Topics in Critical Theory: Culture Industry: Paradoxes of Democratic Mass Culture

The critique of the culture industry is part of a philosophical concern for democracy that is grounded in the diagnosis of a “normative paradox.” A normative paradox arises when a value that initially promised a qualitative gain in freedom tends to become so inverted over time that it opposes such a development. Already early forms of mass culture aroused the suspicion of having realized the egalitarian principle of democracy in a problematic way, namely as homogenization of the masses. The seminar will introduce and discuss the respective tradition of political and aesthetical thought.