Post Critical media studies, or how to reach a classless world in one (perhaps not quite so) easy step.

Nominalism. I was close in my understanding before the seminar, but I had a much clearer grasp afterwards. The seminar leader explained to us the difference between nominalism and realism through Plato’s allegory of the cave. In the allegory you are stuck in a cave and can only see the shadows from outside hit the back wall of the cave. A realist would argue that it is the object casting the shadow on the wall that is the true thing, and only a thinker can actually see the object. This understanding of the philosophical meaning of realism, as being different from the more everyday understanding of the word, helped me in seeing the difference between realism and nominalism.

The thing I found most interesting during the seminar this theme was a discussion about what can happened if you take a philosophy to the most extreme line of thinking. During the discussion on what nominalism was we talked about what can happen if you only always regard and never participate in the world. Nominalism and enlightenment are the same in the regard that they both advocate to take a step back, and try to see things as if you are not involved in what is going on around you.This is the reason that Adorno and Horkheimer were critical of it. If you take their argument to the extreme that would mean that it is only possible to act on what already is. There is no room for you to influence or change anything in your life, since you are just an observer. The world is the way it is. The rich are rich, minorities are oppressed, and there is no changing that. Also, along the same line of thinking, that could then mean that you as an observer have no moral or ideological imperative to stop atrocities from happening. In response to that I would argue, and did during the seminar, that similar risks can occur when taking realism to the extreme. If nominalism can be used as an argument for genocide by saying that this is the way the world is, and there is no changing that, then realism can in the same fashion be taken to dark side. It can interpreted to mean that anything that differs from the true thing you know exists outside the wall is wrong and of less worth.

So what similarities are there between enlightenment and mass media? Adorno and Horkheimer would perhaps argue that mass media just mirrors the world, and therefore has neither interest nor power to change things. Benjamin doesn't quite agree on that, he believes that some forms of art has revolutionary potential. His argument relates to the concept of aura. Aura, as I understood it after the seminar, is in itself exclusionary. Aura is created by uniqueness and that in turn is desired by the wealthy and powerful. Mass production of art would serve to destroy the aura of objects and serve to somewhat equalize the standing of the classes.
This is a very interesting thought to me, because in a way we have achieved the destruction of the aura in everyday life. All things are mass produced. The internet means that the spread and access to almost all forms of art are instantaneous. If I want to view the Mona Lisa I don’t have to travel to the Louvre, I can just google an image of it. It won’t perhaps, some might argue, be the same but I will still have seen it. If I want to see an obscure movie from India I can most likely do that on the same computer I’m using to type this. I guess you could say that Benjamin got his wish. In most art forms aura has been destroyed. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have brought on a true marxists paradise quite yet...