
Remember to cite specific instances from the text to support your views.
- How does Critical Theory play into the visual culture and visual literacy?
- Marcuse fought against the domestication of authentic culture by re-contextualizing it as advertising or as pop culture (think “Bach as background music in the kitchen, [. . .] Plato and Hegel, Shelley and Baudelaire, Marx and Freud in the drugstore”). Do you agree with him? Why or why not?
- Althusser addresses “symptomatic readings” of works. The example given in the text is a symptomatic reading of the film Taxi Driver. Do you see this as a valid way to understand cultural works? Why or why not?
