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A Critical Theory of CreativityErnst Bloch and Utopian Critical Theory

A Critical Theory of Creativity: Ernst Bloch and Utopian Critical Theory [Critical theory has a reputation for hostility towards popular culture. This is not wholly undeserved. According to Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer, popular culture was repetitive, formulaic and mind numbing — mass-produced for consumption like any other industrial product. It was, in their majestically dismissive expression, ‘mere twaddle’. 1 Their objections to popular culture, however, were not simply qualitative; they were also ideological. According to the Frankfurt theorists, popular culture was not the culture of the people; it was in fact imposed upon them in a class society. In this way, popular cultural forms were ideologically loaded by those who owned the means of cultural production in order to make capitalism appear both natural and inevitable. 2 So popular culture, instead of articulating the genuine interests, ideals and values of a people, was, in fact ‘their master’s voice’. 3 If Adorno and Horkheimer are correct, then so much of Utopian thinking on the function of popular culture is under threat: it cannot be accepted as serving as any credible, authentic kind of Blochian ‘wishful image’ in the mirror. 4 On the contrary, we might have to agree instead with Adorno that in popular culture, the audience is ‘not its subject, but its object’. 5] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Critical Theory of CreativityErnst Bloch and Utopian Critical Theory

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References (6)

Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2015
ISBN
978-1-349-68579-0
Pages
29 –43
DOI
10.1057/9781137446176_3
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Critical theory has a reputation for hostility towards popular culture. This is not wholly undeserved. According to Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer, popular culture was repetitive, formulaic and mind numbing — mass-produced for consumption like any other industrial product. It was, in their majestically dismissive expression, ‘mere twaddle’. 1 Their objections to popular culture, however, were not simply qualitative; they were also ideological. According to the Frankfurt theorists, popular culture was not the culture of the people; it was in fact imposed upon them in a class society. In this way, popular cultural forms were ideologically loaded by those who owned the means of cultural production in order to make capitalism appear both natural and inevitable. 2 So popular culture, instead of articulating the genuine interests, ideals and values of a people, was, in fact ‘their master’s voice’. 3 If Adorno and Horkheimer are correct, then so much of Utopian thinking on the function of popular culture is under threat: it cannot be accepted as serving as any credible, authentic kind of Blochian ‘wishful image’ in the mirror. 4 On the contrary, we might have to agree instead with Adorno that in popular culture, the audience is ‘not its subject, but its object’. 5]

Published: Dec 18, 2015

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