Pseudoindividualidade e indústria cultural em Theodor W. Adorno

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to investigate the correlation between pseudo-individualization and culture industry in Theodor W. Adorno, based on the elucidation of the aesthetic and philosophical analyses of the Frankfurt philosopher. In order to do that, the cultural and socioeconomic scenarios that culminated in the hypothesis of the individual's denial and the current failure of the subject's own category will be examined. In this sense, I intend to demonstrate how the absence of the ability to judge unfolds in the context of production and reception of cultural goods under the aegis of capitalism and the propagandistic dimension of the media, based on the concept of culture industry developed by Adorno together with Max Horkheimer mainly in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. Pseudo-individualization, taken as an idea of the successful reification that the consumption of cultural goods introduced, will be analyzed along Adornian aesthetic theories and philosophy of art, bearing in mind the supposed impossibility of the individual to genuinely experiment aesthetic experiences. It will also be necessary to explain, given the illusion of autonomy and the inability to choose, how pseudo-individualization develops due to the standardization of production and reception of cultural goods, from his work The Theory of Half-Education. It is noteworthy that the importance of the present work is not limited to the context in which Adorno developed the notion of culture industry, but also it has distinct and profound consequences for the current conjecture, characterized by the existence of individuals who, despite being increasingly exalted and adulated, inertly observe their suppression as subjects, far removed from the necessary capacity to reflect on the motivations of their aesthetic, artistic and political choices. As the only hope for progress for the pseudo-individual and for pseudo-culture, the historical processes of semi-formation established by the imperatives of the capitalist system and the culture industry must be denounced, in which, on the one hand, the isolation of authentic works of art is observed, that enables the necessary criticism of society, and, on the other hand, there is the wide predominance of reified cultural productions that represent the perpetual maintenance of the current stage of the masses.