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Frankfurt school is not a place
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It is a school of thought
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It is a group of similar theories that focus on the same topic
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The scholars that made up the Frankfurt school were all directly, or
indirectly associated with a place called the Institute of Social
Research
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The nickname of the thinkers, originates in the location of the institute,
Frankfurt Germany
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The "Frankfurt
School
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Prominent theorists within this school of thought are: Max Horkheimer,T.W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Lowenthal, and Erich Fromm
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Each of these philosophers believed, and shared Karl Marx’s theory of
Historical Materialism
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Each member of the Frankfurt school
adjusted Marxism with his additions, or "fix“.
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Then, they used the "fixed" Marxist theory as a measure modern
society needed to meet
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These ideas came to be known as "Critical Theory"
Note: Remember Marxist
Theory
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Argues that hierarchical class system is at the
root of all social problems and must be ended by a revolution of the workers.
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Dominant classes directly control the means of
production (labor, factories and land), which is called the base of society.
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Rulling classes also control the culture, which is
called the superstructure of society. Therefore, the dominant ideology of a
society is the ideology of rulling class.
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Base: the means of production
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Superstructure: a society’s culture
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Ideology: ideas present in a culture that mislead average people and
encourage them to act against their own interests
The Neo-Marxist Approach: Frankfurt School
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The Marxist approach to the media studies
developed in parallel with the functionalist approach. It is best characterized
by the work of the Frankfurt
School
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The school was concerned with developing a revolutionary, philosophical
variant of Western Marxism, opposed to capitalism in the west and Stalinism in
the East, which came to be called critical theory.
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In 1930s when Hitler came to power, the
Institute was forced to leave Germany
for New York
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In 1953 it was re-established in Frankfurt .
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Adorno and Horkheimer developed a Marxist
sociological approach to media studies. They saw the media as a cultural industry that maintained power relations and served to lessen the
‘resistance standards’ of cultural aesthetics by popularizing certain types of
culture.
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They produced some of the first accounts within critical social theory
of the importance of mass culture and communication in social reproduction and
domination.
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They generated one of the first ,modes of a critical cultural studies
that analyzes the processes of cultural production and political economy, the
politics of cultural texts, and audience reception and use of cultural
artifacts (Kellner 1989 and 1995)
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Frankfurt school developed a critical and
transdisciplinary approach to cultural studies and communications studies, combining
political economy, textual analysis, and analysis of social and ideological
effects
The contribution of
the Frankfurt School
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Frankfurt school made historical materialism a
centerpiece in social theory
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It forced Marxist ideology to broaden its scope
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While Marx said, "This is historical materialism, and this is what
it does”
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The Frankfurt
School
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The Frankfurt school also had it’s own
effects on philosophy as a whole
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It affected philosophy by preserving the notion of meta-analysis of society
through its economic, political, and social systems
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It introduced the notion of social philosophy and made theory part of
everyday practice by "mixing" philosophical problems, and empirical
problems
See: One Dimensional man / Herbert Marcuse
See: One Dimensional man / Herbert Marcuse