Real material progress and democratization form the progressive elements of mass culture

Evidence

Marcuse argues that what he calls ”higher culture” is not so much defeated as it is superseded by (what is still for him) mass culture. Social reality has ”refuted” higher culture by gratifying many of the thwarted needs and desires formerly sublimated in higher culture. This real material progress, along with the democratization in which the ”ideal” is ”brought down from the sublimated realm of the soul or the spirit or the inner man, and translated into operational terms and problems,” constitute the ”progressive elements of mass culture” (58). Yet, insofar as ”higher culture becomes part of the material culture,” it ”loses the greater part of its truth” (58). — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 154

Categorization

• XREF: Marcuse granting mass culture genuine progressive elements flips the usual Frankfurt School rejection; echoes the ‘affirmative character’ debates. — connects to: Postmodernity extends modernity’s egalitarianism to subaltern others — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 506; Culture operates as a constitutive force in politics and social change — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 159; Intellectual growth and mass cultural elevation advance dialectically together

Broader Connections

• Intellectual growth and mass cultural elevation advance dialectically together #corroborates (0.80)
• Culture operates as a constitutive force in politics and social change #expands (0.72) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 159