Page 81 - Contemporary Cultural Theory 3rd edition

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Contemporary Cultural Theory

of instrumental reason, a history of bourgeois society and a
history of western civilisation. Adorno and Horkheimer locate
the contradictions of class society in relation to a more funda-
mental and prior contradiction, that of the struggle between man
and nature. Human ‘progress’—self-actualisation, the develop-
ment of social complexity and reason—thus goes hand in hand
with the subjugation and manipulation of nature: ‘A philo-
sophical conception of history’, they insist, ‘would have to show
how the rational domination of nature comes increasingly to win
the day, in spite of all deviations and resistance, and integrates
all human characteristics’ (p. ix). The will to domination over
nature is based on ‘fear of the unknown’, they argue, and it not
only alienates humankind from nature, but also turns inward,
repressing the natural drives and instincts. As in Freud, the
history of western civilisation is read as a ‘history of renuncia-
tion’ (p. 55). In a radical reading of the Odyssey, Adorno and
Horkheimer interpreted the eponymous hero of Homer’s epic
as the prototype of the bourgeois subject. Civilisation, admin-
istered society and bourgeois subjectivity were thus set in
opposition to nature, spontaneity and imagination.
The mass media or ‘the culture industries’, as they described
them, became central targets for this critique. Authentic art, they
argued, involves a necessary confrontation with already estab-
lished traditional styles; ‘inferior’ work is merely the practice of
imitation. ‘In the culture industry’, they conclude, ‘imitation
finally becomes absolute. Having ceased to be anything but style,
it reveals the latter’s secret: obedience to social hierarchy’ (p. 131).
In short, the central function of the mass media is ideological
manipulation in the interests of profit. Adorno and Horkheimer
describe the technologies of the culture industries, noting how
these involve the combination of a few production centres with
many dispersed consumption points. The technological ration-
ale for such an organisation, they argue, is the rationale of
domination (p. 121), where the cultural ‘consumer’ is made
passive and manipulated. ‘There is nothing left...to classify’,
they write: ‘Producers have done it for [us]’ (p. 125). The culture
industries’ products are thus increasingly standardised, and are
characterised by a predominance of ‘effect’ over ‘idea’, so that

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