CRITICAL THEORY

Critical Theory, Critical Practice/ Debates and Issues

Critical Theory, Critical Practice/ Debates and Issues

Introduction

Theodor Adorno, was the most renowned philosophers of the Institute for Social Research, the Frankfurt School in Germany. He was a sociologist, composer, philosopher and musicologist as well. During the Nazi era, he emigrated to the America. He continued his critique and analysis of bourgeois culture, contributing to the Authoritarian Personality in 1950. He reestablished the Institute with Max Horkheimer when he returned to Frankfurt in 1953. He had many key publications. He died in 1969. (Witkin 2003, 118)

Analysis

The debate on the effects of mass culture dates practically from its beginning since many years ago, but it becomes a hot topic now. Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, who are the associates of the Frankfurt School, produced a critical analysis from a logical point of view than a traditional point of view of mass culture, in which they demonstrated the critical importance of the media in shaping social realization, and awareness. They also defined the boundaries of communal change below previous free enterprise. The School of Frankfurt of Germany initiated the Critical Theory after the crash and failure of the vulgar Marxism of the 2nd International's theorists Bernstein, Kautsky, and Plekhanov who provided radical and innovative option in World War I in Germany. (Adorno 1991, 73)

According to Adorno's point of view who was then the head architect of the Institute, conventional art had failed to sustain its independence and declare to accuracy below the monopolization of culture by mass cultural institutions known as culture industry. Technical rationality had known as the rationality of domination as an aspect of the cultural industry dialectic of enlightenment .In his book Dialectic of Enlightenment, with Max Horkheimer, he argued that in current era, the extraordinary increased in the drives of production had an result contradictory from as predicted by Marx. The development of technology had ended in mass deception, savagery, and instinctual repression rather than being an volatile power conductive to revolution. (Adorno & Horkheimer 2002, 45-60)

The result of the self-destruction of moderate club and the increase of monopoly capitalist economy was due to this system of technocratic dictatorship. The decline of traditional art and the rise of mass culture were the indications of an in-depth decline in the forces of contradiction in advanced society, a procedure which Marcuse called as "one-dimensionality." dictatorial mass activities like fascism and the erosion of the patriarchal power were symptoms of this decline. The lessons of the authoritarian personality, culture industry and anti- Semitism in Frankfurt School, pointed to a boom in the compliance and obedience of the person in advance society and joined to a sole conclusion. (Alastair, 1997, 307)

The increase of technology provided the culture industry in America as it helped make tighter the control of authoritarian governments in Europe according to Adorno. The consequence was a wide revolution in the environment of the creation and sharing of culture. (Adorno 1991, 73)

In media research, Adorno's criticism of mass culture was at the ...