Theme 2: Critical media studies

1. Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters.

Before the enlightenment, myths was used to control people who did not have a better judgement. Enlightenment got rid of myths and superstition and made room for knowledge. Enlightenment was considered as true knowledge in the sense of quantitative, objective and measurable science. 

2. Dialectic is a method of argument when seeking to resolve differences.

It is the way two persons conversate when they have different views on a topic. Dialectic is a way of reasoning through arguments to find the truth. 

3. Nominalism is the doctrine that universals or general ideas are mere names without any corresponding reality. Only particular objects exist, and properties, numbers, and sets are merely features of the way of considering the things that exist.

It rejects universals and abstract objects. An abstract object is an object that exists beyond space and time and a universal describes what objects have in common through qualities and characteristics.

They argue how dangerous it can be to use abstractions and universals that is not up to date. With enlightenment new universals have to be formed. 

4. Adorno and Horkheimer's argues that myths arose while trying to explain the existential problems that could not be comprehended.

Myth was something that arose from subjective and individual experiences. This was false knowledge that was spread to control the people who had no better judgement.

The myth embraces superstition and practice rituals and it was considered as knowledge before the enlightenment.

Enlightenment has always regarded anthropomorphism, the projection of subjective properties onto nature, as the basis of myth. The supernatural, spirits and demons, are taken to be reflections of human beings who allow themselves to be frightened by natural phenomena. According to enlightened thinking, the multiplicity of mythical figures can be reduced to a single common denominator, the subject. 

1. In Marxist theory it is proclaimed that our society consists of two layers. The Base which constitutes the Infrastructure/Substructure and also the Superstructure.

The Infrastructure/Substructure comprises the relations of the production, employee conditions and employers with what they produce to survive.

Superstructure includes what is not directly connected to the production. In the society it includes the institutions, culture and political power structures.

The Infrastructure/Substructure determines and controls the Superstructure while the Superstructure often influences the Infrastructure/Substructure. Though the Infrastructure/Substructure dominates the relationship between them.

The Superstructure has been more reactive (slow) than the Substructure. It takes a longer time for the Substructure to influence the Superstructure than vice versa. The changes in the Substructure during the industrialism led to changes in art and culture because of an increased availability of art.

The purpose of analyzing the subject is to seek to understand the basic conditions in terms of capitalist production to predict the future of capitalism,

2. Photography was considered having revolutionary potential because of its technical reproduction of art. It changed the way we interact with art and how we could document our environment. Superstructure can make an impact on the Infrastructure/Substructure and therefore does culture have revolutionary potentials. Adorno and Horkheimer can not see that development will generate revolutionaries. 

3. Historically has our way of perceiving things changed due to different events according Benjamins. He proclaims that sense perception is determined by historical circumstances and not only by nature.

During the enlightenment the humans perceived things in a way that characterized that epok while today we perceive it differently. We are influenced by our society and our environment which will influence our way of reflecting and perceive things.

4. Aura is described as the originality and authenticity of a piece of art that has not yet been reproduced.

A mechanical reproduction of an art piece won’t have the aura as of an original. Benjamin proclaims that there is a glowing area above natural objects but it is of another sort than the one found in the arts.