Comunicar 39-ingles - Revista Comunicar

103so-called «negativity» as the critical impulse that movesthe Enlightenment, emphasizing the critical aspect thatmotivates change and social transformation. This,there fore, ensures the exercise of a critical dialectic: amethod of seeking the truth from the dialogue, inwhich a concept is confronted with its opposite (thesisand antithesis), to then achieve the synthesis.Part of the investigative work of this school is psycho-sociological,the integration of the individual insociety and the cultural impact of commercial life. Thefunny thing is that some of these studies, conducted byMax Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno, were madeunder the aegis of North American capitalists, as thefollowing quote testifies: «In1937 (Lazarfeld) instructsAdorno in his research as partof the Princeton RadioResearch Project (ColumbiaUniversity) into music and itseffect through radio broadcasting.It gives rise to the publicationin 1938 of an article onthe fetishistic nature of musicand the regression of hearing.The public are subject to thecriteria of commercial radioand the interests of recordcompanies, individual musicaltaste regresses to infantilism.These ideas contradicted theinterests of the industry (whofinanced the research), whichsees in Adorno’s ideas a certainideological criticism»(Igartúa & Humanes, 2004:121).Following these studies, Horkheimer and Adornocoined the term «Cultural Industry» (1944; 1947) 5 torefer to all symbolic production that standardizes massculture, provoking social disequilibrium.Adorno and Horkheimer sustain that media production(films, radio and print media) aims to ideologizeand homogenize content and preferences to cultivatetastes and necessities, and undermine the audience’sability to discern. This kind of cultural productwas meant to be consumed quickly in a distractedway, limiting mental discernment and breeding dominationpatterns.One of the fundamental aspects of this theoreticalposture is to promote a critical attitude that deals withmedia culture and influences scientific production, inconsonance with the Marxist proposal for the reorganizationof society. Much of the Frankfurt’s Schoolwork is developed between World War I and II,which justifies the sense of its sociopolitical orientation.According to the theories of the Frankfurt School,the cultural industry creates an economic system that isconcentrated, identical and standardized, and consolidatedby the so-called «technical rationality». Thisrationality leads to the manipulation and obliteration ofthe citizen’s critical reflection that negotiates the culturalindustry repertoires.Igartua and Humanes (2004) say that in technocraticsocieties, what is rational (formal rationality:To install or promote a critical attitude in the case ofeducommunication requires identifying the political approachof the cultural industry and the communication process; thisrequires constant questioning of the transparency of mediamessages and proposing the creation/ formation of theindependent citizen who is inquisitive and creative. It is nocoincidence that many educommunicative experiences inLatin America, especially those described by Mario Kaplun,were at one time or another performed clandestinely dueto the military dictatorships prior to the 1980s.adaptation of the media to the ends) dominates reason(substantive rationality: actions are performed takinginto account a series of values). At the same time technicalrationality offers more possibilities for control andcreates a one-dimensional society (Marcuse, 1993) inwhich individuals are considered defenseless. Criticalreflection thus transforms itself into the main tool usedto survive market and mass culture impositions. This isprecisely its main communicational strategy.2. Critical nature and educommunicationIt could be said that critical theory provides educommunicationwith perspectives, bases on which toreflect on the media, which materialize in a critical readingpattern. These are conceived as methodologicaltools of the critical subject dimension, according to theComunicar, 39, XX, 2012© ISSN: 1134-3478 • e-ISSN: 1988-3293• Pages 101-108