Theme 2: Critical media studies. (After Seminar)

  Both Lecture and Seminar concerning the second theme were quite interesting, thanks to both stay clear the idea that Adorno & Horkheimer and Benjamin wanted to transmit with your texts. Understanding the context and the cultural situation in which the text was written is critical in order to understand the intentions of the authors, and thanks to this idea became easier to achieve understand the idea that these authors wanted to express. For example in the case of Benjamin is important to understand that he is a Jewish philosopher pursued by the Germans at the time he wrote this text in 1936, shortly before the start of the Second World War, in order to understand the cultural situation to which he is referring in his texts. It is also important to understand how in the case of Benjamin’s  ideals had different changes since starting with ideals of Jewish theology and then base their texts on Marxist ideals, due to various circumstances which he lived.

  Another issue that I am more clear about it, is the concept of nominalism, which aims to make understand how two objects of the same name have nothing in common but the name. Thus if we have two chairs, they can have the same name but are not considered to be the same object, I just grouped them under the same name, which was given to me by culture and society. From a nominalist view, generalize objects allows you questioning the world, and not only adapt and accept the worldview that you already have. However according to the readings and discussed in seminars, have an extreme nominalist ideology makes that do not exist a structure because nothing can be generalized. We cannot have a change if we accept things as they are presented to us.

   The above concept is also related to the Enlightenment, which according to the understood texts, intended to free humanity from fear of the unknown and eliminates the world of magic to supplant them with knowledge. However, the Enlightenment not only brought development of societies but also consequences. While it brought whit it scientific revolution, creating industries and technologies, emerged consequences for society as were poor living conditions in industries and wars. In the seminar we also talked about industrial culture and how Adorno and Horkhermer see it, authors were disagreed with this culture despite being a product of the Enlightenment. According to these authors the art produced in the industrial culture is not what is known as art, but are now mere products of capitalism. On the other hand if we compare the texts of Benjamin and Adorno and Horkhermer you can see how Benjamin is expressed more optimism and Horkhermer Adorno, in particular as regards the power it possesses culture as a revolutionary potential.

 At the end of the seminar, we discuss the concept of aestheticized politics, we discussed about what this means and how it emerged as a result of Enlightenment and lead  to movements like fascism and Nazism. Finally we ended the seminar the following question: today we can still see these concepts in any culture? I believe that globally, in many systems of government still exists aestheticized politics and the greatest example I can give of this is in my country, Venezuela. Currently Venezuelans live under a government that relies on the support of the media to show society "good conditions" under which we are living, and the progress being made with the current government. This is achieved by showing only a small part of reality through the media which are censored and controlled by the government, preventing Venezuelans know about the sad reality in which we are living.