Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

In the article I attempt to present a genealogy of the neoliberal, postmodern media present through an analysis of some of the past forces that created it, providing a context that reassesses certain traditions of Cultural Studies. I claim that Enzensberger’s 1970 essay ‘Constituents of a theory of the media’ serves that purpose: written at the threshold of the postmodern age, and describing the socialist/left vs. (neo)liberal alternatives, it helps us understand our 21st-century ‘media/culture’ present. Accordingly, the article is partly a rereading and critique of the essay, and partly a reflection on the present. While in 1970 Enzensberger analyses the contemporary (via critiquing Lukács’s theory of culture, McLuhan’s media theory and the left of 1968) and that which is likely to come, what I attempt to do now is to better understand our present through his observations and ideas.

Keywords

consciousness industry Cultural Studies Enzensberger Lukács McLuhan media theory (neo)liberalism (New) Left postmodernism theory of culture

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abbas

Erni

(eds) (2005) Internationalizing Cultural Studies: An Anthology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Barthes

(1985) The fatality of culture, the limits of counterculture. In: The Grain of the Voice: Interviews 1962–1980, trans. Coverdale

. New York: Hill and Wang, pp. 150–156.

Boyers

(ed.) (1998) ‘The consciousness industry’: a symposium. Salmagundi 118–119: 106–190.

Calvet

L-J

(1995) Roland Barthes: A Biography, trans. Wykes

. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Chen

K-H

Chua

(eds) (2009) The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Reader. New York: Routledge.

Denning

(2004) The socioanalysis of culture. In: Culture in the Age of Three Worlds. London: Verso, pp. 75–90.

Doederlein

(1976) Review of The Consciousness Industry: On Literature, Politics and the Media. Communication Quarterly Spring: 49–50.

Enzensberger

H-M

(1970) Constituents of a theory of the media. New Left Review 64 (Nov.–Dec.): 13–36.

Enzensberger

H-M

(1974a) The Consciousness Industry: On Literature, Politics and the Media. New York: Seabury Press.

10.

Enzensberger

H-M

(1974b [1962]) The industrialization of the mind. In: The Consciousness Industry: On Literature, Politics and the Media. New York: Seabury Press, pp. 3–15.

11.

Enzensberger

H-M

(1978) Two notes on the end of the world. New Left Review July–Aug.: 74–80.

12.

Foucault

(1975) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan

. New York: Vintage Books.

13.

Frow

Morris

(eds) (1993) Australian Cultural Studies: A Reader. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.

14.

Grossberg

(2010) Cultural Studies in the Future Tense. Durham: Duke University Press.

15.

Harvey

(2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

16.

Isenberg

(1999) Picking up the pieces (Review of Zig-Zag: The Politics of Culture and Vice Versa, by H-M Enzensberger). Dissent Fall: 120–123.

17.

King

(2007) Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Writing, Media, Democracy. Oxford: Peter Lang.

18.

Kittler

(2009) Optical Media. London: Polity.

19.

Lash

Lury

(2007) Global Culture Industry. Cambridge: Polity.

20.

Leitch

(2014) Literary Criticism in the 21st Century: Theory Renaissance. New York: Bloomsbury.

21.

Lukács

(1970) The old culture and the new culture. Telos 3(5): 21–30.

22.

McLuhan

(1995) Playboy interview. In: McLuhan

Zigrone

(eds) Essential McLuhan. Concord, Ontario: Anansi, pp. 233–268.

23.

Mookerjea

Szeman

Faurschou

Jameson

(eds) (2009) Canadian Cultural Studies: A Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

24.

Nealon

(2012) Post-Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Just-in-Time Capitalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

25.

Osterle

(1987) Interview with Hans Magnus Enzensberger on German–American relations. New German Critique 42(Fall): 129–149.

26.

Smythe

(1977) Critique of The Consciousness Industry. Journal of Communication Winter: 198–202.

27.

Stevens

(2010) Marshall McLuhan and media and cultural studies. In: Grossiler

(ed.) Transforming McLuhan: Cultural, Critical, and Postmodern Perspectives. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 17–36.

28.

Szeman

(2003) Culture and globalization, or, The humanities in ruins. CR: The New Centennial Review 3(2): 91–115.

29.

Watt

(2013) Thatcher funeral: Cameron says ‘We are all Thatcherites now’. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/17/margaret-thatcher-funeral-cameron-respect (accessed 24 April 2013).

Leftist vs. (neo)liberal scripts for the (media) future: Enzensberger’s ‘Constituents of a theory of the media’

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References