Back to Frankfurt: Rethinking culture as commodity.

摘要

The dissertation conducts a theoretical inquiry into the effects of commodification upon cultural practices. It argues that the work of the Frankfurt School---particularly Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin---offers valuable conceptual resources for thinking through both the dangers and the opportunities that arise out of the fusion of culture and commodity form in advanced capitalist societies. While Adorno's writings provide a complex framework in which to analyze the limits of commodified mass culture, they are largely unable to make sense of the critical possibilities that remain within it. Consequently, extensive research is conducted into Benjamin's work, focusing upon its much greater capacity for exploring the utopian moments within commodified cultural objects and practices. The dissertation examines his speculative theory of experience in which certain forms of cultural praxis (e.g. dialectical images) may explosively charge and release wishes and dreams that have thus far only achieved petrified expression in the products of industrial capitalism. In short, the juxtapostioning of Benjamin and Adorno makes possible the 'redialecticization' of the culture industry thesis and furnishes an excellent theoretical model for exploring both the utopian and dystopian moments that arise out of culture's commodification.;Conversely, the field of contemporary cultural studies is criticized for its basic failure to explore commodification in any systematic fashion. The roots of this failure are traced to the adoption of structuralism (both Marxist and linguistic) by the Birmingham School as the preeminent mode of theorizing cultural practices. While contemporary cultural studies---notably the work of Lawrence Grossberg---has addressed many of the problems associated with earlier efforts---such as textualism or excessive celebrations of (sub)cultural resistance---it remains unwilling to directly explore the role of the commodity form in culture, as well as engage with critical theory as a relevant form of cultural analysis. The dissertation speculates as to why this conceptual barrier continues to exist and offers some suggestions as to how a more productive relationship between these two traditions might be secured.