Technical progress makes art’s alienation from society irreversible.

Evidence

Artistic alienation succumbs, together with other modes of negation, to the process of technological rationality. The change reveals its depth and the degree of its irreversibility if it is seen as a result of technical progress. The present stage redefines the possibilities of man and nature in accordance with the new means available for their realization and, in their light, the pre-technological images are losing their power. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 304

Categorization

• XREF: Technological rationality redefining possibility itself is the core Frankfurt thesis bridging to attention/consumption economics. — connects to: The rationality of art grows as society’s irrationality grows — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 832; Art’s autonomy paradoxically depends on the very commodity economy it negates — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 118; Art reflects its historical situation precisely by refusing the social. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 85

Broader Connections

• The rationality of art grows as society’s irrationality grows #expands (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 832
• Art’s autonomy paradoxically depends on the very commodity economy it negates #complicates (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 118