Theme 2: Critical media studies (before)

1. Dialectic of Enlightenment

 a. What is "Enlightenment"?

Enlightenment had the aim to overrun fantasy and myths with knowledge. Enlightenment is advanced thoughts, power and totalitarian. It is knowledge about the world and was used to enlighten people and change myths and as well liberating people from fear and instead make them masters. To take away injustice of the old inequality and fear, enlightenment relates all things that exist to all other things.

b. What is "dialectic"?

Dialectic is the art of investigating and discussing the truth of opinions. Since knowledge is perception, one has to investigate which experience is the most truthful, but also investigate all opinions that are not.

c. What is "nominalism" and why is it an important concept in the text?

Nominalism is a way of thinking regarding physical things and abstract things. The physical things or objects exist and the abstract things do not. It preserves what we can see and is not questioning it. It also destroys myths which make it a bit easier for people to understand the world. It is important in the text because it is explained both to be good (enlightenment) and also to be a bad thing (not questioning the society and if things are right/wrong).

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

Myths were made up so that there could be clarification to the people about things that couldn’t be explained. The stories took place because of fear of the things that were unknown.

2. "The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductively"

a. 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" means in this context and what is the point of analyzing cultural production from a Marxist perspective?

Superstructure is an ideology production of culture and religion (like concepts and laws etc.). This structure changes more slowly. Substructure is the general production of economy and politics. It defines the society and the future. The point of analyzing those two structures is that they depend on each other and how people behave.

b. 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?

Yes culture has revolutionary potentials. He thinks for example that photography can change the society in a revolutionary way. The perspective of Adorno & Horkheimer differs a bit because they think that technology has revolutionary potentials rather than cultural ways.

c. 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).

It means that this perception can be affected by historical phenomena that people have experienced or only naturally that it is shown. The perception is determined not only by how things are seen but also what historical things have happened in people’s lives. An example he brings up is the roman art and how people got new and changed ways of seeing art.   

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

By aura Benjamin means the unique part of objects in the moment. Natural objects have shadows, reflections and other things because of distance and space creating an aura. While art objects like pictures differ from natural objects because they can’t have the same aura, they are not unique anymore since they are reproduced.