Mass production reduces judgment to blind subsumption under stereotypes

Evidence

In the world of mass series production, stereotypes replace individual categories. Judgments are no longer based on a genuine synthesis but on blind subsumption. At an earlier stage of history judgments were based on hasty distinctions which gave impetus to the process, and in the meantime exchange, circulation and legal precedents and convention have contributed their share. The process of judgment passed through the stage of weighing up the relative merits of individual cases, which gave the subject some measure of protection against brutal identification with the predicate. In late industrial society, there is a regression to illogical judgment. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 161

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the mechanism by which mass production replaces genuine synthesis of judgment with blind subsumption under stereotypes.
• XREF: Connects to Weberian rationalization and the broader Frankfurt School account of instrumental reason, and to Burns’s later use of Adorno. — connects to: The stereotype substitutes for real nourishment in cultural production — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 114; Successful craft choices can be nonintuitive, favoring blind copying over reasoning — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 351; Stereotypes can operate implicitly outside conscious awareness — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes,…, 193
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The stereotype substitutes for real nourishment in cultural production — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 114; Successful craft choices can be nonintuitive, favoring blind copying over reasoning — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 351; Stereotypes can operate implicitly outside conscious awareness — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes,…, 193