virtualization of design and production a thesis - Bilkent University

ationalizing forces of modernity to generate a critical tension towards it. This
negation is the sole productive entity for a critique of the capitalist reality.
However, there is a masking that conceals this critical thought or even it has
already been diminished giving way to an administered culture rather than a
critical one.
“Culture as a whole has become consumer culture. All
culture is now produced, exchanged and consumed in the
form of commodities. It has therefore lost all oppositional
content and all critical distance from capitalist society with
which it is now totally identified. It is produced on a rational
and exploitative basis and for mass sales, just like any
commodity; it is consumed with alienated social relations. It
is part of the system –an affirmative culture - rather than its
negation. All consumption, but above all cultural
consumption, has become compensatory, integrative and
functional. It offers the illusions of freedom, choice and
pleasure in exchange for the real loss of these qualities
through alienated labor; it integrates people within the
general system of exploitation by encouraging them to define
their identities, desires and interests in terms of possessing
commodities; and it is functional in that consumer culture
offers experiences ideally designed to reproduce workers in
the form of alienated labor” (Slater 121).
When Adorno and Horkheimer propose the concept of ‘culture industry’ their
purpose is to underline that the production of the culture is part of the capitalist
economy, i.e it is a production of commodities (Boradkar 5). In his writings on
mass culture, Adorno provides a theory of the nature of the cultural product and
its valuation at an appropriate level of discourse. For him, films, radio and
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