Critical media studies (Pre-seminar)

Dialectic of Enlightenment:

a) What is "Enlightenment"?

“For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers, and ultimately into one, is illusion”

Enlightenment is an epoch where people came to understand that they were curious creatures who wanted to receive facts and knowledge about the world. All myths and fantasies would be replaced by knowledge and concrete facts. The man’s world was altered by modern science which also led to that human beings became more suspicious about religion and myths existens. To summarize with regarding to the citation, man wants to replace myths and fantasies with knowledge, and everything that is not knowledge or scientifically proved, is in our imagination.  

b) What is "dialectic"?

Dialectic is when two or several people use opposite argumentation towards each other about the same subject or hypothesis. By setting arguments against each other the people which are included in the discussion may gain new insight and understanding about the subject they’re discussing and probably agree on a common or new solution.

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

Nominalism is a term within the metaphysical question and the term contains of two aspects. The only thing that exists in nominalism is the object, for example the human body. The things that do not exist is the qualities, and the things you can not observe with the human body. Therefore, all the abstract qualities, do not exist, according to nominalism.

It is an important concept in the text because enlightenment questions the qualities/objects of being or not being. For example the myths, religion and fantasies, are abract things becasue you cannot see them, and therefore question their existence. The physical objects that you can see (in singularity) eg. a chair, a tree etc do exist.

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

Myths are abstract stories that the enlightenment tries to refute. Before the enlightenment epoch, people turned to myths(like religion) for answers about their existens.

The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity:

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

Superstructure is a term in capitalism that contain propellants beyond the physical construction of the society. Superstructure therefore contains the “environment” of the society such as political and legal intuition, religion, family, media, education etc that also provides the development a society. From a marxist perspective means that these propellants together with a base builds up the society and infrastructure. The base or substructure includes all the “tools” you need to build up a society, such as machines, factories, properties etc. So to speak, the substructure determines the superstructure, and the supertructure supports (financial contribution) the substructure. In the text, I think you can compare superstrucutre with eg. spectators, economy etc. And the substructure is the painting brushes, cameras, sculpting tools etc.  

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?

I think that culture have revolutionary potential. Benjamin writes in his text, for example, that art could be reproduced with lithography. Later on, lithography gets replaced by photography. Later on they realized how fast you could ‘catch’ a moment through the lens, so they started to film the actors movement. And that is how they went from snapshots to capturing moving images. As Benjamin writes it's “the mechanical reproduction of art”, ie. new tools were invented (as the camera) and they could explore the apparatus qualifications.

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).

Benjamin gives an example that the Romans developed a new kind of perception that was different from antiquity due to new art forms emerged. The historically perception is about a cultural change in art. Naturally determined perception is how every human being, individually, interprets the world through their senses. For example, it is likely that I perceive a work of art differently (maybe due to my earlier experiences in life) than another individual perceives it. I think that time and space affects how every individual examines art through their own perspective.

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

Aura is the art's authenticity and unique attachment to time and place. Therefore I think, that reproduction of art, loses its aura, because you can not associate it to a particular time and place. On the other hand, I think that both natural objects and art objects have an aura depending on how the spectator experiences the object.