Power shapes the way in which we live our lives. The enactment and resistance of power generates forms of behaviour that can be liberating and oppressive. Critical theory seeks to move away from the removed philosophical position of simply observing society and, instead, pursue a more practical purpose in changing it: to liberate the oppressed. In order to do this effectively, it is accepted that critical theory should adapt throughout history to best analyse a world which is constantly shifting.
In this essay, I argue that an analysis of power through the Foucauldian theory (i.e. that of power as a dynamic and transformational action, rather than an objective, static unit which is possessed or achieved) in an historical context is fundamental to critical theory and the emancipation of marginalised groups. Different axes of oppression – race, gender, class, disability, etc. – operate in so that, in any given situation, an individual from a marginalised group may exercise more power than that of another individual in the very same group. In this way, the analysis of how (and where) power is exercised is crucial to critical thinking.
From its origins in the Frankfurt School – a group of Jewish German social theorists, whom have been both influential in and criticised for their approach – critical theory has evolved from a relatively narrow critique of culture and class to a broader process used to address pedagogy and a diversity of oppressions. In particular, the Frankfurt School were criticised for not offering any solutions to the problems they raised – in this essay, I explore ways in which subsequent critical theorists attempt to bridge the gaps the original theorists left behind.
The Frankfurt School responded to the increasingly hostile environment of Hitler’s Germany and the advancement of the ideology of capitalism in their host country of exile, America, by coining the mass production of TV, film, music and literature the ‘culture industry’. In their view, culture had become homogenised – art and literature was being produced on a mass scale and was more readily and widely accessible to the masses than it ever had been. To them, creativity was being stifled by standardization: “Culture today is infecting everything with sameness.” (Horkheimer, Adorno, find year Dialectic of Englightenment) They argued that society had taken on a routine of passive engagement with mass-produced, homogenous leisure activities, which, in turn, devalued ‘high art’ and simultaneously turned language and music “into an appendage of advertisements and consumerism” [cite].
The seamless integration of the culture industry with capitalist ideology deeply concerned the Frankfurt School (be more specific with which theorists?): the manner in which music was used as background noise and language simplified to meaningless rhetoric in advertisements to further a consumerist agenda held sinister overtones. To this end, the culture industry had become a tool of manipulation and a means of social control. Images of the same depictions of large houses, clear skin, fancy cars, well-groomed appearances, dripping wealth – were neatly packaged up and ‘sold’ to the public as the ‘American Dream’, something to desire and aspire to. By creating false needs in this way, the working classes were kept passive and diverted from any revolutionary thoughts that might serve to destabilise the economic structures of capitalism, which relies on the existence and exploitation of inequality. Horkheimer and Adorno describe this as “the culture industry: enlightenment as mass deception” [find year: Dialectic of Enlightenment].
Not only did capitalism provide false needs, according to the Frankfurt School – equally, it controlled the gratification of them, providing the products that the working classes now believed they needed. This generated a ‘false freedom’: a belief that one was free to choose, when in fact the selection of choice was already pre-determined by the institutions that created it. Marcuse describes this as a ‘false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood … it becomes a way of life’ (1964); a routine develops, and the ideology of capitalism becomes embedded in day-to-day life. The consumerist complicity of the working classes served to stabilise contemporary capitalism, and conform to the capitalist institutions in America, and the fascist government in Germany, Horkheimer (check?) believed.
Hauntingly, Marcuse describes the mass media as defining the terms in which we view the world [cite, Marcuse in Bennett 1982: 44] and thus the ways in which we take part in it. The implications of this are vast and sinister, seen to devastating effect throughout Hitler’s reign of violent genocide, carried out by fellow German citizens. Through the culture industry we are delivered messages on how we ought to live our lives, what we should value and what we should resist. In the UK today, we can observe how this plays out in a contemporary society: regularly, front page news (owned by wealthy businessmen, often with a political investment) plays on an insider/outsider (i.e. those who comply, and those who don’t) dynamic. Ways in which different groups exercise their power are policed by the media in terms of how people outside of those groups should respond to their exercising of power. Repeatedly, the Black Lives Matter movement is stereotyped as violent, thuggish, antisocial. Refugees are demonised as ‘illegals’, flooding the country. The ways in which women dress or behave are placed under moral judgment. Poor and disabled benefits claimants are tarred with a social stigma of ‘fakers’, ‘scroungers’, ‘burdens on the state’. The Muslim community is scapegoated as a hotbed of terrorism and terrorist sympathisers.
The lens through which the media encourages us to look initiates a foundation of social acceptance that legitimises other structural inequalities to occur. Judicial persecution (for example, of the black community) increases (stats) the risk of imprisonment and death by (stats) and disabled people are put under intrusive observation through distressing assessments in order to receive their benefits. The impact of the media in influencing and perpetuating social inequalities is glaring.
In this instance, the Frankfurt School’s model of critical theory is lacking. Its singular focus on the economic structures of power on class does not address other inequalities. Shirley Steinberg and Joe Kincheloe describe the necessity for a contemporary approach to critical thinking, “one that is more sensitive to modes of domination that involve race and gender and to the complexity of lived experience than in the Frankfurt School’s original articulation of the notion in the 1920s in Germany”( year) . They propose a critical theory that ‘analyses competing power interests among groups and individuals within a society, identifying who gains and who loses in specific situations’ (p143, year). This more intricate and intersectional approach to analysing power can provide a better understanding of what external forces may be interacting with individuals’ lives, such that they are prevented from shaping their own lives with autonomy. In exposing these forces, an emancipatory process can begin. Crucially, although they call for a more diverse critical theory than that of the Frankfurt School, Steinberg and Kincheloe argue that “economic factors can never be separated from other axes of oppression” (p143, year); class oppression is not to be ignored, nor is it to take ‘precedence over all other modes of oppression’ (p144, year). This would likely not affront Marcuse, Horkheimer et al; the Frankfurt School themselves emphasised the need for critical theory to adapt to the historical context it is developed in. Steinberg and Kincheloe sum this up nicely:
‘Critical theory demands an engagement with the suffering of the people of the lived world, with the moral dilemmas that face us in the complexity of everyday life. … It was developed to disrupt, to challenge, and to promote moral action. To accomplish these daunting tasks it must be reinvented and reformulated for every new generation.’ P.149
Similarly, Johanna Meehan describes Amy Allen’s approach to feminist theory and feminist power as necessarily including ‘an account of empowerment and resistance, the kind of power agents can experience and exercise despite the domination of others’ (p381, 2004). On describing Allen, Meehan notes that power always involves both possibilities of domination and empowerment, ‘for at the moment it constrains, it also enables’ (p378, 2004).
Originally published 15.10.2019