Theme 2: Critical media studies

Dialectic of Enlightenment

1. What is "Enlightenment"?

Enlightenment refers to the Age of Enlightenment, a "philosophical movement of the 1700s that emphasized the use of reason to scrutinize previously accepted doctrines and traditions and that brought about many humanitarian reforms." (1) Adorno and Horkheimer refer to it as "the advance of thought" which arguably could be seen as a definition of knowledge. They furthermore say that it "is mythical fear radicalized" and that "Enlightenment [...] left nothing of metaphysics behind except the abstract fear of the collective from which it had sprung." They say that the Enlightenment and its answers to metaphysical questions have left the people with an uncertainty to the meaning of life and therefore made room for ideological views and beliefs.

2. What is "Dialectic"?

Adorno and Horkheimer state "The concept, usually defined as the unity of the features of what it subsumes, was rather, from the first, a product of dialectical thinking, in which each thing is what it is only by becoming what it is not." they further write that "dialectic discloses each image as script. It teaches us to read from its features the admission of falseness which cancels its power and hands it over to truth." This describes dialectic as a method for finding the truth by confronting a statement with specific counter statements or negations of the statement.

 

3. What is "Nominalism" and why is it an important concept in the text?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines Nominalism as "the doctrine holding that abstract concepts, general terms, or universals have no independent existence but exist only as names." (2) Therefore they exist only in the mind and are a concept of knowledge. In coherence to the text it is an important concept to overthrow any myth. 

4. What is the meaning and function of "myth" in Adorno and Horkheimer's argument?

Adorno and Horkheimer use the term "myth" for any unanswered metaphysical questions as well as anything unknown or untruth.

"The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity"

1. In the beginning of the essay, Benjamin talks about the relation between "superstructure" and "substructure" in the capitalist order of production. What do the concepts "superstructure" and "substructure" mean in this context and what is the point of analyzing cultural production from a Marxist perspective?

Substructure refers to anything directly related to production such as machines, factories, tools and alike. Superstructure refers to everything else. For example Art, Religion, Family, Politics and so forth. Benjamin sees the substructure as a vital component for the rising and thriving of the superstructure.

2. Does culture have revolutionary potentials (according to Benjamin)? If so, describe these potentials. Does Benjamin's perspective differ from the perspective of Adorno & Horkheimer in this regard?

Benjamin states the superstructural concepts are "useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art." He mentions photography as one of these potentials. A painting is always a perception of the painter and how he sees the world he is painting, whereas a photograph can capture a piece of reality in an instant of time.

3. Benjamin discusses how people perceive the world through the senses and argues that this perception can be both naturally and historically determined. What does this mean? Give some examples of historically determined perception (from Benjamin's essay and/or other contexts).

Our senses only forward raw data to our mind. Only there we can compare this data with the former and present experience (knowledge) and associate a meaning to it. This however means it is dependent on our prior knowledge of history and society. Therefore the same input, lets say a picture of an iceberg, has a completely different significance for a person who lived before 1912 than for a person who lives after 1912.

4. What does Benjamin mean by the term "aura"? Are there different kinds of aura in natural objects compared to art objects?

Aura is being described by Benjamin as "the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be". He uses the outline of a mountain range on the horizon as an example. When you see this outline you feel the mountains aura. He further states that the aura of works of art "is never entirely separated from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the “authentic” work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value." Therefore any copy of a work of art can never have the same aura as the original piece.

(1)American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. S.v. "enlightenment." Retrieved September 9 2016 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/enlightenment
(2)American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. S.v. "nominalism." Retrieved September 9 2016 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/nominalism