Adorno And Horkheimer's Perception Of The Cultural Industry

During the interwar period, the school of social and philosophical theory called, The Frankfurt School was present. It consisted of a group of neo-Marxist scholars that believed capitalism within society was not explainable. A well-known member of the Frankfurt School was Theodore Adorno who believed that a dominated culture industry used technology of mass production to have power over society because it served economic interests. The chapeter called The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception depicts Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer's perception on the culture industry. Within this chapter, Adorno and Horkheimer state that capitalistic society's culture industry has betrayed itself by allowing contributory logic to take over
Foucault argues that we live in a society of discipline while Deleuze believes we live in a society of control. According to Michel Focault, if an individual of a country is being governed through society then consequently they are being affected by discourses. A system of discourse is considered a system of representation or knowledge that is treated as the truth (Jenkins, p.121). Foucault argues that knowledge is used through discourses and disciplines to enforce power and ideas of acceptable behaviour and control within society that conditions the way individuals of the society are to behave and what to believe. In a liberal and democratic society that advertises the illusion of freedom it is vital that the population has the ability to determine normal and appropriate social behaviour to be governed through "norms, routines, standards, and classifications" and distinguish authority because governing just as much a mentality as it is laws (Jenkins, p.121). For example, it modern day society, it is illegal not to hire someone because of their race, however, individuals of various race and ethnicity are being discriminated against daily within the working world, possibly intentionally or unintentionally. Regardless of the reason, Foucault's depiction of discourse ties in with the discrimination against various race or ethnicity may accompany the assumption that an individual from a different country may not be qualified or are simply not hired because of the stereotypes that are surrounding that particular race. However, within contemporary society, there has been a large emphasis on making it a point to hire an employee of colour or setting guidelines that each firm should hire a certain amount of employees with varying ethnicities. Therefore, it is possible to question whether this is an account of prejudice since people are being