A “Symptomatic Reading” of the Mass Culture Critique and Its Implications for the Reconstruction of Contemporary Chinese Literary Theory

Abstract

The critique of mass culture is a core theory of the Frankfurt School. Entering China in the early 1990s, this critique enjoyed an initial but brief acclaim. As an over-reaction and over-interpretation stemming from painful historical memories, it tended to impede the impartial assessment of mass culture and the culture industry, resulting in obvious theoretical blind spots and gaps and making a “symptomatic reading” necessary. Today, the Frankfurt School’s critique of mass culture is still of value and significance as an intellectual resource and historical reference, but it warrants further scrutiny when used to analyze practical issues. Given the burgeoning of mass culture and the cultural industry presently under way in the Chinese market economy, we should rise above previous intellectual limitations and theoretical misunderstandings to give due weight and active encouragement to the positive energy of mass culture and the cultural industry. The construction of Chinese literary discourse has its own distinctive pattern, and must orient itself toward China and the contemporary era, and particularly toward the practical development of contemporary China in the current period of transition. The academic counterpart of this is a three-dimensional platform consisting of level of thought, value concepts, and Chinese characteristics.