FRANKFERT SCHOOL OF THOUGHT
In contemporary usage, the term Cultural Marxism is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that the Frankfurt School is part of a continual academic and intellectual effort to undermine and destroy Western culture.
The Frankfurt School refers to a collection of scholars known for developing critical theory and popularizing the dialectical method of learning by interrogating society's contradictions and is most closely associated with the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse. It was not a school, in the physical sense, but rather a school of thought associated with some scholars at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in Germany.
One of the core concerns of the scholars of the Frankfurt School, especially Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, and Marcuse, was the rise of what Horkheimer and Adorno initially called "mass culture" (in Dialectic of Enlightenment). This phrase refers to the way technological developments had newly allowed for the distribution of cultural products—like music, film, and art—on a mass scale, reaching all who were connected by the technology in society. (Consider that when these scholars began crafting their critiques, radio and cinema were still new phenomena, and television had not yet hit the scene.) Their concern focused on how technology-enabled both a sameness in production, in the sense that technology shapes content and cultural frameworks create styles and genres, and also, a sameness of cultural experience, in which an unprecedented mass of people would sit passively before cultural content, rather than actively engage with one another for entertainment, as they had in the past.
In contemporary usage, the term Cultural Marxism is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that the Frankfurt School is part of a continual academic and intellectual effort to undermine and destroy Western culture.
The Frankfurt School refers to a collection of scholars known for developing critical theory and popularizing the dialectical method of learning by interrogating society's contradictions and is most closely associated with the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse. It was not a school, in the physical sense, but rather a school of thought associated with some scholars at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in Germany.
One of the core concerns of the scholars of the Frankfurt School, especially Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, and Marcuse, was the rise of what Horkheimer and Adorno initially called "mass culture" (in Dialectic of Enlightenment). This phrase refers to the way technological developments had newly allowed for the distribution of cultural products—like music, film, and art—on a mass scale, reaching all who were connected by the technology in society. (Consider that when these scholars began crafting their critiques, radio and cinema were still new phenomena, and television had not yet hit the scene.) Their concern focused on how technology-enabled both a sameness in production, in the sense that technology shapes content and cultural frameworks create styles and genres, and also, a sameness of cultural experience, in which an unprecedented mass of people would sit passively before cultural content, rather than actively engage with one another for entertainment, as they had in the past.
They theorized that this experience made people intellectually inactive and politically passive, as they allowed mass-produced ideologies and values to wash over them and infiltrate their consciousness.
In Traditional and Critical Theory (1937), Max Horkheimer defined critical theory as social critique meant to effect sociologic change and realize intellectual emancipation, by way of enlightenment that is not dogmatic in its assumptions. The purpose of critical theory is to analyze the true significance of the ruling understandings (the dominant ideology) generated in bourgeois society, by showing that the dominant ideology misrepresents how human relations occur in the real world, and how such misrepresentations function to justify and legitimate the domination of people by capitalism.
Critical theory maintains that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation.
No comments:
Post a Comment