The Logic Of Capital Domination And The Critique Of Modernity On The Mass Culture

Compared with the previous centuries, multifarious and multi-dimensional reformation have occurred in human society in the21th century with high speed. The influence of this reformation can be viewed from two aspects:firstly, every field of human society develope in a totally different way, social productivity level is improved unprecedentedly, and people’s material life becomes prosperous along with the constant progress, overall popularization and application of science and technology; meanwhile, with the popularization of education and its tendency of industrialization, sociocultural modality is changing from elite culture to mass culture. It makes the elegant and pure traditional culture become vulgar and utilitarian. Therefore, people’s spiritual life is faced with some tough challenges, such as the lost of transcendence, homogenization, nihilization and so on. It is under this circumstance that the western scholars start with analyzing mass culture to criticize the capitalist society in an all-round way, then they try to find a way out by revealing hte logic of mass culture. By going deep into their study with social development, the scholars have obtained a series of influential and thought-provoking theoretical achievements.Mass culture is a cultural form that possesses cultural resources and expresses spiritual appeal in a certain institutional community. This thesis aims at studying the substantial characteristics and the contemporary situation of mass culture from a brand new angle-combining the critical theory of mass culture with Marx’critic on capital logic. And upon this basis the author tries to use basic theory of Marxist philosophy to make theoretical interpretation and to propose theoretical counterplan to the subject----the contemporary situation of China’s mass culture by taking the current situation of mass culture in China into consideration.This thesis proceeds from the concept of mass culture: firstly, it analyzes the critical theories of mass culture and the social background and theoretical background from wich it originates; then it tries to explain the relationship between the modern nature of mass culture and the capital logic domination by considering the mass culture in modern society; meanwhile, it detailedly analyzes the mode of thinking and the value purport manifested by mass culture from capital logic domination, which is based upon Marx’analysis of capital logic; finally, it points out that the essence of capital logic is a kind of materialized logic, thus the mass culture which follows this logic is vividly materialized, and it is where the "malady" of contemporary mass culture lies. If people want to cure this "disease", they should restore the inherent tension of mass culture and construct new cultural way from two angles:emotional liberation and public reason.