Fetishism and Pseudo-Individuality in the Dialectic of Enlightenment

Authors

  • Fábio César da Silva Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais

Keywords:

fetishism, fetishism of the cultural commodity, pseudo-individuality, culture industry

Abstract

This paper aims at establishing an interrelation between the fetishism of the culture commodity and its Freudian cultural matrix linked to the culture industry as exposed in the Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) by T. W. Adorno and M. Horkheimer. In that work, this interrelationship is evidenced through the use of the term pseudo-individuality, which is understood as the hypothesis of the subject’s impossibility to have genuine aesthetic experiences. For the authors, the explanation of this hypothesis is that the lack of a formation of a strong, mature psyche, which could counteract the suggestions given by the culture industry, building up in this manner a conditioning and totalizing acculturation based on standardization of cultural values with the aim of exchange values.

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Published

2016-02-16

How to Cite

da Silva, F. C. (2016). Fetishism and Pseudo-Individuality in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. Constelaciones. Revista De Teoría Crítica, 4(4), 178–206. Retrieved from https://constelaciones-rtc.net/article/view/786