Page 97 - Critical and Cultural Theory

SOCIAL IDENTITIES
robust workers, brimming with health and pride, rendered in a
minutely naturalistic fashion. Quite a different version of reflection
theory is supplied by Georg Lukacs (1885-1971), who is often
cited as the principal proponent of the Hegelian approach. Lukacs
is not especially interested in the formal attributes of texts but
actually seeks to establish the philosophical and cultural world
views they communicate. Lukacs praises the realist text as capable
of mirroring the true underlying order of things, and the universal
structures of history and society. Realism is superior to both
Naturalism, which supplies objective yet purely random depictions
of the world, and Modernism, which supplies subjective impres-
sions of life and bleakly denies any sense of historical develop-
ment: 'Man, for these writers [i.e. Modernists], is by nature
solitary, asocial, unable to enter into a relationship with other
.
human beings .. the hero is strictly confined within the limits of
his own experience. There is not, for him, - and apparently not
.
for his creator - any pre-existent reality beyond his own self ..
the hero himself is without personal history. He is "thrown-into-
.
the-world": meaninglessly, unfathomably. .. The disintegration
of personality is matched by a disintegration of the outer world'
(Lukacs 1972: 476-9).
Lukacs's negative assessment of Modernism is in stark contrast
with the evaluation of this movement proposed by Theodor
Adorno (1903-69), one of the most prominent members of the
Frankfurt School. Founded by Carl Grunberg in 1923, the School
wished to move beyond the crude economic determinism asso-
ciated with vulgar Marxism and purely functional and pragmatic
interpretations of Marx's philosophy. It aimed at developing a
self-critical approach that could consistently assess the relationship
between that philosophy and contemporary culture. 'Critical
Theory' is the phrase used to describe the School's project and
systematic investigation of mass communication in modern socie-
ties, of their technocratic culture industry and of the relationship
between popular culture and art. Keen on celebrating the redemp-
tive value of art, Adorno enthusiastically welcomes Modernism as
the most realistic model available, for it depicts people as helpless
and isolated and thus forcefully calls for action, for measures that
would rectify their dismal situation. Writing about Kafka and
Beckett, Adorno states: 'The inescapability of their work compels
the change in attitude which committed works merely demand'

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