「文化」的歷史
- 獨立、抽象的名詞：這個用法自封建貴族階層而來，用來描述十八世紀以來思想、精神與美學發展的一般過程(Process)。
- 獨立的名詞：這個用法自浪漫主義浪潮而來，用來表示一種獨特的生活方式，這種生活方式可以是關於一個民族、一個時期、一個群體、或全體人類的生活方式。
- 獨立抽象的名詞：用來描述有關知性(Intellectual)的作品和活動，尤指藝術方面的，例如音樂、文學、繪畫、與雕刻、戲劇、電影等等。
「文化」的用途
- 封建貴族階級
- 資產階級
- 工人階級
意識形態國家機器
文化工廠：人作為客體和主體的區別
高級文化——異化的體驗
文化作為抵抗的意念
結語
Culture and high culture: destruction or creation?
by Psychic
Shortly after the Russian Revolution in 1923, Trotsky wrote "Literature and Revolution," which influenced Lu Xun's views on literature and also inspired Marxist cultural exploration in the West. One sentence from the book reads, "Every ruling class creates its own culture, and thus creates its own art. There have been Eastern and Greco-Roman slave cultures in history, feudal culture in medieval Europe, and now the bourgeois culture that rules the world."
However, what is culture? Does the current society have a bourgeois culture? Is bourgeois culture a "high culture"? These questions are not easily answered, as "culture" is one of the most complex concepts in English. Gramsci (2007) wrote in "Prison Notes," "Philosophy is inseparable from the history of philosophy, and culture is similarly inseparable from the history of culture. If people do not have a historical perspective, do not recognize the development stages represented by this worldview and the fact that it contradicts other worldviews or their elements, then they cannot become philosophers in the most direct and essential sense." To answer this series of questions and become a philosopher, we should first understand the historical development of the word "culture."
The History of "Culture"
Like other concepts in sociology, the history of the concept of culture began in the Enlightenment era. We can glimpse this history from Raymond Williams' (2015) book "Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society," which traces the evolution of the term from its earliest meaning as a noun indicating a "process" of caring for something, to its derivation from "caring for plants and animals" to "the development of human beings" in the early 16th century. In the 18th century, "culture" began to evolve into two concepts: (1) "civilized and cultivated" and (2) a universal historical view of the Enlightenment period - civilization. During the French Revolution, these two concepts were in tension - one belonging to the feudal aristocracy as "education" and the other as the "spirit of the entire civilization." At the same time, during the Romantic era, Johann Gottfried Herder (1791) suggested that "culture" should be a plural unit, emphasizing national and traditional cultures, including "folk culture" (which includes criticism of the inhumanity of emerging industrial civilization). Until the 19th century, "culture" was considered material, while "civilization" was considered spiritual. In contemporary social science, especially in cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, and archaeology, the meaning of "culture" varies. Archaeology and anthropology often emphasize the "production of cultural material," while sociology and cultural studies emphasize culture as a "signifying" and "symbolic" system.
We can categorize the "methods of defining culture" into three main types:
- Independent and abstract nouns: This usage originated from the feudal aristocracy and is used to describe the general process of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development since the 18th century.
- Independent nouns: This usage originated from the Romantic era and is used to describe a unique way of life that can be about a nation, a period, a group, or the entire human population.
- Independent abstract nouns: Used to describe intellectual works and activities, especially in the arts such as music, literature, painting, sculpture, drama, film, etc.
The third category of usage originates from the first category, according to Williams (2013): "The third usage category appeared later in time, and we cannot be sure of the exact time because it is derived from the concept of a general process involving intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development that has been effectively used and extended to works and activities. 'Process' has become 'artistic progress of culture.'" Language is a set of established concepts and ideas, which includes a worldview (Gramsci, 2005). In contemporary times, these three types of definitions are repeatedly used, begging the question: What kind of worldview does the complex meaning of "culture" represent and what is its purpose?
The Use of "Culture"
The ruling class of society faces the difficult problem of "maintaining ideological unity of the entire social entity" (Gramsci, 2005). The source of this problem is that "when people acquire a worldview, they always adopt the terminology of a particular social group, which is a group of all social members who adopt the same way of thinking and behavior." Gramsci first explained the ideology of an organic social entity under theocracy based on Catholicism: "They strongly feel that all the faithful demand a unified doctrine and strive to prevent the division of the higher intellectual class from the lower one." Gramsci believes that this contradictory integration of social relations is ideology: "'Politics' guarantees the relationship between common sense and high-level philosophy. Just as politics guarantees the relationship between the Catholicism of intellectuals and that of ordinary people." He further pointed out the theocratic cultural form of Catholicism: "There are existing groups of believers between Catholics, and this rift cannot be solved by raising ordinary people to the level of intellectuals (the church has never imagined this task because it is beyond its capability, both ideologically and economically)... They can only give clerics (here referring to priests) strict discipline to prevent them from crossing a certain line and enlarging the rift... The church integrates through mass movements (among which powerful figures will always be created, such as new religious groups centered on Saint Dominic and Saint Francis)." Thus, this forms the theocratic culture of feudal society.
However, during the gradual emergence of capitalism, the culture of divine power could no longer maintain its rule in the form of the past, as the "consensus ideology established between intellectuals and ordinary people" became ineffective. This can be seen in the "rapid collapse of the Roman Church in the face of the religious reform after the Renaissance" and later in the conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism in the "Thirty Years' War". The Thirty Years' War directly led to the birth of the Netherlands as an independent nation (that is, "culture" was born as an exclusive identity, in the form of a "nation", in human civilization for the first time). The frequent use of the three meanings of "culture" shows that "the ambiguity of various uses and the tension among them actually constitute a meaningful reflection on a society undergoing radical and painful changes". (Eagleton, 2000) In other words, from the 14th century, when capitalism began to emerge in Europe, to the 19th century, "culture" was proposed as a challenge to "divine power". When divine power no longer had a dominant ideology, humanism and romanticism emerged - that is, civil rights, combined with modern terms such as "culture" and "civilization". It is no longer possible to simply integrate the entire society with the meaning of the French term "intellectual" - that is, the clergy at that time (this class monopolized religious ideology: philosophy and science, as well as schools, education, morality, justice, charity, and social relief). The various classes in society began to compete for "hegemony" in society. During this period, "culture" officially took shape in the long 19th century. During this period, society faced great tension, both in terms of production modes and social culture. Revolutions and coups emerged endlessly, and various emerging social historical groups (Social History Bloc) were forming. According to Gramsci (2007), "the historical unity of the ruling class is achieved in the state, and their history is essentially the history of the state and the national group." In other words, the culture of the ruling class is the culture that rules society, that is, the "mainstream culture" in society. We can use Bourdieu's (1993) field theory to understand this situation: different social groups compete for capital in the same field, and specific, mainstream social groups - under capitalism, it is the culture of the bourgeoisie - always have stronger field power in this cultural field (Field) to achieve reproduction. However, this field is not fixed, but "relational". In the understanding of Marxist sociology, this field is also "contradictory": In the process of forming historical social groups, other groups are also "assumed in advance, and their unity is dialectical (Servo della Ieba), that is, because there are people in the sense of slaves, there will be nobles." (Gramsci, 2005) This leads to the birth of the symbolic field of the word "culture" being full of contradictions: it is a language symbol that is contradictory, complex, conflicting (Conflict) and uncoordinated, that is, only in the sense of the existence of "high culture" will there be "popular culture"; only with the appearance of the "bourgeoisie" will there be a "working class". Only at this level can we understand the historical origins of the three meanings of "culture": the three "cultures" actually belong to three (existing or once existed) historical social groups (Bloc):
- Feudal aristocracy
- Bourgeoisie
- Working class
In history, the formation time of the three classes is different:
(1) Feudal aristocracy is the ruling class of the Middle Ages - "the clergy can be regarded as an organic combination of knowledge and the nobility with land".
(2) The bourgeoisie gradually took shape after the Enlightenment movement - the first bourgeois party, the Whig Party, was established in 1678, and ten years later launched the "Glorious Revolution" against the feudal aristocracy in England. In Anderson's words: "British absolutism was brought into crisis by its peripheral aristocratic localism and clan turmoil: they were historical factors that supported it. Commercial rural gentry, capitalist cities, civilian handicraftsmen, and self-employed farmers brought it to a dead end."
(3) The working class has the latest formation time among the three: it was not until the emergence of the Brownist movement and the Paris Commune that the working class officially had sporadic "formation", which has continued to this day.
Among these three classes, the excessive dominance of feudal aristocracy and bourgeois culture is as follows:
"The development of bourgeois culture began several hundred years before the bourgeois class seized state power through a series of revolutions. When the bourgeois class was still a semi-powerless third estate, it played a significant and increasingly influential role in cultural construction in all fields. " (Literature and Revolution, Trotsky, 2005)
Trotsky further argues his point from an architectural perspective:
"This can be particularly clear in architecture. Gothic cathedrals were not built under the impact of religious inspiration. The structure, architectural style, and sculpture of Cologne Cathedral summed up the accumulated experience of human architecture from cave dwellings, and used the elements of this experience to express the new style of contemporary culture, which ultimately expressed the structure and technology of contemporary society. The bourgeois predecessors of guilds and trade unions were actual builders of Gothic architecture. The bourgeois, who consciously and actively adopted Gothic architecture, created their own architectural style not for churches but for their own palatial buildings after they grew rich and prosperous. The bourgeois relied on the achievements of Gothic architecture, turned to the style of ancient Greek and Roman architecture, mainly the architectural style of ancient Rome, and used Moorish architectural style to make all of this conform to the new conditions and needs of urban social life, thus opening the Renaissance era (Italy - the end of the first 25 years of the 15th century)."
Starting from the classical urban commune movement, the bourgeois gradually occupied various fields of thought such as philosophy and science, culture, schools, education, morals, and justice - gradually establishing social hegemony in the sense of Gramsci: "That is, the ruling and leadership of knowledge and morality... A social group must also exercise leadership before winning power (this is one of the primary conditions for winning power)." This process is not singular and absolute, but a slow evolutionary process: that is to say, these are the "accumulations" of human life, as mentioned above, the bourgeoisie actually borrowed the historical and cultural governance to construct; in other words, the culture we mention in daily life is actually a kind of "historical unconsciousness (or social unconsciousness)": it is a "experience" that overlaps and accumulates with the past. And these experiences are actually reflected in our daily lives, and at the same time, these experiences are dynamic and constantly changing, which is different from Bourdieu's imagination of the field: from the perspective of political criticism, the field is a dialectical concept that continues to promote historical progress. As Fromm (2013) mentioned, the source of these changes and driving forces for historical progress comes from:
"Most of the things that people consciously think about are false consciousness, ideology and decoration. The real driving force for human behavior is what people are not conscious of. According to Freud, the power comes from people's sexual desire; according to Marx, the power is rooted in the entire social organization of people, and society guides people's consciousness in certain directions, preventing them from realizing certain facts and experiences. "
"Marx's Concept of Man"
Under capitalism, what we call "culture" is precisely the state of indeterminate false consciousness that arises from this vague, uncertain state of affairs. As such, the definition of culture is always very vague: "used to represent a unique way of life, which can be about the way of life of a nation, a period, a group, or the way of life of all human beings." Uniqueness is relative to other things, and a nation, period, or group is also relative to other nations, periods, or groups. Therefore, culture is essentially a term that tries to encompass numerous social relations and can be appropriated according to circumstances. However, at the same time, it has a certain material basis and is constituted by lived experience, as Marx (2009) said:
"It can be seen that the matter is this: certain individuals who engage in production activities in a certain way are involved in certain social and political relationships. Observations of experience should always reveal the connection between social and political structures and production based on experience, without any mystical or speculative coloring. Social structures and states always arise from the life process of certain individuals engaged in production. However, the individuals referred to here are not the kind of individuals imagined by themselves or others, but the individuals in reality, that is, those who are engaged in activities, engaged in material production, and therefore active within certain material limits, premises, and conditions that are not arbitrarily subject to their control."
Therefore, culture is productive, which is why bourgeois culture "began hundreds of years before the bourgeoisie seized state power through a series of revolutions (Trotsky, 2005). He must expand his "leadership" by competing for the production base and creating new production tools to absorb and seize social domination. This is also why the word "culture" was created in the 16th century: it must emphasize the integrity of society (sometimes local integrity) to ensure (1) the consistency of the universal market and (2) the consistency of the market, thereby ensuring (1) the expansion of the world capitalist market and (2) Ensuring the accumulation and competition of capital between local markets. Since culture is a term used by the ruling class to maintain social integrity and achieve internal competition of capital (thus we can understand why the definition of the word "culture" is so vague: because it is originally used to cover contradictions and achieve social unity), we can infer a conclusion based on this: "All 'culture' (in the context of capitalism) is 'bourgeois culture'; and in capitalism, what is shaped as 'high culture' (relatively formed is 'popular culture') is the elegant culture favored by people who can bring 'special experiences' to others and have more capital in the capital market (we will explore this issue carefully later in the article)." This kind of high culture obviously inherits the culture of the feudal aristocracy; the function that can give people "special alienation experience" cannot be provided in capitalist society (because its operation purpose is to achieve the largest capital accumulation, in other words, as long as it can be obtained The maximum profit can be obtained from it). In order to continue selling this "special experience" and obtain the maximum profit, capitalism has established a fixed "cultural" production mechanism, which is specifically designed for people, because only "people" can enable culture to be produced:
"The production of ideas, concepts, and consciousness is initially directly intertwined with people's material activities, their material exchanges, and the language of real life. People's imagination, thinking, and spiritual communication are still here. The direct product of people's material actions. The spiritual production expressed in the language of politics, law, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc. of a certain nationality is also like this. "People are the producers of their own concepts, thoughts, etc.," but the people referred to here are real people engaged in activities, and they are subject to a certain development of their own productivity and the communication that adapts to it - until the farthest form of communication constrains it. "Consciousness [das Bewusstsein] can only be existence [das bewusste Sein] that has been realized at any time, and people's existence is their real life process." If in all ideological forms, people and their relationships are upside down in the camera, then this phenomenon is also from the historical process of people's life, just like the inverted reflection of objects on the retina is directly from the physiological process of people's life. "
"German Ideology" Karl Marx (1965)
That is to say, only when people are aware of these "ideologies" do these "ideologies" formally become "ideologies" (which we can also call historical unconsciousness, because more of it is not yet conscious to us) and exist as "culture" in society. These "ideologies" are repeatedly tested, implemented, and promoted in society, so that they can be "seen" and "recognized" in society. In this sense, the relationship between the material world and the world of cognition conforms to Gramsci's concept of "everyone is a philosopher", that is, ideologies become their intended state only when they are recognized and affirmed (consent) by themselves. Next, we will talk about how this cultural production mechanism works.
The Ideological State Apparatus
The cultural production base of capitalism began preparing itself early on, as it gradually took control of many social institutions:
"The accumulation of the elements of the bourgeois culture and their fixation as a basic process of creating a style depends on the social characteristics of the bourgeoisie as a productive, exploiting class: it not only developed within feudal society, intricately interwoven with it, and gradually concentrated wealth in its hands, but also attracted intellectuals to its side, having established its own cultural base (secondary schools, universities, research institutions, newspapers, and magazines) long before taking control of the state through the third estate."
(Trotsky, 2005)
In his book, "On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus," Althusser (2014) expands Gramsci's concept of the ideological battlefield. He divided the state apparatus into the "repressive state apparatus" and the "ideological state apparatus." The former is responsible for violent suppression of street movements, and is composed of military, police, and various law enforcement agencies that directly suppress any attempts to seize power. The latter is a ubiquitous daily presence that spreads throughout the atmosphere, and is responsible for "professional media that disseminate knowledge," such as religious institutions, schools, media outlets, and television networks. From Gramsci's perspective, this is the competition field for the struggle for leadership and maintenance. The above quote further reminds us that this situation did not just arise in contemporary capitalism, but began long before the bourgeoisie officially became holders of power: it gradually brought everything around us into the same logic of capitalism, where people are "equal," and everyone can enjoy the "same culture," but the premise is that you must have enough capital to obtain the "special experiences" produced under the cultural mechanism - this is the ideological state apparatus, a logical mechanism deeply integrated with the social market.
Cultural Industry: The Distinction between Object and Subject
Under this logic, cultural production has gradually become industrialized and centralized. "Popular culture" has become the "cultural industry": one is the culture created spontaneously by the public (which is, of course, the ideal state of "culture"), and the other is the standardized and centralized cultural "product" produced by capitalism, which the public can only accept as individuals. Adorno (1975) described the situation of the cultural industry as follows:
"We use 'cultural industry' instead of 'popular culture' to exclude from the very outset any connotations that might suggest it is a kind of culture spontaneously generated by the masses and is the contemporary form of folk art. We have to distinguish as clearly as possible between the cultural industry and popular art... In all the branches of the cultural industry, products are made to appeal to the consumer either singly or in terms of certain categories, and they are more or less systematically produced according to plan. The structure of the various branches of the industry is similar or even homologous, and their coordination is so close that they easily merge into a seamless system."
Adorno (1975) fiercely criticized the status of the cultural industry, stating that "the cultural industry wants to make us believe that the consumer is God, but in fact this is not the case. The consumer is not the subject of the cultural industry, but its object. The term 'mass media' was specially created for the cultural industry, which has shifted the focus of the problem to harmless territory. The crux of the problem is not a question of prioritizing the masses or a technical issue of mass communication, but rather a question of the spirit that is instilled in the masses, that of their rulers. The cultural industry assumes that the masses' minds are fixed and unchangeable, and mistakenly uses its attention to the masses to replicate, consolidate, and reinforce this mindset."
In other words, the cultural industry has a strong purpose: to transform consumption purposefully through the products it creates. As objects, consumers cannot participate in the production process. In contemporary times, consumers participate in the big data creation of social media, but the essence of the cultural industry remains unchanged. It still maintains an industrial framework, only allowing people to produce within limited, assembly-line parameters.
"The concept of technology in the cultural industry and in art is only superficially alike. For the latter, technology is related to the internal organization of the object itself and its internal logic. In contrast, the technology of the cultural industry is from the beginning a circulating and mechanically reproducible technology, and therefore always external to its object. The cultural industry seeks ideological support precisely in order to carefully resist the full potential of the technology contained in its products. It parasitizes the material production technology of art and commodities, without considering its obligation to the internal artistic whole implied in its objectivity, or the formal laws required by aesthetic self-discipline. The result of the cultural industry's physiognomy is essentially a mixture of two aspects: one is a strict precision like that of a production line or photography, and the other is the residue of personality, sentimentality, and the already rationalized and adapted romanticism. Benjamin expressed his view of traditional artworks through the concept of aura. If we adopt his thinking, we can define the cultural industry as not presenting a principle that is diametrically opposed to the principle of aura, but maintaining a thin mist of aura that has already disappeared. The cultural industry thus reveals the secret of its ideology."
In capitalist society, the value of artworks lies in their exchange value, that is, how much they are worth on the market. But in classical feudal society, the value of artworks was based on their intrinsic value. Benjamin (1935) described this in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction": "The instantaneously and simultaneously received uniqueness or aura which, as it were, is the obverse of the absolute remoteness or accessibility, is becoming ever rarer. But it is the latter which lends to the work its bearing on reality. It is the result of this historicity that the concept of authenticity is formulated." However, due to industrialization, the worship value of artworks is gradually eroded in the process of standardization. Adorno used film to describe the glory of the capitalist industrial age: "It is not too literal to understand the word 'industry'. It refers to the standardization of things themselves (such as the standardization of westerns that every movie fan knows) and the rationalization of circulating technology, rather than strict standardization in the production process. In the core sector of the cultural industry, such as film, although the production process is very similar to the operating mode of technology in terms of extensive division of labor, the use of machinery, separation of labor and production tools (as reflected in the permanent conflict between artists active in the cultural industry and the controllers of the cultural industry), it still maintains an individualized production method... Each product is packaged with a unique personality. This personality itself serves to strengthen the ideology. Since the illusion is magically summoned, completely objectified and intermediated things are shelters for immediacy and real life."
The essence of art is alienation, but in the capitalist world, even this individual alienation cannot be accepted - people who are extremely alienated cannot engage in productive work or accumulate capital. Benjamin describes this state of extreme alienation as the aestheticization of fascist political life: "Cult of art - destruction of the world...The human being who was once an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods has now become one for himself, his alienation has reached such a degree that he can experience his own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order." In other words, fascist aesthetics - self-destruction - is a kind of art that arises from extreme alienation and produces an extremely unique experience. Contemporary capitalism brings about alienation while at the same time forcing us to suppress the alienation that arises from our daily labor through ideology - "culture". The industrial society that produces through standardized and rationalized production techniques can only eliminate people's alienation through the ideology (culture) of standardized and rationalized production techniques, which also creates Marcuse's "One-Dimensional Man".
High Culture - An Alienating Experience
Based on the points mentioned in the previous article, we can understand that "culture" is essentially a process of alienation, where both the "subject" and the "object" are constructed by us (culture as a verb (process), as mentioned at the beginning of the article, the first use of culture), and can also be a process of alienation which results in culture becoming a noun, a romantic way of life. The so-called High Culture is no exception. The reason why High Culture is considered high is not only because of its historical factors - as a remnant of the feudal aristocracy's way of life, but also because this way of life does not belong to this era originally:
"The high culture of the West - industrial society still acknowledges its moral, aesthetic, and intellectual values - is a pre-technical culture in terms of function and age. Its effectiveness comes from the experience of a world that no longer exists and cannot be regained, because in a strict sense, technological society will make it ineffective. Even when it gave it some of the most persistent formulas in the bourgeois era, it was still largely a feudal culture. It is feudal not only because it is limited to a few privileged people, not only because it has an inherent romantic element, but also because its typical works consciously alienate the entire commercial and industrial field, alienate its calculating and profit-oriented order."
"One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society" by Herbert Marcuse (2013)
In the capitalist era, everything should operate according to the logic of capitalism. Any culture, before it can be considered culture, must be a sellable commodity, which is an inviolable logic under capitalism - except for the culture before capitalism formally conquered the world. Capitalism cannot erase the culture of the feudal aristocracy, as Marx mentioned in "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844": "The general domination of private property starts from the ownership of land; land ownership is the basis of private property. But under the feudal system of land ownership, the lord is at least the apparent sovereign of the territory. At the same time, on feudal estates, there is an illusion of a closer relationship between the land and the territory than mere material wealth. The plot is personalized with its owner, with his title, i.e. the title of baron or earl; with its privileges, its jurisdiction, its political position, and so on. The land seems to be the inorganic body of its master." In other words, the logic of capitalism is based on the logic of feudalism, and the capitalist order cannot exist independently of feudalism. However, at the same time, the elements of feudalism are also unacceptable to the logic of capitalism, and these elements are constantly challenging the logic of capitalism:
"The representatives of this other dimension are not heroes of religion, spirit, and morality (they often support established orders), but destructive figures like artists, prostitutes, adulterers, major criminals, and vagabonds, warriors, rebellious poets, demons, and idiots - they do not make a living by earning wages, at least not in an orderly way.
Of course, these figures have not disappeared from the literature of developed industrial societies, but their remnants have fundamentally changed. Extortionate prostitutes, national heroes, the lost generation, neurotic housewives, gangsters, stars, charismatically successful giants, have a very different, even opposite role to their cultural predecessors. They are no longer images of another way of life, but rather the aberrations or archetypes of the same life, positive rather than negative towards established orders. Positive, their predecessors' world is a pre-technical world, a world that has a conscience about inequality and hard work, where labor is still a doomed misfortune; but in this world, people and nature have not yet been organized as objects and tools. This past culture, with its form and manner criteria, its literary and philosophical style and vocabulary, embodies a melody and content of the universe, in which valleys and forests, villages and inns, nobles and villains, salons and courts are all part of the reality experienced. In the poetry and prose of this pre-technical culture, the melody expresses those who wander or ride horses, those who have time and pleasure to meditate, reflect, feel, and describe."
"One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society" by Herbert Marcuse (2013)
Feudal aristocrats expressed their opposition to the existing worldview logic by presenting a worldview that was completely different and had existed in the past. They exhibited a different form of alienation to deny the existing worldview: "...in some of its decisive aspects, this culture is also a post-technological culture. Its most advanced images and positions seem to have escaped being assimilated into the comfort and stimulation of administration; they continue to be aware of the possibility of their regeneration in the perfection of technological progress. They express a freedom and conscious distancing from the established way of life, and even in literature and art, where they decorate that way of life, they oppose it with this distancing." This culture was therefore placed in a relatively "superior" position, as it "does not disturb the commercial order" nor "can it disturb the commercial order." Thus, "culture" initially appeared in the form of opposition to the bourgeoisie: the bourgeoisie did not have the lifestyle that the feudal class had established for a long time. However, when the bourgeoisie gained fundamental economic power, these oppositions became powerless; they could only become accusations against capitalism. Capitalism attempted to assimilate these cultures, which were originally its enemies, using market logic (even though this assimilation was only essentially erosion).
"In the history of this assimilation, there was immaturity; it established cultural equality while preserving domination. Society is excluding the privileges and monopolies of feudal aristocratic culture, along with its content. The a priori truthfulness of art, the aesthetics of life and thought, which only a few educated wealthy people could obtain in the past, was a one-dimensional social fact and the fault of the repressive society of the past. But this fault is not corrected by paperback books, popular education, slow vinyl records, or new etiquette dress codes in theaters and music halls. Cultural privileges express unfair freedom, the contradiction between ideology and reality, and the separation of spiritual productivity from material productivity; but they also provide a protected area that allows taboo truths to survive with abstract integrity - the distancing that suppresses these truths in society."
One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, Herbert Marcuse (2013)
The logic of market expansion sought by capitalism has caused these formerly protected areas to face the problem of cultural homogenization by the market. High culture under capitalism has become an industrial product that can be sold and purchased as long as there is capital:
"The alienation of art, like the architecture of the new theaters and concert halls in which it is performed, has become designed from a utilitarian point of view. There is no doubt that this new architecture is better, that is, more beautiful and practical, than the grotesque architecture of the Victorian era. But it is also more 'integrated' - cultural centers are becoming a suitable part of sales centers, municipal centers, or management centers. Rule has its own aesthetics, and democratic rule also has its own democratic aesthetics. Yes, almost everyone can get beautiful art anytime they turn on their sound system or step into their music room. However, in this popularization, beautiful art has become a cog in the cultural machine that renovates beautiful art content."
The alienation of art, along with other negations, has succumbed to the process of technological rationality. "If this change is seen as a result of technological progress, then its irreversibility can be seen in its depth and breadth, as determined by its newly available means of realization. The images of pre-technological times are losing their power."
One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, Herbert Marcuse (2013)
In other words, under the logic of capitalism, advanced culture, including its functions as a post-technological culture, has been eroded and assimilated, and culture under capitalism has gradually been consumed. Western traditional culture, whether in the sense of high culture or popular culture, has become part of the culture industry. At this level, there is no culture under capitalism, only the logic of capitalist culture. People under capitalism, due to their status as objects of the culture industry, have become what Marcuse calls "one-dimensional man." However, it is worth noting that Marcuse adopts a pessimistic attitude, coupled with Benjamin's "Hope is given to us precisely because of the hopeless. " to address the readers of "One-Dimensional Man". However, this pessimistic attitude is worth criticizing, just as we should dialectically criticize the culture itself, we should also dialectically criticize the creators of culture - human beings themselves:
"The reality shows that the proletariat, who is both a thing and a man, an object and a subject, has a dual character: both essence and appearance, both inner essential form and surface. The experience of the proletariat in this situation enables it to understand the whole social reality as essence and appearance, starting from the already achieved form of rectification. Self-alienation reaches its peak in the proletariat. By becoming an object, a thing, a person becomes the subject and object of knowledge at the same time. This is the meaning of "self-knowledge of reality" in dialectical materialism. In the process of becoming a thing, the material structure of reality dissolves and becomes human and social. The unity of man and thing reveals the humanity of the relationship between things." (Jakubowski, 1976)
Since we acknowledge that human beings as humans can create a state of being an object (i.e., the receiver of the culture industry), we cannot deny the ability of human beings as humans to transform themselves into subjects (i.e., the potential creators of culture).
Culture as the idea of resistance
The term "culture" is essentially rebellious, as Adorno (1975) pointed out, "Something that can rightfully be called culture as an expression of suffering and contradiction always strives to understand the idea of a good life. Culture cannot express things that only exist, nor can it express categories of order that are no longer binding - and the culture industry uses these things to obscure the idea of a good life, as if the existing world were a good life and those categories were the true standards for measuring a good life. If representatives of the culture industry claim that they are not spreading art, then they are themselves an ideology, avoiding social responsibility and only doing their business. This explanation has never corrected any wrongdoing."
As philosopher Ernest Bloch (2009) said, "The world has a tendency, the characteristics of which are that humanity is striving towards a world without exploitation and suffering, towards utopia. 'Not yet' is an expectation of this goal, expressed in various forms; 'overall', 'not yet' 'consciousness' is a psychological expression of a time and its world that has not yet become. "Culture as a verb is a potential thing, and it" like the limited consciousness of existence, can only be understood by asking where it comes from, where it is going, and what it is. It is not something that has existed in the past, but rather the essence of the world itself is at the forefront." (Bloch, 1986) Thus, the meaning of culture has been fully interpreted and reproduced: it is not a process of being shaped by industrialized culture in a simple, static way, but a potential talent that individuals possess, as philosopher Hegel said, "As long as people do not destroy the dead objectivity of the world, do not realize their own life and their own life behind the fixed form of things and laws, then the world is an alienated and unreal world. Once he finally reaches self-awareness, he not only embarks on the journey to his own truth, but also the journey to the truth of his world, and with this understanding, there will be action. He tries to turn this truth into action, thereby making the world a truly authentic world, that is, realizing self-awareness. "Thus, Gransci proposed to create a more advanced" high culture "to transform the world so that it can return to its" true "state. This kind of culture is new and critical:
"To create a new culture does not only mean the discovery of individual 'originality.' It also - this is particularly important - means spreading the truth that has already been discovered in a critical way, that is, 'socializing' these truths. Even making them the basis of major activities, elements of a common mission, intellectual and moral order. Because guiding the masses to think cohesively and thinking about the real world in the same cohesive way is far more important than the truth of a philosopher or the wealth of an intellectual group, and it is much more 'original.' "
"Prison Notebooks" Antonio Gramsci (2007)
Since the current culture exists in the form of "false consciousness," which is an ideology, it does not completely match the actual material conditions. This constitutes the contradictory nature of the material world and the cognitive world. In a sense, Marcuse is right: "Social critical theory does not have a concept that can bridge the gap between the present and the future, makes no promises, shows no successes, and only negates." But he didn’t say the next thing: the essence of critical theory lies in its ability to judge how to practice, and to raise this ability to a social, common world view based on equality, with the ability to unite for the same purpose. Therefore:
"At the beginning of practical philosophy, it had to present itself as a debate and criticism, presenting itself as a replacement for existing thinking and concrete ideas (that is, the current cultural world). Therefore, it is first a critique of 'common sense', although at the beginning, it builds itself on 'common sense' in order to prove that everyone is a philosopher. Therefore, it is not a question of introducing scientific thinking into everyone's personal life, but of reforming existing activities in a revolutionary way to make them 'critical' issues. "
"Prison Notebooks" Antonio Gramsci (2007)
This contradictory nature must be resolved when the material world and the cognitive world become unified. That is, "The change in the environment and human activities can only be seen as revolutionary practice." These processes, like the concept of cultural capitalism, are based on "the environment is changed by people, and educators themselves must be educated." As Gransci mentioned:
"The premise of practical philosophy is all past cultures: the Renaissance and the Reformation, German philosophy and the French Revolution, Calvinism, classical economics in England, secular liberalism, and historicism rooted in the entire modern worldview. Practical philosophy is the culmination of all these spiritual and moral reform movements, and it is the dialectic of mass culture and advanced culture. Practical philosophy conforms to the combination of Protestant reform and the French Revolution: it is both a political philosophy and a philosophical politics. Practical philosophy is still in the popular stage: it is not easy to cultivate a group of independent intellectuals; it needs a long process, including action and reaction, aggregation and division, and the emergence of many complex new structures... Practical philosophy (ie Marxism) has revived the entire set of experiences of Hegelianism, Feuerbachism, and French materialism in its founders, in order to restore the dialectical unity, which is to 'turn it upside down.' The fate of Hegelianism has been repeated in practical philosophy, that is, on the one hand, the return of philosophical materialism from dialectical unity... "
"Prison Notebooks" Antonio Gramsci (2007)
In other words, just as Marx and Engels were members of the petite bourgeoisie, their ideas were naturally petite bourgeois as well. However, as their ideas were practiced by the people, this "high culture" gradually became a truly excellent and more socially realistic "culture." In a society where culture has reached its peak, the concept of culture under the bourgeoisie will no longer exist, and people will truly recognize their alienation. Evolved works of art will be displayed in front of human civilization. As Marcuse asked readers "because hope was given to us for the sake of those who did not have hope," we respond to his "hopelessness" with Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction": "Fascism seeks political aestheticization (self-destruction), while Marxism responds with the politicization of art."
"We must seize the 'leadership' in order to 'create culture': to become a consciousness that is a specific part of the power to lead is the first step towards further self-awareness. In this self-awareness, theory and practice will eventually merge... until a truly unified worldview is reached." (Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 2007)
Conclusion
Culture has always been a product of alienation: it was only because theocratic culture could no longer be integrated into society that people began to talk about culture. In the intense struggle between the feudal aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, culture was given a new and different historical significance. To resist the emerging bourgeoisie, the feudal aristocracy described their own history as culture, which was strongly opposed. The concept of culture was further expanded to include universal and collective cultural implications by the liberal bourgeoisie. Under late capitalism, even the original cultural implications were included in the logic of the capitalist market. The feudal culture that the bourgeoisie actively learned was also drawn into it. In order to avoid falling under fascist aesthetics - that is, towards the alienation of destruction - capitalism actively expanded its market and even absorbed all cultures into the capitalist market, becoming a single culture. Marcuse described such a society as:
"When individuals seek their development and satisfaction in the same way as their imposed life, the concept of alienation seems questionable. This unity is not a fantasy, but a reality. However, this reality constitutes a further stage of alienation. The alienated subject is engulfed by its alienated existence. There is only one dimension, which is ubiquitous in various forms. The achievements of progress openly defy the accusation and defense of ideology; in their court, the "false consciousness" of their rationality becomes real consciousness.
However, the adoption of this ideology by reality does not signify the 'end of ideology.' On the contrary, in a specific sense, today's ideology is more ideological than its predecessors because it is embedded in the production process itself. This proposition reveals the political aspect of prevalent technical rationality. The means of production and the goods and services they produce 'sell out' or deceive the entire social system. Industries such as transportation, communication, housing, food and clothing, entertainment, and information have an overwhelming influence on people's attitudes and habits, shaping certain ideas and emotional responses, which unite consumers with producers and, through producers, with society as a whole. Products have indoctrinating and manipulative effects, fostering a false consciousness that avoids its own falsity. As these useful products are used by more individuals in more social classes, their indoctrinating effects are no longer propaganda but become a way of life. It is a good way of life - much better than before - and as a good way of life, it obstructs qualitative change. Therefore, a one-dimensional pattern of thought and behavior emerges, in which concepts, aspirations, and goals that exceed the established domain of discourse and action are excluded or reduced to several contents of this field. They are redefined by the established system and its quantitative expansion." (Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, 2013)
In times when "culture" is used to mask "alienation" (that is, ideology concealing ideology), the only "high culture" that can be independent of "culture" will be critical theory that critiques capitalism. Such theory arises from capitalist society and moves towards a society that is not yet conscious. In such a society, there will only be practice and no culture (or it can be full of culture), and many of the limits of humanity will be rediscovered in the absence of market logic. As Ernst Bloch wrote: "Thus, the Marxist dialectical and historical tendency studies the realistic future science and the objective and realistic possibility in reality; [the purpose of this possibility is action.]... Only when Marxism is involved, will the future horizon be given the true dimension of reality along with the past that serves as the anteroom. Only then can many dimensions of human civilization be gradually rediscovered in a society where people can quickly detect their own alienation. Human civilization can evolve to an unprecedented height - reconstruction, development, and reconstruction again. The only thing that can make "culture" progress towards true "culture" will be the true "high culture", and with Marxism, the future horizon can be revealed in its true dimensions.
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