‘Horkheimer and Theodor *Adorno’s term for the n all its forms—music, literature, the visual eation of every aspect of daily life that f the twentieth century. Written in exile in Los er and Adorno’s essay ‘The Culture ass Deception’ is a central plank in their of life in *modernity offered in Dialektik d as Dialectic of Enlightenment (1972).- $ culture industry ) culture industry rather than ‘mass culture’ (their The ae oOuMe culture’ —provides a significant clue as to how oxigina should be understood: the emphasis should be placed on the or not the first. For what Horkheimer and Adorno were struck ' falyses of Hollywood was the fact that the application of a industrial processes of production, distribution, and consumption to ve resulted in the complete deterioration of culture as they knew it. In tec, their implication is: where there is industry there cannot be culture,/ ig is because, as Herbert "Marcuse would later explain, under such anditions culture is performed rather than lived. ‘The culture industry's singular aim is to produce a form of culture compatible with the aims of capitalism. In order to make culture into i the means of reliably turning a profit it has to be standardized and its disruptive power neutralized. Standardization primarily occurs at the level ‘ofform, a fact that is masked by the apparent variety of what Horkhéimer and Adomo scathingly refer to as psuedo-individualization of contenteFor 4 example, as several formalist studies of genre fiction (particularly exime,- | romance, and westerns) have shown, difference tends to be ¢onfined to the incidentals of setting and character and even then there are restrictions. Because of its commitment to market principles, the culture industry tends to try to repeat success via duplication and avoid failure by ininimizing innovation. This doesn’t mean it cannot make entertaining, complex, and interesting products, but it does mean at the end of the day all it makes is products. Consequently, as Jameson explains in Late Marxism (1990), *critical theory regards the offerings of the culture a {meaning false or deceitful in both an ontological ‘ological sense) because like all commodities they proclaim that happiness and pleasure ‘ already exists and is readily available for consumption. Authentic art, by contrast, offers no such consolation and instead affirms the sheer ‘negativity of existence. The culture industry reverses Immanuel *Kant's famous dictum that art is ‘purposiveness without purpose’ and gives | ‘ise to ‘purposelessness for purpose’,/or what Marcuse referred to as r RL A} tonEmpire A prophetic and utopian concept which attempts to theorize in philosophical terms the nature of the new paradigm of power and right that emerged alongside *globalization in the latter half of the twentieth century. Conceived by Italian Marxist Antonio *Negri and American Marxist Michael *Hardt in their bestselling book Empire (2000), Empire is fo effect a new form of *sovereignty, which is at once a brutal new power regime bathed in blood and a new set of possibilities for liberation. Hardt and Negri claim that the sovereign authority of nation-states has declined 2empiriciam = oe 1% rely in the post World War Il era, Taleng, its sacs 16 8 tO Serie of rule or sqovernmentallty, Jimpire, whieh yokes together multinational corporations and supranational organizations (6% the Iiternational Monetary Mund) to produce not only a new form of subjectivity, tut may 4 new form of value as well, Proof of its existence, they say, 6 10 he found in the fact that no nation, noteven the USA, Is capable by iteell of controtiing the whole world fn all Ite fae Similarly, the fact that all nations are at the merey of global trends In finance capital (as the sub-prime loan meltdown in 2007 made apparent) Is symptomatic of their relative hack of *austhrriey in the postmodern world, In contrast to the nation-state model of sovereignty, Empire isa decentred and *deterritorialized apparatus of rule, which has no history, no fixed centre and no boundary lines demarcating iw territory. Contra *Lyotard, it endlessly espouses a master narrative tn which it presents itself as universal and all-inclusive, as having always been there and encompassing, the entire world right down to its yangfia. ‘The acknowledged inspirations for the concept of Empire are Foucault's notion of *biopower and *Deleuze and *Guattar\’s concept of desiring: production, but Hardt and Negri tax Foucault with failing to grasp ey true dynamism and Deleuze and Guattari with spoiling their concept by rendering power too chaotic. Although it appears bleak in that it is a form of power that, as Foucault argued with respect to biopower, is interested in populations rather than people, Empire has its affirmative dimensions too. Its modification of sovereignty has created a new political constituency, which Hardt and Negri refer to as the *multitude, which in their view is destined to invent new forms of democracy that will take us beyond Empire's uninviting landscape toward a more hopeful and space. Empire has provoked fierce debate. The Right dismiss it of hand as fanciful, while the Left demand more rigour in its analyses. absolut