1.6.2. Chapter 3: Theodor W. Adorno and the Critical Theory of Knowledge
This chapter explores which insights of Adorno’s philosophy can be used for grounding a critical theory of knowledge? Adorno’s contribution to a critical theory of knowledge is analysed by revisiting the assumption that he is a media pessimist, reconsidering the debate about aesthetics between Lukács and Adorno and generalising its conclusions from art to the theory of knowledge, and by discussing and further developing Adorno’s dialectical concept of knowledge. Adorno’s theory of knowledge is not, as often claimed in media and cultural studies, a form of media and cultural pessimism that sees humans as passive, manipulated by ideologies, and incapable of resisting a society without alternatives. He saw alternative and critical potentials of the media. A critical theory of knowledge can be grounded in dialectics of identity and non-identity and the subject and the object. Adorno made important contributions to the foundations of such a theory. His works not just foreground the power of ideologies, but also stress the importance that one can learn from Hegel’s anti-positivist, dialectical language and thought how to criticise, deconstruct, and struggle against ideologies. Adorno’s works give us hope that instrumental knowledge that expresses partial interests is not the final world and can be changed by critique, which is the very process of the dialectic and dialectical knowledge.
1.6.3. Chapter 4: Herbert Marcuse and Social Media
This chapter reflects on the relevance of Herbert Marcuse’s philosophy of technology in the age social media. Although Marcuse did not experience the rise of the Internet, the World Wide Web and ‘social media’ as major means of communication, his insights about technological rationality, technology and the role of technology in the context of labour allow us to today reflect on the relevance of Marcuse’s philosophy of technology for a critical theory of digital and social media.
The chapter first gives an overview of how Marcuse thought about computer technology. It then engages with Marcuse’s interpretation of Hegelian dialectics for analysing social media’s dialectics. It also uses Marcuse’s works for critically theorising digital labour on social media and social media ideologies. The chapter engages with Marcuse’s understanding of the dialectical logic of essence in order to provide some foundations of social media ethics.
1.6.4. Chapter 5: The Internet, Social Media and Axel Honneth’s Interpretation of Georg Lukács’ Theory of Reification and Alienation
This chapter poses the question, what are the potentials of the concept of alienation/reification for a critical theory of society today? Based on the example of
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Critical Theory of Communication