In the introduction to David Held’s accomplished 1980 book, Introduction to Critical Theory, Horkheimer to Habermas he begins thus: ‘The writings of what may loosely refer to as a “school” of Western Marxism – critical theory – caught the imagination of students and intellectuals in the 1960s and early 1970s’. In the initial parts of the introduction Held continues to refer to the ‘school’ and then the ‘Frankfurt School’ in inverted commas before further stating:
The membership is often referred to as the Frankfurt School. But the label is a misleading one; for the work of the Institute’s members did not always form a series of tightly woven, complementary projects. To the extent that one can legitimately talk of a school, it is only with reference to Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Lowenthal and Pollock – and it is for these five men that I have reserved the term ‘Frankfurt School’. When referring to the Institute of Social Research, however, I include all those affiliated to the Institute.
The title of this present collection of essays Revisiting the Frankfurt School attempts to capture a part of that reality and the complexity concerning the thinkers either directly involved or associated (loosely or otherwise) with the ‘school’. Writers featured in this edition are also those detailed above by Held as central figures to the school such as Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Leo Lowenthal and includes others closely associated with the school such as Jürgen Habermas and Erich Fromm, others in the ‘outer-circle’ as Held argues, such as Walter Benjamin and one who perhaps is on the far reaches of the school, Siegfried Kracauer. One other important writer introduced in this edition is Hans Magnus Enzensberger, not normally directly associated with the school or in the outer-circle or far reaches but nevertheless considered by some to be a part of the generation of thinkers associated with the school. There is one further additional writer introduced in this edition which is Dallas Smythe as way of comparison of ideas with Theodor Adorno.
One particular reason for revisiting the school in the context of culture and media is to provide an opportunity for readers to view the field in a wider rather than a narrowly defined context. It’s not unusual to think in terms of a small rather than wider number of writers when the Frankfurt School is mentioned and here I am thinking of Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Benjamin. The concept commonly associated with school is the ‘culture industry’ detailed in the chapter titled ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’ in the Dialectic of Enlightenment published in 1947 by Adorno and Horkheimer, although as Habermas wrote in ‘Remarks on the Development of Horkheimer’s Work’ the chapter on the culture industry was the product of Adorno, although Horkheimer referred to the culture industries in 1941 and his writings on culture and reason in the Eclipse of Reason and other texts hardly get a mention in many works related to media communication studies.
It’s also interesting to note that for many students I have taught at university level that they invariably associate the school with the ‘culture industry’ but even more distressing and worrying is the problematic ‘hypodermic needle theory’. The latter has perhaps been the most destructive and effective for both limiting and undermining the ideas associated with the school and its writers. This book has been written in part to offer a broader viewpoint of ideas, whilst at this point of the discussion it’s also worth pointing out to those who associate the hypodermic needle theory with the school that in fact it isn’t or it should not be. To seasoned scholars this will come as no surprise, but the fact remains that this falsehood is passed on to secondary school pupils in their preparation for university life. Some discussions concerning essay projects by school pupils on the Internet confirm this. Furthermore, the Internet is also a perfect vehicle for further advancing such nonsense because it is, as we know, the ultimate shortcut to academic pursuits as demonstrated in this quote linked to a web address including the words ‘media’ and ‘students’:
The Frankfurt school, set up in 1923, were concerned about the possible effects of mass media. They proposed the ‘Effects’ model, which considered society to be composed of isolated individuals who were susceptible to media messages. The Frankfurt school envisioned the media as a hypodermic syringe, and the contents of the media were injected into the thoughts of the audience, who accepted the attitudes, opinions and beliefs expressed by the medium without question.1
To make matters worse, if that’s possible, the author produces a connection with the above to ‘video nasties’ such as Child’s Play 3 and whether it ‘influenced the child killers of Jamie Bulger’. It is perhaps easy for scholars to scoff at such assertions, although not for this one, but the issue for the school in the homogenized form it is presented above, is that at the very least it is guilty by association. Suffice to say, an exploration of the index of this site reveals no direct references to anyone associated with the school. And here is a blog from a student studying Media Studies AS level conveniently titled ‘The Hypodermic Syringe Model’ and posted January 2011:
The hypodermic syringe theory suggests that the media is like a magic bullet and when an audience is targeted it will immediately be knocked down when they are hit. The hypodermic-syringe theory also suggests that society is passive and the media ‘inject’ their media influence into society and manipulates it.2
An American journalist, Vance Packard, wrote The Hidden Persuaders in 1957 and Packard spoke of the hypodermic needle theory. Packard receives a brief, complimentary mention in the introduction to Marcuse’s book One-Dimensional Man, whom Marcuse defends against those who perceived Packard’s analysis as too simplistic. Nevertheless, the simplicity and over-determined essence of the hypodermic model does not comply with Marcuse’s more complex arguments in his book. One Dimensional Man is about conforming and containment of radical resistance (Stuart Hall also spoke of containment of popular cultural forces), but as Douglas Kellner informs us in his introduction to the 1981 edition that Marcuse fully understood and accepted social change and the transformation of capitalism was still possible. Kellner further states that: ‘One-Dimensional Man should be read in relation to Eros and Civilization’ and Marcuse’s An Essay on Liberation and Counterrevolution and Revolt because ‘It is precisely the vision of “what could be” articulated in these texts that highlights the bleakness of “what is” in One-Dimensional Man’ (Kellner’s introduction in Marcuse xxxiii: 1981).
A cursory glance at the title of Marcuse’s introduction of One-Dimensional Man may lead us to believe that hopelessness pervades, titled ‘The Paralysis of Criticism: Society Without Opposition’ and only confirm the hypotheses of the hypodermic needle theory. But on further reading this is far from the truth, already detailed by Kellner but confirmed by Marcuse where he details contradictory tensions and dialectical struggles rather than one-way domination which forces subjects to become victims of their own submissions. Marcuse speaks of ‘ambiguities’:
One-Dimensional Man will vacillate throughout between two contradictory hypotheses: (1) that advanced industrial society is capable of containing qualitative change for the foreseeable future; (2) that forces and tendencies exist that may break this containment and explode the society. I do not think that a clear answer can be given. Both tendencies are there, side by side – and even the one in the other (Marcuse xlvii: 1981).
I’ve used Marcuse here as an example of the argument against the one-dimensional latitudes of the superfluous hypodermic needle theory. To the extent that humans could escape the authoritarian character of capitalism, of which Fromm originally spoke of, was very much a matter of degrees concerning the analysis of writers within and associated with the Frankfurt School. Marcuse was hopeful and unsure, Adorno less optimistic as was Horkheimer: Benjamin and for that matter the lesser-known Kracauer saw democratic moments and possibilities of emancipation in elements of cultural production. It’s also arguable, as well as open to interpretation, that Lowenthal would have perceived new media as offering at the very least the opportunity of rebellion. My only desire in this present collection is to open the window a little more than previous on the works of the Frankfurt School and associates.
Chapter 1 begins with a philosophical account of the cultural observations by that lesser-known writer Siegfried Kracauer written by Sanda Miller. The chapter opens with a wonderful quotation by Friedrich Engels on the alienating character of the city and Engels observation of the city as a microcosm of the larger capitalist industrial system. Kracauer in many ways an outsider to the school wrote a collection of essays in his Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays which the chapter focuses on. A number of relevant writers are introduced by way of comparison and reflection to highlight Kracauer’s writings such as Charles Baudelaire and more emphatically Walter Benjamin, the subject of the following chapter, whom Sanda Miller draws comparisons with concerning observations of the ‘everyday’.
The second chapter concerns the comparative figure detailed by Sanda Miller in Chapter 1 and one considered to be on the outer-circle of the Frankfurt School, Walter Benjamin. Alan O’Connor’s chapter is a focused and detailed account of Benjamin in relation to cultural processes, particularly Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and the intellectual field. In his fine analysis Alan O’Connor asks the following question: ‘Is it possible to expand Bourdieu’s notion of class habitus and to develop a picture of Benjamin’s intellectual habitus?’ Alan O’Connor identifies ambiguities in Benjamin’s writings which he further argues reflect inherent contradictions in Benjamin’s class habitus and his political position.
One of the central figures of Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse, is the subject of analysis and assessment in Chapter 3 written by Philip Bounds. The emphasis of the chapter is the philosophical and political process of negationism in a cultural context. Whimsically pre-titled, so-to-speak, as ‘Just Say No’, Philip Bounds sets out to explain Marcuse’s writings on negation as an anti-establishment basis for radical action. Marcuse’s position as a leading figure of the new left in the 1960s is well-known but Philip Bounds argues that negationism remains a viable form of critique and opposition to industrial capitalism on a global scale pointing to the rise of the ‘anti-globalization’ movement in the latter half of the 1990s amongst other movements, which reflect the struggle against ‘containment’ detailed above. As Philip Bounds states consumer societies ‘defuse’ or to reflect the above attempt to contain ‘political resistance’. Negationism in this respect stands in opposition to affirmative culture; the point is to realize it.
In Chapter 4, I attempt to show Max Horkheimer in a new light by discussing his insights on human development and social justice in relation to liberalism (and neo-liberalism) and culture. Whilst Horkheimer was a central figure to the school becoming Director of Social Research Institute in Frankfurt in 1930, he nevertheless published less than his colleagues (including associates) and has to a large extent been neglected on issues concerning culture, which Adorno and Lowenthal were prominent. This chapter therefore attempts to correct that intellectual deficit because Horkheimer produced some very interesting solo intellectual insights into the meaning of culture, and I provide documents to show this not least from the much neglected Eclipse of Reason. The chapter discusses how Max Horkheimer combined Arthur Schopenhauer’s ‘pessimism’ and ‘suffering’ with the ‘materialism’ of Marx which formed the basis of his ideas on critical theory and in this context provides a discussion of the relationship between culture and liberalism further arguing that Max Horkheimer produced often contradictory statements on control and liberation.
In Chapter 5, Robert E. Babe compares one of the leading figures of the Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno with the Canadian born writer Dallas Smythe. The chapter assesses two conceptual frameworks central to both writers. With respect to Adorno the chapter focuses on perhaps one of the most important areas of concern in media communication studies, which is the culture industry, a concept pursued in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, co-authored with Horkheimer. With respect to Smythe, Robert E. Babe discusses work concerning the consciousness industry. In both cases the author proceeds to compare their respective insights in relation to the political economy of media and communication. Robert E. Babe reminds us that Smythe acknowledged that the idea of the consciousness industry originated with Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s who as the author states ‘is generally considered to be a second-generation member of the Frankfurt School’. Hans Magnus Enzensberger is the subject of the following chapter.
Mike Wayne’s chapter introduces readers to the works of Hans Magnus Enzensberger, the originator of the term ‘consciousness industry’, and proceeds to discuss Enzensberger’s works in relation to new media technology. Mike Wayne sets out to show how Enzensberger’s writings allow for a new narrative and assessment of the relationship between ‘technological forces and social relationships’. The aim here is to show that by applying Enzensberger to social phenomena in this way can effectively avoid the technological determinism that is so ‘prevalent amongst liberal media scholars’ as the author argues. Enzensberger isn’t usually included in any detailed discussions in the English speaking world in relation to the Frankfurt School and Mike Wayne reminds readers that generally speaking Enzensberger’s work in relation and comparison to other writers has been largely ignored and marginalized from debate. Mike Wayne shows that Enzensberger’s work on the consciousness industry reveals some of the contradictions in capitalism particularly in relation to control and cultural production.
In Chapter 7, Julian Petley discusses the works of Jürgen Habermas in relation to media and the public sphere. The chapter begins by explaining many of the theoretical problems associated with the idea of public sphere originally forwarded by Habermas but as the chapter proceeds the author highlights how the reformulated public sphere by Habermas can effectively be applied to critically assess the ‘social and political role of the media’. This is important because all too often in academia it is common for writers/models of assessment to fall out of favour, but Julian Petley effectively reminds readers that the public sphere idea (early or later reformulated one) can contribute to theoretical assessments of ‘public service media, public/civic journalism, the media and the public interest, spin and opinion management’. Moreover, there is an assessment of new media and the Internet which has impacted greatly on Habermas’s idea of the public sphere and whether it offers democratic possibilities.
Chapter 8 is an updated version of the work by Hanno Hardt originally titled ‘The Conscience of Society: Leo Lowenthal and Communication Research’ published in 1991 in the Journal of Communication. Here it is extended to reflect both recent historical and contemporary conditions and re-titled ‘The Legacy of Leo Lowenthal: Culture and Communication’. One of the overall reasons for working on this current book is to bring in the associates and outsiders of the Frankfurt School, such as Kracauer, Fromm, Benjamin and Enzensberger and discuss their works and contributions (many neglected) in relation to what has become known as the Frankfurt School. However, it is ironic, to say the very least, that Lowenthal’s work has been largely ignored in media communication studies because he was not a peripheral figure at all, in fact as David Held reminded us above Lowenthal was a central figure to the school. But it is also ironic, that despite the neglect that Hanno Hardt first wrote his work on Lowenthal in 1991 and yet still, people may ask ‘who is he’? This chapter serves as a prod and a reminder.
The final chapter in this book is written by Caroline Kamau and is a welcome assessment of the work of Erich Fromm, the social psychologist and psychoanalyst whom, as the author reminds at the very beginning of the chapter, was introduced to Max Horkheimer by the subject of the previous chapter, Leo Lowenthal. Fromm joined the Institute in 1928 but occupied a space somewhere between the school’s central figures and periphery. Caroline Kamau discusses the tensions between Fromm and other Frankfurt members, in particular Horkheimer and Adorno, over Freudian psychoanalysis of which Fromm was critical. This chapter is a welcome reminder of Fromm’s work concerning the ‘authoritarian personality’ and his influence over the school in this area. As Caroline Kamau reminds us ‘many agree that Fromm was responsible for pioneering work on the authoritarian personality’, but yet in media communication studies it is Adorno who is largely credited with this conceptual idea. This chapter offers fresh insights to Fromm’s works in relation to culture, consumerism and media.
1 http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/pph9701.html – See also the student room http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=465072 where confusion reigns, despite a few students believing they have identified the real source, which they had.
2 http://serenabarnes.blogspot.com/2011/01/hypodermic-syringe-theory.html.