Page 80 - Contemporary Cultural Theory 3rd edition

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Critical theory: from ideology critique to the sociology of culture

contemporary science and culture as (over) rationalised; from
Freud, the theory of the unconscious and the notion that social
order functions in part by way of psychic repression. These influ-
ences would shape the general trajectory of the School’s
theoretical development. In his inaugural address as director,
Horkheimer had defined the Institute’s central focus as:

The connection between the economic life of society, the
psychological development of its individuals and the changes
within specific areas of culture to which belong not only the
intellectual legacy of the sciences, art, and religion, but also
law, customs, fashion, public opinion, sports, entertainment,
lifestyles, and so on (Horkheimer, 1989, p. 31).

They shared with Lukács a stress on the notion of totality, a rejec-
tion of science and scientific socialism as partial and detotalising,
and a sense of the truth value of theory as related to its social role,
initially as theoretical companion to the working class, always as
in itself emancipatory. But they soon came to reject the notion of
the working class as revolutionary subject, so that, as early as
1937, Horkheimer declared that ‘even the situation of the prole-
tariat is in this society, no guarantee of correct knowledge’
(Horkheimer, 1972, p. 213). This in turn marked a shift away from
a celebration of the emancipatory potential of culture as human
self-activity, and towards a recognition of the debilitating and
disabling power of culture as ideology.

Adorno and Horkheimer
For the Adorno and Horkheimer of Dialectic of Enlightenment,
written while in exile in America during the Nazi period, capi-
talism was already a fully rationalised system of domination, the
inherent logic of which tended towards fascism. Fascism was
thus a culmination of the dehumanised and positivistic science
and society unleashed by the Enlightenment: ‘Enlightenment
behaves toward things as a dictator toward men. He knows them
in so far as he can manipulate them’ (Adorno & Horkheimer,
1979, p. 9). Dialectic of Enlightenment is at the same time a critique

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