Postmodern thinkers

Question 1

What is Baudrillard’s theory of hyper-reality?

Answer 1

• A world that is more “real” than real.
• Those inhabiting it are obsessed with timelessness, perfection and objectification of the self.
• Authenticity has been replaced by a copy and nothing is “real”.
• Those engaged in the illusion are incapable of seeing it.
• Instead of having experiences, people observe spectacles via real or metaphorical control screens.
• Instead of the real, we have simulation and simulacra.

Question 2

What is Adorno’s theory of ‘culture industry’?

Answer 2

• Argued capitalism fed people with products of a ‘culture industry’ - the opposite of ‘true’ art - to keep them passively satisfied and politically apathetic.
• Suggested that culture industries churn out a debased mass of unsophisticated, sentimental products which have replaced the more ‘difficult’ and critical art forms which might lead people to actually question social life.

Question 3

What is Adorno’s theory of false needs?

Answer 3

• False needs are cultivated in people by the culture industries.
• Can be created and satisfied by the capitalist system, and which replace people’s ‘true’ needs.]
  E.g freedom, full expression of human potential and creativity, genuine creative happiness.

Question 4

According to Adorno, we live in a completely commodified society. Why is this?

Answer 4

• The world of today is a place of nothing new.
• Instead, society spends it’s time packaging and repackaging, in diff formats, elements of the culture industry.
• It’s niche-making in which no person can not slip in between.
• Everyone is accommodated in the pre-formed facets of a completely commodified society.