The Culture Industry

This bachelor thesis wants to address two problems: on the one hand, it strives to provide an overview over the book “Dialectic of Enlightenment” by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer in general and its chapter “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” in particular. On the other hand, this thesis aims at providing the reader with an understanding as to why the two authors came to the conclusion that the culture produced by the “Culture Industry” has a negative impact on human beings. The strategy chosen to solve these two problems is intertwined: in order to understand why the “Culture Industry” negatively impacts human beings, it is necessary to understand every facet of it; from its relationship with power to how this negativity manifests itself in various domains. In order to achieve such a detailed understanding, the text is structured into seven chapters that each focus on one particular aspect of the “Culture Industry”:

• Overview over “Dialectic of Enlightenment”: where general information about the authors, the creation of the book and each chapter is provided
• Overview over the “Culture Industry”: where the idea of the “Culture Industry” is described in more detail
• The Culture Industries Relationship with Totalitarianism and Capitalism: where the works of Adorno and Smythe on the relationship between the “Culture Industry” and fascism and monopoly capitalism are discussed
• The Impact of the “Culture Industry” on Aesthetics: where the effect of the “Culture Industry” on the fundamental concepts of aesthetic are outlined
• Historical and Contemporary Evaluation & Impact: where the points of critique raised by Mrs. Sandkaulen and the “Cultural Marxist” theory are discussed
• The “Culture Industry” in the 21st century: where the work of Amirhosein Khanizaji is used to describe the “Culture Industry” in the 21st century
• Evaluation: where the various arguments brought forward in the previous chapters are being evaluated

In the end, the reader should be able to understand how this negativity is produced, how the negative consequences of the “Culture Industry” look like, how the “Culture Industry” relates to Totalitarianism and Capitalism as well as which form the “Culture Industry” takes on in the 21st century.

Supervisor & Adivsor

• Henri Krop
• Gijs van Oenen