Adornos Culture Industry. Critique against the Mass Culture

Résumé ou Introduction

There are as many exciting misunderstandings about a few critical theory concepts about the cultural industry. The essay “Culture Industry - Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” which Adorno wrote in exile in the United States in the 1940s, has long been a classic but is somewhat notorious than famous in the relevant seminars. That his theses about the cultural industry are either under-complex, exaggerated, and cultural conservative is one of the most common objections. At least Adorno gladly accepted the accusation of an exaggeration, who himself described it as one of his maxims to exaggerate the gloomy with the certainty that the only embellishment is the medium of truth today (Adorno 1959). One of his “exaggerated” theses criticizes the mass culture.

Adornos statement that mass culture prevents subversion is not valid because he oversaw the subversive potential of pop culture, especially Jazz, in his argumentation.

The paper's first step is to review the literature on the topic and check the current research. The aim is to see how other researchers approached the problem. Then, the crucial points of the culture industry will be described. The next step is to show the subversive potential that pop culture has. Afterward, an explicit example will be given with the impact that jazz culture had on the African American civil rights movement. The paper will be completed with a conclusion. That will pick up the thesis statement. The conclusion will also include the topic's political relevance and the lack of culture within political science.