Theme 2: Critical Media Studies

1. Dialectic of Enlightenment

a.What is "Enlightenment"?

The enlightenment is a way of seen a new process of which dispel myths and fantasy and replace it with true knowledge and facts. The humanity should learn from the nature and reduce the fear of mythical. The metaphysics meeting the human being and they were still left in the myth of life and death.

b.What is "dialectic"?

Dialectic is objective definition in which the thinking what a object is thought what it’s not is. In this way the concept and thing become separate. 

c.What is "nominalism" and why is it an important concept in the text?

The nominalism are a description of a general concepts of something excising, an independent thing that has nothing meaningful except the name of it. The only property of the thing is the “word”.

d.What is the meaning and function of "myth" in Adorno and Horkheimer's argument?

The meaning of myth in the context is to explain that these kinds of thoughts are something that isn’t realistic in the real world, to reduce the fear. It’s contexts of something that have been speculating since back from the history. The function is to explain the non-realistic thoughts of the human being, the super natural phenomena, spirits and the demons. 

2. "The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity"

a. In the beginning of the essay, Benjamin talks about the relation between "superstructure" and "substructure" in the capitalist order of production. What do the concepts "superstructure" and "substructure" mean in this context and what is the point of analyzing cultural production from a Marxist perspective?

The substructure is in the way of something in production, in this context as painting, art creating, movies, theatres etc. But the superstructure is everything except the production, like the environment of our society, politics and laws.

b. Does culture have revolutionary potentials (according to Benjamin)? If so, describe these potentials. Does Benjamin's perspective differ from the perspective of Adorno & Horkheimer in this regard?

Benjamin saw the potentials of the culture in a way of the development of photography. He argues for the presence of time and space as a unique existence at the place. He rise the theory of a negative, a revolutionary mean of reproduction, photography. Later it would be an evidence of the history and the mechanical reproduction.  

c. Benjamin discusses how people perceive the world through the senses and argues that this perception can be both naturally and historically determined. What does this mean? Give some examples of historically determined perception (from Benjamin's essay and/or other contexts).

It means that we as humans can build us knowledge through both natural references and the historical has already happened, the experience of people's past lives. Benjamin gave an example of the Roman art, in the school of Viennese where they draw conclusions that where limited to the significant. They didn’t attempt to show the changes of perception, because they didn’t know how.

d. What does Benjamin mean by the term "aura"? Are there different kinds of aura in natural objects compared to art objects?

He defined the Aura as the “unique phenomena of distance, however it be. “ He explains the natural aura as the reproduction of something real in the way of looking closer to the object. The art may not meet the experiences of something real, regardless it has a very good quality and by analogy. Its only your eyes that can reproduce something real.