Relational dialectics

The historical dialectic materialist approach represents a key feature of Marxist thought. It is so vital to his explanations of history that it has often been seen as being synonymous with Marx himself. If one wants to understand history as a dynamic, and historical process, it is essential to look at it materially. Ultimately, the historical dialectic materialist approach allows us to make sense of why things are the way they are in a certain era. Three concepts go into explaining the…

indiscretions”. She also discovered that “dating couples lie to each other in about a third of their interactions—perhaps even more often than they deceive other people” (Kornet 53). A research study examining forgiveness found that commitment, trust, and relational satisfaction were all significantly related to forgiveness among couples. “The process of forgiving someone involves process involves intrapersonally coming to terms with one’s emotional state after a transgression in order to…

In 2001, Michael Haneke directed a film called, The Piano Teacher. Haneke’s view, as conveyed to the viewer, is not to rail against pornography, per se, but to rail against its impact as generated by a capitalist-patriarchal society. This stems from a similar modality of thinking introduced by Linda Williams in 1989, in which she “...moves beyond the impasse of the anti-porn/anti-censorship debate to analyze what hard-core film pornography is and does…” (Slade 656). Haneke’s method is…

The cultural industry is described by Adorno and Horkheimer (1977) as the standardisation of culture and cultural goods, attained through the manipulation of consumers, pseudo-individualism and commercial marketing in order to accomplish an economic and social status. Within Adorno and Horkheimer’s theory, there are three major concepts that have increased the development of the cultural industry and the behaviour of consumers, this involves discussing the transformation of use value to…

Huge department stores such as Macy’s stand for almost everything that Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer despise. Arguably, department stores minimize a person’s capability to act and think in a logical and self-governing manner. Adorno argues that “standardization develops due to the ability of the ‘people in power’ to regulate the manufacturing of cultural goods in order to try and gage and control what people like and want to buy to increase how much profit they make. Furthermore, he states…

In Benjamin’s piece, I was reminded of many of the lectures we have had throughout the lecture. The apparatus mentioned throughout the piece, in both cultural and camera lense forms, reminds me of Leni Riefenstahl. Professor Beebout spoke about how her innovative techniques changed cinema, but her association with the Nazi party casts a large shadow over her contributions. She added to the machine of fascism by creating this larger than life image of Hitler and the “superior race” rather than…

The culture industry argument, established by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, is a critique of mass media, which refers to the industrialization of culture, where the masses are not the only source of mass culture; capitalism serves the masses, and treats them like commodities for their own benefit (McAnany & Wilkinson, 1996). Adorno and Horkheimer chose to call it culture industry, rather than mass media, because they believed that in mass media, masses had some influence upon the creation…

1 CHAPTER 1INTRODUCTIONThe culture industry’s cycle of assumptions is the interaction between the director(culture industry), the author (hip hop artist), and the audience (White consumer). Together thethree combine to create ideological outcomes that reflect and reinforce historically negativeWhite racial attitudes. Interrogating all three aspects of the cycle assists in understanding thecomplexities of the culture industry’s racial representations and White racial attitudes as well…

The historical and cultural references in Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's "The Culture Industry" and Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility" are subtle but nonetheless fundamental. I began the research process by perusing through both writings to find references applicable to my papers. That is, I tried to find references that substantiated and bolstered the points I made in Midterm Paper 1. I found eight references that were suitable for further…

Question 1: In The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as mass deception, Adorno and Horkheimer are observing the culture industry. The culture industry is the entire system of production and circulation that establishes mass, mainstream, and popular culture. In this essay, the authors illustrate more precisely the relationship between culture industry and reality by explaining that “[r]eal life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies. The sound film, […], leaves no room for imagination or…