Culture Industry - The Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School

Part of a series on the
Frankfurt School
Major works
Reason and Revolution
The Work of Art in the
Age of Mechanical Reproduction Eclipse of Reason
The Fear of Freedom
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Minima Moralia
Eros and Civilization
One-Dimensional Man
Negative Dialectics
The Structural Transformation
of the Public Sphere The Theory of Communicative Action
Notable theorists
Max Horkheimer · Theodor Adorno
Herbert Marcuse · Walter Benjamin
Erich Fromm · Friedrich Pollock
Leo Löwenthal · Jürgen Habermas
Important concepts
Critical theory · Dialectic · Praxis
Psychoanalysis · Antipositivism
Popular culture · Culture industry
Advanced capitalism
Privatism · Non-identity
Communicative rationality
Legitimation crisis

Adorno and Horkheimer were key members of the Frankfurt School. They were much influenced by the dialectical materialism and historical materialism of Karl Marx, as well the revisitation of the dialectical idealism of Hegel, in both of which events are studied not in isolation but as part of the process of change. As a group later joined by Jürgen Habermas, they were responsible for the formulation of Critical Theory. In works such as Dialectic of Enlightenment and Negative Dialectics, Adorno and Horkheimer theorized that the phenomenon of mass culture has a political implication, namely that all the many forms of popular culture are parts of a single culture industry whose purpose is to ensure the continued obedience of the masses to market interests.

Read more about this topic:  Culture Industry

Famous quotes containing the word school:

    By school age, many boys experience pressure to reveal inner feelings as humiliating. They think their mothers are saying to them, “You must be hiding something shameful.” And shucking clams is a snap compared to prying secrets out of a boy who’s decided to “clam up.”
    Ron Taffel (20th century)