Language and Culture in Marxist Theory: 'The Culture Industry' and 'Ideological State Apparatuses'

Abstract

This essay compares Horkheimer and Adorno’s ‘The Culture Industry’ (1947) and Althusser’s ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’ (1970), exploring and contrasting their perspectives on culture, subjecthood and subjection, and language. It argues that, while both essays construe culture under capitalism as a superstructural conduit for bourgeois ideology, their approaches to subjecthood/subjection and language differ in significant ways. Namely, while Horkheimer and Adorno see capitalism as achieving subjection through the erasure of human subjecthood, Althusser conceives of cultural ideology as achieving subjection through interpellation, i.e., the constitution of subjecthood. Moreover, while Althusser sees positivistic ratiocination as a useful instrument for revolutionaries, Horkheimer and Adorno contend that such quasi-scientific, rationalistic diction only mutilates language, representing a nefarious device by which to reify ideology, conferring upon it a veneer of factuality. Thus, in comparing these two seminal texts, this essay attempts a deeper understanding of 20^th century Marxist theory on matters most pertinent to literary studies.