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The Culture Industry revisited

Posted by moses @ 15:57 • , , , , , , • 0 comments



While cultural studies has today succeeded in appearing to undermine the Frankfurt School critique of the Culture Industry, the machinery of commodification steams ahead, more productive than ever. The intellectual world is powerless before this trend and continues to concede its influence. Numerous scholars of culture are striving to make their field at once more obscure and more accessible. They toil to create a happy vision of a world that is poised to reap the benefits of new communications technology, promising a cosmopolitan future of choice and enlightened consumption.

This vision is constructed through discourse that is sprinkled with an ever-growing list of newly-coined terms. Yet it is, at the same time, one that people can readily identify with—for who isn't ready to believe in the prospect of a brave new world, especially when the media has just informed them of the exciting new products available in the market?

Admittedly, Critical Theory does not often fare well in today's intellectual climate, a circumstance that I feel is attributable to its underpinnings in the labour theory of value, or at least in varying degrees of economic determinism. Popular conceptions of value no longer hold it as something objective or cardinal. Value is something that is purely relational and manifested in actual preferences. In other words, that people value something more than another cannot often be explained in terms of natural and tangible causes. Valuation is often a subjective affair.

In a powerful way, this undermines the Marxist critique of exchange value, not only by dispelling the labour theory of value on which the critique is based, but also by replacing the concept of use value with ordinal utility. Now we have another conception of value that is also Subject-determined and correlated with exchange value but is not equivalent to the latter. And the concept of use value seems cumbersome and obsolete beside one that is able to account for all Subject perceptions of value, including the intangible, instead of being mired in the materialist paradigm. Moreover, this conception of value is seductively democratic. After all, what can appear more empowering than a view of value that privileges people's preferences and decisions?

What this means for the Frankfurt School critique is its effective isolation as an elitist view of culture that presumes to tell people what they ought to value. If preferences are subjective, what right does anyone have to proscribe any as long as no actual harm can reasonably be alleged to result?

It is difficult to defend the Frankfurt School from such a charge. Yet I maintain that its critique of the Culture Industry still rings true, albeit in a way that may necessitate some distancing from Marxist discourse. My proposition is to look at the critique from a particularly modern perspective that revolves around expectations and hype.

If there is anything that we have learned from the last global financial crisis, it is that expectations may diverge from a more tangible reality of a situation, whatever the latter may be. Perhaps this can be seen in terms of the divergence between short-term and long-term confidence, the latter which is dependent on a stricter or more complete procedure of reasoning. But regardless of what exactly we should compare expectations to, the evidence seems to point to the existence of hype.

Hype can be understood, in that sense, as the inflating of expectations of returns relative to a more tangible measure of actual returns. Even under conventional ways of looking at the market, hype is rarely a good thing—it implies that buyers are ultimately losing out in terms of expected versus real returns to their spending. And since hype is paid for by marketing costs that are likely to figure in pricing decisions, hype also represents a potential deadweight loss.

What does this have to do with the Culture Industry? It is my contention that the Culture Industry is a major source of hype. It deals in feelings, manufacturing them in order to generate interest in things—a process that is typically subsumed under the goal of making profit. It thus becomes the primary source of trends that influence people's preferences in goods. To grasp the commercial importance of the Culture Industry under late capitalism, simply witness how advertising thrives on the products of the Culture Industry.

Moreover, this principle does not apply merely to the products of various industries, but also to more general things such as lifestyles and even happiness—the message is that spending our money on something or adopting a certain attitude or lifestyle can bring us happiness or a sense of fulfillment.

But can hype not become real if it proves to be permanent? After all, there are still many people who would be very happy to buy, for example, the latest Apple products simply on the basis of the expectations that have been generated through marketing. Thus, it would seem to be the case that these people continue to get what they expect.

Yet it remains true that no one really knows how long the ephemeral expectations that are associated with hype can last, especially on the level of the individual. All it takes is for the realisation to come, in one fine moment, that there is no basis for believing that something is as good as it has been made out to be. Much of the perceived returns would be lost in that moment, just as the perceived values of certain financial instruments evaporated a few years ago.

The lie that Culture Industry sells us does not, therefore, have to depend on a highly contentious philosophical analysis of value. Whatever the exact nature or typology of value may be, hype as the commodification of feelings can be observed in our everyday experience; and it stands clearly a means of extracting profit through the inflating of expectations.

The perpetual requiem

Posted by moses @ 19:32 • , • 0 comments


Those who wish to hold on to dreams should also be prepared to give them up. One cannot be uncompromising about dreams, for dreams have power over us. They have the power to reveal our mortal limitations, unclothed by the delusions of power that flights of fancy bring. For dreams are always a few steps ahead of us—the more we are able to realise, the fancier they become. Confidence often leads to our undoing, and the moment when we see the precariousness of our situation, the potential futility of our efforts, is the moment of despondency; a moment of lifelessness and regret for failures past.

To dare to dream is to dare to give them up. Yet, on the other hand, can we do without them? As dreams give meaning to our lives, they may also take them away. Thus, it is not having dreams or giving them up that is most crucial. Most importantly, accept the passing of dreams. Old dreams die to be replaced by newer, often less exalted ones. As we age, so do our dreams decay. But still you must hold on to them, to give them up later or perhaps to even realise them. That is what we really live for—the chance, however small, to see some of our dreams realised, or to fight again another day until we breathe no longer.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Big picture, small picture—who the hell knows anyway?

Posted by moses @ 20:18 • , , , , • 0 comments



More technocratic or elitist discourses on governance often bring up concepts like 'the big picture' or the 'the long view'. I won't dispute the fact that these terms have meanings (albeit relative ones). But they don't seem as clear as they are made out to be in those instances. It's always worth asking what the big picture or the long view is, and how anyone knows what it is. Otherwise, it would only serve as a cover that allows the powerful to explain things away with a wave of the hand.

The problem in thinking in terms of the big picture becomes clear when there are competing claims about the same reality, typically with some grounded in experienced reality and others in more abstract or socially-constructed terms. For example, it is possible to enjoy a period of posted economic growth and rising nominal (or even real) wages while having people report decreasing standards of living in their everyday experience. Of course, facts grounded in experienced reality are often fragmentary and contentious—they are typically anecdotal and it is easy to find examples that contradict each other. To the rationally-minded, such facts might therefore be unquestionably devalued.

However, this does not mean that they are necessarily untrue or unreal. Everyone sees reality through the veil of a particular (and partly self-imposed) perspective. However, this reality is also the reality that each of us knows. It's cold comfort to be told that some abstraction or another person's reality can free our perceptions from the constraints of the experienced. What we experience is necessarily treated as true because we experience it. That is a fundamental tautology in epistemology.

Of course, ontologically this is a problematic position. Yet in practical matters, the empirical is the most directly relevant to the individual. Small epistemologically-determined problems can culminate in an ontological crisis. After a certain point, we just don't know if a claim that has been 'proven' to be ontologically true is indeed true. It becomes increasingly difficult, for example, to hold on to a traditionally held view that something is good when we are finding so many little things that are wrong with it.

The epistemological/ontological divide translates into a small picture/big picture divide in the socio-economic realm. What I call the 'small picture' is obvious enough to each individual, as it concerns the present and immediate reality around him. But how do we derive the big picture? Are we able to see how all the small things, consisting as they are of an insurmountable mountain of conflicting data, form the big picture? The long view is even more complicated as time constantly introduces change.

What people wind up doing is simplifying the reality that they see. They abstract reality, deriving theories, numbers and indicators to allow them take stock of it in a convenient and concise way. When they need to think about the future, they make projections based on these abstractions. This is a powerful and useful method, but it's not without its risks. If experienced reality is affected by perspective, what exempts our visions of the big picture from the same influence? In fact, most if not all attempts at abstracting reality are acts of interpretation—we are interpreting reality according to a certain framework or paradigm.

In governance, the tendency to abstract and derive the big picture for policy purposes has led governments to pursue numbers. They rely on indicators to measure the effectiveness of their policy, the welfare of the people and virtually everything that pertains to their business. This is often a necessary measure in their position, yet the problem with these indicators is that they are interpretive. The real problem, however, comes when people are not aware of this. Numbers and abstractions become totalitarian teleologies, imposing an "iron cage", as Max Weber put it, of rationalism on the lives of individuals. And worst of all, they become held as 'truth'.

The elitism regarding the big picture is a manifestation of this rationalist arrogance and its obliteration of the hermeneutic. What individuals think and feel is completely unimportant beside the data. Unfortunately, the people who champion the big picture often neglect to ask how the data is derived. Emptily they claim to be bastions of reason and lovers of wisdom, and those who disagree they declare to be contrarian or oppositional. Hence, the position of the unthinking rationalist is readily assumed by the most dangerous ignorant people of all—the pseudo-educated, the body of the reactionary middle class.

A note on the elections and on change

Posted by moses @ 12:17 • , , , • 0 comments


I don't care much for procedural politics in general. My aspirations for social and political change are a little bit on the 'pie-in-the-sky' side. This is not to say, though, that I don't care to vote. Voting is important for some rather obscure reasons to do with the technicalities of particular representative democratic systems, barring some really exciting circumstances—and this comes from someone who normally likes pretty obscure stuff. Real life seems rather too important and straightforward for obscure reasoning, but in the absence of strong reasons to believe otherwise, citizens should exercise their voting rights.

So that is to say that I am normally pretty agnostic towards voting, but I am leaning more for it than against it. Now let me explain why I don't think voting is anywhere near the limit or the be-all-end-all of the exercise of one's capacity as a political (in the bona fide classical sense) individual.

In order to do so, it looks like I have to first explain why I have little faith in the electoral process as a mechanism for social and political change anyway. Perhaps I live under somewhat exceptional circumstances, but I have seen the election of new governments fail spectacularly to institute much meaningful change. In a country like Singapore, where institutions can be expected to be particularly sticky or conservative, the electoral process certainly doesn't inspire me with much hope.

I am not familiar with comparative and more empirical theories of democracy, and so I turn to bigger narratives to find reasons why it is the case that elections are not normally game-changing. There is a myth defended by the older stuffy liberals (sometimes known as conservatives) that voting is the ultimate exercise of one's capacity as a responsible political agent. This is the myth we are brought up to believe, which may explain the religious seriousness with which some attend to the matter of voting in elections. However, reflecting Habermas' narrative of the decline of the public sphere, elections constitute a dated procedure handed down from ages past, an old gentlemen's game that has been massified but nevertheless expected to retain the same significance for each individual voter. Meanwhile, as the actualisation of the sovereign will of the people, it is actively being circumvented in modern times by influential political organisations with direct access to policy makers and by purported political exigencies that are subject to little public scrutiny. In other words, your votes as individuals pale in significance to how much power and influence is wielded by a political elite, whose mandate to rule over you is ironically affirmed by your votes.

The only way forward, under present constraints of the prevailing democratic systems, seems to be in trying to match the direct policy-making influence of powerful organisations. We are in need of a large civil society consisting of citizen activists who would fight for the causes they believe in. The only way forward is through citizen advocacy groups, unions and active everyday participation in politics. The days of waiting for elections and for your representatives in parliament to make your voices heard are over, if they were ever there. Only then can the public put itself on the same playing field as elite organisations in determining the character of governance.

In a sense, the conservatives have it right: Don't trust the authorities. But that does not mean we should minimise government—the government does many beneficial things after all; it means we should have a civil society to match. This, if anything, is the true meaning of a big society.

For this to happen, however, there must be a lively as well as a quality culture of political participation in society. It takes a certain amount of awareness, political wisdom and community spirit amongst citizens to institute a strong civil society. Unfortunately, the current state of Singapore's society and its public discourse does not inspire me with much hope in this either at present. Nevertheless, the stirrings in the public, if rather too naively focused on the electoral process, might be a sign of the beginnings of change. This may also be somewhat 'pie-in-the-sky', but, ultimately, I think one should be optimistic and look forward to real change.

The Commodification of Leisure, Part I: Art and the Culture Industry

Posted by moses @ 18:35 • , , , , , , • 0 comments


Here I present a reading of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, with reference to Frederic Jameson's essays on Adorno in Late Marxism and Amresh Sinha's Adorno on Mimesis in Aesthetic Theory.

So where should we begin? The first thing to note is the fact that there is more to Adorno and Horkheimer's theory than the suggestion of mass culture as fundamentally characterised by passive consumption. That is really only a symptom (though a very important one for Adorno and Horkheimer) of the general 'malaise' of mass culture, and one that has received far too much emphasis in media studies to the detriment of the discussion of its other aspects. In light of this, I will endeavour to present a more contextual reading of this essay.


I am looking at Adorno and Horkheimer's critique of mass culture from the perspective of their critique of pleasure as it is associated with mass entertainment under late capitalism. It should be noted that Adorno and Horkheimer's analysis of pleasure "takes place within a framework of the theory of the alienated labor process" (Jameson, 1990: 145). This entails the analysis of mass culture as the colonisation and the commodification of leisure time—amusement is the prolongation of the working day insofar as it merely functions as a period of relaxation that demands no effort (hence the passivity of the consumer), which is sold to the individual worker so that he/she can continue working contentedly the next day. Pleasure is therefore seen not only as a flight from reality but also as the flight from "any last thought of resistance" (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1998).

The full implications of commodification will be brought out later. Presently, we will attend more closely to the notion of the colonisation of leisure, which involves the mechanisation of culture that reflects the mechanisation of modern economic production: The enjoyment of culture is schematised for a passive audience so that, as mentioned above, no effort is required on the part of the latter. This entails the presentation of "repetition and the familiar" (Jameson, 1990: 148) in order not to tax the audience's minds. Thus, the familiar character of the labour process is ironically reproduced in entertainment, which indicates that the monotony of "standardised operations" that characterises the working day "can be evaded only by approximation to it in one's leisure time" (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1998).

This is where media scholars' criticisms of Adorno and Horkheimer are typically focused, with their rather belaboured emphasis on the examination of the link between media consumption and power (sometimes in an effort to deny that the media wield power over the audience). As stated in the beginning, such a perspective is sorely inadequate, and this will become evident as we examine the other aspects of Adorno and Horkheimer's theory on mass culture, beginning with its aesthetic critique of pleasure.

Adorno and Horkheimer hold that pleasure/happiness is found in what is yet to be, and their charge is that the Culture Industry offers 'inauthentic' pleasure that is purported to already exist and is ready for consumption. Furthermore, Adorno postulates a conception of the artistic mimesis as pure expression, which is antithetical to the notion of 'expressing something' (Sinha, 2000). Artistic expression is hence self-identical (Sinha, 2000) and thereby incompatible with the notion of equivalence, which is so important to the process of commodity exchange. Like the mystical in Wittgenstein's philosophy, in other words, it cannot be substituted by something else. Therefore, unlike the products of the Culture Industry, it cannot be subsumed under the mechanism of substituting means for ends (Sinha, 2000), being thus quite apart from the market for identity and leisure that under late capitalism are treated as just more commodities to be exchanged.

One important insight that we can derive from Adorno's conception of art is that, for Adorno and Horkheimer, reception is identified with the capitalist mode of production, particularly in the context of commodification. This means the reception of the products of the Culture Industry has to be understood in relation to their production. The most common criticisms of Adorno and Horkheimer are heavily invested in the critique of their claims regarding reception, emboldened by evidence indicating that audiences are not passive. Thus, a good way to uphold the Frankfurt School critique, without explicitly invoking theories of power, is to bring production back into the discourse.

Equivalence is, as stated earlier, crucial for commodity exchange, and it is created through abstraction—the Marxist account of commodity exchange involves the abstraction of the use values of goods into exchange/monetary value, "allowing comparable and measurable quantities to be manipulated" (Jameson, 1990: 149). This forms a vital part of the commodification of leisure as it is the need to conform to the principle of equivalence and create monetary value that drives the production of cultural products in a manner that is similar to the production of consumer goods, leading to the creation of what Walter Benjamin calls the mechanically reproducible work of art.

But what implications does the nature of production in the Culture Industry have on consumption? Questions of quality come first to mind, but this is, understandably, shaky ground on which to stake a critique of mass culture. We need look above and beyond, at the implications of the relations of production on the consumption of mass culture as a whole and not as discrete cultural products. 

Roland Barthes asserted, mirroring Adorno's critique of pleasure, that mass-produced culture under late capitalism serves to conceal or obscure the capitalist mode of production, thereby eliminating resistance. However, this line of argument is once again susceptible to the criticism, born of audience studies, that audiences are not simply passive recipients. Indeed, I think the exact opposite is the case: Far from hiding it, the Culture Industry revels in the capitalist mode of production, showing us the promises that await us should we acquiesce to the system, namely all manner of consumer goods and the status and identities that come with them—rewards that are, however, readily available. It tempts the audience with these prizes, rather than compelling or co-opting them directly. But, crucially, it also promises the more elusive, yet-to-be prospect of success itself, embodied most vividly and blatantly by the stars it churns out as the human end-products of its capitalist mode of production. It is therefore unsurprising, though ironic in light of Adorno's linking of pleasure to readily achievable ends, that audiences are so preoccupied with stars.

Continued in Part II

The Subject of Pipe Dreams

Posted by moses @ 18:38 • , , , , , • 0 comments


Postmodern approaches to social theory emphasise multiplicity and de-centring, and these themes find their natural articulation in cultural analyses. Such analyses focus on the richness of cultural interaction and the reproduction of identities in non-linear ways, and where they concern themselves with politics and social organisation, they seek to realise this vision of cosmopolitan society—a society consisting of empowered and complex Subjects. Some theorists have even gone so far as to announce that we live in the age of the Subject.

Is this true? The last claim is especially dubious; our everyday experiences are enough to cast serious doubt on it. There are structural and physical limitations that ensure that Subject-Object relations continue to exist in force and often dominate the social terrain. Thus, trying to establish the existence or even plausibility of pure Subject-Subject relations in mass society amounts, at least under present conditions, to an exercise in wishful thinking.

Such limitations can be observed most clearly in political processes. Indeed, politics may be said to define these limitations insofar as it is considered as the necessary framework of social organisation. Politics, therefore, exercises a restrictive rule on the freedom and the pure reciprocity that would give rise to a society consisting only of relations between empowered Subjects.

The agents that enforce this rule are institutions. Institutions impose their decisions on Subjects in non-negotiable ways, and this happens every day in processes of governance. Democracy and dialogue fade away when individuals are faced with institutional decisions made under the guise of systemic necessity. Dreamers might continue to insist on the democratic possibility of changing such outcomes, but as Marx said, "Between equal rights force decides."

The will of individuals as Subjects and systemic concerns (as they are treated by institutions) are thereby locked in a Hegelian moral opposition—the dialectic is a forceful one. Even Subjects with dialogic aspirations for society need to be able to resort to confrontation in order to assert themselves in reforming or recreating institutions to carry out the vision of a cosmopolitan society.

It is no wonder, then, that non-violence and compliance are attributes that are often considered highly desirable, if not the most desirable, in liberal democracies—institutions may depend upon them to survive when there is potential conflict with the will of the demos, the collective body of Subjects.

Hence, democracy as an ideal exists only in its immutable form in a theoretical revolutionary moment, when the will of the demos is able to assert itself without institutional restriction. Echoing the structuralist critique of the metaphysics of presence, the ideal of democracy is not actually present in everyday procedures of governance and planning. There is typically only the reality of individuals acting as economic units under systems that often vaguely recognise their status as free and equal beings.

What about dialogue? Is there more that can be said about it? Indeed, the critique of dialogical interaction can be expanded from an institutional focus to the relations between Subjects within the demos or the public sphere itself. Some of these relations are no doubt power relations, but the existence of Subject-Object relations can be established beyond the influence of power and as the product of necessity as well. Once we move from small-scale interpersonal relations to mass society, it becomes difficult to avoid the constitution of Subject-Object relations. Mass communication is inherently objectifying because it is depersonalised—in addressing a mass of individuals, Subjects communicate without the ability to recognise particular and distinct Subjects as the recipients of their messages. As such, they must necessarily generalise about and even essentialise their audience, moulding the latter's image according to their messages. While dialogue is possible, it is nevertheless unable create a public sphere consisting of Subject-Subject relations as long as the whole of the mass is considered. The conversation will not be able to take into account every individual in his/her full complexity as a Subject; nor will it empower every Subject by allowing his/her unique voice to be heard fully.

So where does this leave postmodern approaches that try to construct a rhizomatic web of non-essentialising relations between Subjects? The pessimistic answer is "Nowhere"—there will always be Subject-Object relations and they will continue to have great relevance in social organisation. However, to give a more optimistic assessment, postmodernists may take a cue from modernist approaches and seek to address the actual existence of centres, instead of pretending that the Subject has got the better of them. Otherwise, like the proverbial ostrich, they can only make themselves more vulnerable to objectifying processes.

On the relative unimportance of the relativity of truth

Posted by moses @ 18:02 • , , , • 0 comments


I wonder how often the pronouncement that "It's all relative anyway" is accompanied by the knowledge of why exactly that is so. Perhaps utterance without precise understanding is somewhat apt within a relativist paradigm. In any case, it would certainly be apt to draw upon one philosophical tradition, which grounds beliefs on a particular theoretical basis, in order to explain and mitigate the notion that truth is relative. Hence, I want to look at structuralism and its take on the crisis of foundationalism.

The structuralist critique of foundationalism and the metaphysics of presence revolves around the arbitrariness of the link between the signifier and the signified. Essentially, it denies that inherent ideas or mental states accompany the utterance of words such as to supply the words with fixed and unmistakeable meanings. The arbitrary nature of the signifier/signified connection, however, does not imply that individuals simply decide what they mean when they say something. Meanings are decided, subject to perpetual change, through the relations of words with one another, governed by principles that constitute a language (by which I mean langue or a system of signification) and that are beyond the simple agency of individuals.

The implication is that truth claims are problematic insofar as the instability and arbitrariness of meaning make the communication of claims about objective or universal truths impossible—meanings and the truths they are supposed to convey do not necessarily translate from language to language or, depending on which philosopher you are reading, between communities that speak different languages based on the respective forms of life that characterise them. And if thought is a form of internal communication insofar as it is constructed linguistically, then it seems to follow that it is impossible to apprehend objective truths that must by nature correspond perfectly in the minds of all individuals.

Thus, there appears to be two aspects to the problem, one communicative and the other epistemological. In downplaying the practical implications of relativism, I will focus on the communicative aspect as it seems more directly applicable to our everyday lives. This seems, at any rate, appropriate in view of the linguistic orientation of the structuralist critique. Moreover, communication that is not crippled by relativism may help address the epistemological dimension to the problem, so it might be useful to deal with the communicative aspect first.

What indications are there that meanings are not hopelessly relative and mutually unintelligible when we communicate with each other? For one, there is the interesting fact that individuals who may be regarded as belonging to different communities are capable of being ‘on the same page’ while communicating to each other, even when they are making truth claims. This may be attributed on a broader level to experiences that are common to all human beings, which may, for example, make certain ethical propositions more or less universally acceptable. Even if we were to narrow down the scope of our analysis, we would find that shared experiences that constitute what is called ‘intersubjectivity’ do not permit us to neatly categorise people into distinct communities that draw on exclusive pools of meanings. We often share experiences with one another and thereby establish common grounds of shared meanings that cut across all divisions that traditionally delineate communities.

As part of our daily experience, communication in turn helps us find and perpetuate such common grounds. The act of communicating the structuralist critique of foundationalism itself presupposes shared meanings that are communicated in an effort to create a larger common ground with a potentially vast group of individuals from a range of different communities. Hence, intersubjectivity is arguably an inevitable outcome of communication.

This suggests that even if the epistemological side of the problem proves intractable, even if we can never really know whether objective truths exist, we can get by pretty well without being mutually unintelligible to an extent that cripples communication. And part of our process of getting by would undoubtedly involve having beliefs in ‘objective’ truths that we share with others who are able to empathise with the reasons for those beliefs.

Furthermore, communication can help us to come to know more about objective truths through processes of discourse, as theorists of communicative rationality might argue. In this sense, as I have mentioned earlier, the communicative aspect may be said to precede the epistemological.

Most importantly, however, the fact that we are able to communicate with a diverse range of individuals from different communities means that the relativity of truth, whether it is itself objectively true, is almost irrelevant to our daily practices in a modern liberal society. And in times when the notion of multiculturalism is under sustained attack, it reminds us that there is likely no water-tight philosophical reason for not being able to coexist and communicate with each other.