Wang Fusheng and Pan Xinpei: A Critique of the Frankfurt School from the Perspective of Structuralism
As the two most significant theoretical currents of 20th-century Western Marxism, the Frankfurt School and structuralist Marxism occupy a vital position in the overall development of Western Marxist theory. Generally speaking, the Frankfurt School, with critical theory at its core, essentially implemented the humanist logic of Marx’s thought that gained prominence after the discovery of his 1844 manuscripts in 1932. Confronting a series of grave social issues—the rise of fascism, totalitarianism, and anti-Semitism in European society—as well as new shifts in capitalist society as a whole, it took the culture industry, mass culture, and advanced industrial society as its primary objects to launch a critique of cultural and ideological forms. The formation of structuralist Marxism was somewhat more complex; grounded in the structuralist zeitgeist of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ferdinand de Saussure, and Roman Jakobson, it achieved a synthesis with Marxism through Louis Althusser. Its representative theoretical achievement was Althusser’s use of the "epistemological break" to demarcate Marx’s early and late thought, transforming essential Marxist concepts such as the "mode of production" and "class" into structural concepts.
Despite the enormous influence both the Frankfurt School and structuralist Marxism exerted in intellectual circles and the broader socio-cultural field, the two never engaged in effective communication or dialogue. Furthermore, leading researchers of both schools harbored deep-seated prejudices against one another. For instance, Zhao Yong, a prominent Chinese scholar of the Frankfurt School, in his major work Inside and Outside the Frankfurt School: Intellectuals and Mass Culture, borrows judgments from Zhu Xueqin and Terry Eagleton—phrases like "playing games in the symbolic realm, running wild in the imaginary realm" and "post-structuralism is powerless to smash the structure of state power, but they find that subverting linguistic structures is still possible"—to characterize structuralism and post-structuralism as inadequate. Conversely, discussion of the Frankfurt School from within structuralist circles is even more sparse. According to Richard Wolin, among all structuralists and post-structuralists, only Michel Foucault’s thought comes closest to the themes of the Frankfurt School: "Both Foucault and the Frankfurt School believed that the 'dialectic of the spirit' must be subordinated to techniques of data analysis. Only through this means can the disguise of the spirit posing as a thing-in-itself be unmasked." It is worth noting, however, that while they align on certain theoretical issues (both being situated within what Habermas calls the "discursive cycle of the philosophical discourse of modernity"), their internal theoretical structures, logical methods, and ultimate practical aims differ vastly. A truly intrinsic comparison and discussion between the two remain lacking. In fact, neglecting the structuralist current has deprived the Frankfurt School’s critical theory of an extremely important perspective, and vice-versa. Therefore, taking the theories of Jacques Lacan and Theodor Adorno as representative examples of these two schools, we shall reflect here on how a confrontation and dialogue between these two theories might open up entirely new horizons for themselves and for the study of Western Marxism as a whole.
I. Adorno’s Distinctions
As the most important founder of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory, Adorno established its fundamental objects of critique: the critique of the culture industry and mass culture established in Dialectic of Enlightenment (co-authored with Horkheimer), and the negation of previous metaphysical systems characterized by the logic of "forced identity" in Negative Dialectics. These objects, supplemented by Herbert Marcuse's critique of advanced capitalist industrial society (exemplified by mid-1960s American society) in One-Dimensional Man, essentially constitute the different facets of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory. Ultimately, all these critiques are built upon the following logic of distinction.
This distinction first manifests as the split between the harmonious, unified Greek-style natural society and the one-dimensional modern society of advanced capitalist industry. In the general vision of the Frankfurt School and Adorno himself, critical theory is primarily a social critique—a critique of the continuous "rationalization" [1] of modern society (in Max Weber’s sense), and a critique of how modern society has thoroughly degenerated into a "single-dimension" society under the domination of purposive rationality, instrumental rationality, and Enlightenment reason. This totalizing status quo of modern capitalist society is the basic point of departure for the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and Adorno. A society completely free of alienation where humanity and nature are harmoniously unified, a state of substantial individual existence not suffering the pains of separation—this is the idealized historical picture described by Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment through the lens of the Greek myth The Odyssey: "Having survived several life-threatening dangers, the hero must stand tall, thus tempering himself into a unity of life and an identity of the individual." The existence of this ideal social vision, and the sharp contrast it forms with the modern capitalist reality of abstract total rule, complete individual alienation, and the total reification of all internal elements, allows the modern society critiqued by Adorno and others to be completely demarcated. Protracting this distinction is the internal foundation upon which their critique is systematically expanded.
Secondly, this distinction manifests as the divide between the autonomy and heteronomy of art, as well as the resulting hierarchy of artistic forms. Adorno’s focused critique of the "culture industry" and "mass culture" in modern capitalist society is a direct embodiment of this distinction. In his view, the direct product of the culture industry is mass culture, represented most overtly by post-WWII American mass culture. As a thorough "pseudo-culture," mass culture is wrapped in the ideology of commodity fetishism. By shaping culture into standardized, formulaic, pseudo-individualized, and deceptive products, it directly satisfies the "false needs" of the masses produced by the consumer society. This leads the broad potential revolutionary groups—the proletariat who occupy the subjective position in post-war capitalist society—to completely lose their consciousness of struggle and revolution. The dominance of the culture industry over modern cultural forms corresponds to the total loss of artistic autonomy. Precisely because of the distinction from "true art" possessing autonomy, the deceptive, abstract, false, and enslaving nature of mass culture can be fully exposed.
For anyone with a basic understanding of Kantian thought, the requirements for the autonomy and self-governance of art will be familiar. The category of "autonomy" (自律, zìlǜ) originated in Kant’s ethical system, referring to a subject establishing universal moral laws for themselves through their own will, rather than submitting to external authority. This category was subsequently brought into his aesthetic system. In the Critique of Judgment, when explaining the specificity of aesthetics, Kant pointed out that art and aesthetics are "purposiveness without purpose," unrelated to utilitarian, practical, or external ends. In contrast, the commodity-form art produced by the modern culture industry exhibits the attribute of "heteronomy" (他律, tālǜ): it takes purely external things as its criteria, completely subordinating itself to the dictates of instrumental rationality, the law of value, and the logic of consumption. As Adorno described: "Now, in the most typical products of the culture industry, the first priority is the pursuit of precise and thoroughly calculated effects, straightforward and undisguised." For Adorno, "heteronomous" artworks ultimately become mere products of mimesis, for they have lost the principle of "self-negation" [2] inherent to true works of art. Simultaneously, mimetic artworks naturally lack any utopian content or artistic revolutionary power capable of transcending reality, performing a critical function, or facilitating aesthetic liberation. It is precisely in the process of comprehensively eradicating the autonomy of art or culture that the culture industry distinguishes its "heteronomous" logic of domination from the autonomous logic of true art, thereby providing Adorno and others with a solid internal foundation for their critique.
Thirdly, the logic of distinction is reflected in Adorno’s study of dialectics and metaphysics, specifically in the distinction between the "forced identity" and "totality" of dialectics versus its "negativity" and "preponderance of the object." In Negative Dialectics, Adorno explicitly critiques traditional Western philosophy, especially the "concept fetishism" inherent in dialectics and the logic of forced identity it directly produces. The primary representative of the philosophy of idealism, characterized by forced identity, is Hegelian philosophy. It uses a grand system to encompass all links of philosophical cognition, whether these links are universal, particular, or the mediation between the two. Adorno identifies this mediation as something with content—namely, the social totality (Gesellschaftliche Totalität). However, once the social totality, which originally possessed content, is incorporated into the system of identity philosophy, it is naturally formalized and thereby gains abstract legitimacy. Once social totality achieves this abstract legitimacy, all the hidden and coercive laws behind the social phenomena of modern capitalist society also gain legitimacy. For example, the law of commodity exchange is the concrete, legitimate social form acquired by the principle of identity. This line of thought actually constitutes Adorno’s logical or metaphysical explanation for the continuous "rationalization" described by Max Weber, as well as the series of problems he himself raised, such as the "culture industry," "mass culture," and the "emergence of Auschwitz." Of course, Weber explained these issues through the Protestant ethic, bureaucracy, and the evolution of social dominance, while Adorno answered them from the perspective of Enlightenment reverting to myth to deceive the masses; these will not be elaborated upon further here.
To resist the violence of the logic of forced identity, Adorno emphasizes the negativity of dialectics and the importance of the "non-identical" [3]—that which cannot be dissolved and which the dialectical system of concepts and identity cannot accommodate. In his view, Hegel and his followers' affirmative understanding of the core principle of dialectics—the "negation of the negation"—is merely using contradiction to eliminate contradiction. The result of doing so is only the continuous expansion of dialectics into a totality, thereby causing its own thorough elimination. Conversely, only by maintaining a negative understanding of the principles of dialectics and constantly emphasizing this negativity can dialectics possess true power, because "the resistance of the other to identity is where the power of dialectics lies." The critique of identity is also reflected in Adorno’s emphasis on the "preponderance of the object" (Vorrang des Objekts) in dialectics. If the emphasis on negativity takes Hegel as a specific target, then the emphasis on the preponderance of the object is directly aimed at Kant’s epistemological system. For Adorno, the transcendental epistemological system that reached a high degree of synthesis in Kant is an evolutionary system of cognition based on the subject as a totality; in this system, the object serves only as the medium and sensory material for the subject’s cognition. Facing this idealist framework that emphasizes the priority of the subject, Adorno launches a rebuttal based on the following logic: (1) Setting aside the process of cognition, the subject is by nature an object from the start: "The subject is also an object; this is part of the meaning of subjectivity. But for the object to become a subject is not part of the meaning of objectivity." (2) The immediacy of sensory material is not, as traditional epistemology understands it, shaped by the power of the subject; on the contrary, it is a form of resistance of the objective thing—the facticity of the object is irreducible. (3) Subjectivity cannot be the ultimate form of cognition; this is proven by the development of 20th-century natural science, which dismantled subjective transcendental categories and intuitions such as space, time, and causality. Adorno’s understanding of and insistence on the negativity of dialectics and the preponderance of the object finally allowed his understanding of metaphysics to be strictly distinguished from all previous idealist philosophies that emphasized identity and totality.
To summarize, the distinction between the "rationalized society" or "one-dimensional society" and the original, harmonious, non-alienated society established the general horizon of critical theory for the Frankfurt School and Adorno himself. The distinction between the autonomy and heteronomy of art (and the resulting hierarchy of forms), and the distinction between the negative and identical understandings of dialectics, further grounded Adorno’s critique of the culture industry, mass culture, the law of commodity exchange, traditional idealist philosophy, and traditional epistemology. This means that the social critical theory of Adorno—and indeed the entire Frankfurt School—takes this logic of distinction as its internal foundation.
II. Lacan’s Post-Subjective Philosophy
Lacan, as the most important master of psychoanalysis after Freud and Jung, is likewise a key figure in the structuralist movement. Dosse [4] once listed Lacan as one of the "five sons" of structuralism (the other four being Foucault, Althusser, Lévi-Strauss, and Roland Barthes). As typical postmodern currents of thought, structuralism and post-structuralism are primarily characterized by post-subjectivity; this is evident in the classic propositions of their representative figures, such as Foucault’s "death of man" and Althusser’s "history is a process without a subject." However, it is worth noting that Lacan’s confirmation of post-subjective thought differs significantly from that of other structuralist thinkers: he proceeds from the individual perspective, falsifying the real existence of the subject along two lines—the chronological and the topological. Since the topological approach involves Lacan’s later, quite complex and abstruse theories regarding the Register of the Real, which have yet to reach a scholarly consensus at home or abroad, we shall provide a brief overview here according to the chronological thread.
Although Lacanian theory is world-renowned for its sprawling complexity and obscurity, and frequently offers startling assertions, we can still grasp the overall structure and main thrust of his theory if we understand it step-by-step in chronological order. In Lacan’s view, the subject is fundamentally a product confirmed within a relationship: beginning with an infant identifying an image of its self in a mirror, to the acquisition of language constantly constructing his consciousness and unconscious, and finally to the layers of social relations in the process of growth constantly capturing him within the symbolic order—the establishment of a person's subjective status can never be separated from confirmation by the Other.
For Lacan, the human is a natural "premature birth" [5]; humans are abruptly thrown into this world before various bodily functions have fully matured, which causes a primal "sense of lack" and "frustration" from birth. Subsequently, when the infant grows to between 6 and 18 months old, the first identification process of individual life—the "Mirror Stage"—begins to take effect. The concept of the "Mirror Stage" comes from the observations of the French child psychologist and friend of Lacan, Henri Wallon: a six-month-old infant can recognize its own image in a mirror and becomes obsessed with observing this image; whereas other primates such as chimpanzees, while also able to recognize their image in a mirror, show no interest in it. Although Wallon had realized that the infant’s process of imagining the mirror image possessed a creative function for the unity of the subject, there is no doubt that the more profound and creative development of this concept was completed by Lacan. Lacan’s most important explanatory text on the Mirror Stage theory is the significant report he gave at the 16th International Psychoanalytical Congress in Zurich: The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience (referred to as The Mirror Stage), which was later included in various editions of Lacan’s selected works. Lacan believes that the recognition of one's own image in the mirror, as the first symbolic scene in the infant's individual history, produces the first imago of the child's psyche—the "I" [6]. He further points out: "The 'I' can only be objectified in a dialectical relationship with the Other; only through the restorative role of language can I universally possess the function of a subject." The imago of the "I" given to the infant by the mirror produces a massive Gestalt effect on the formation of the infant's body. The discomfort and motor incoordination manifested in the first months after birth begin to disappear under the functional effect of the imago of the "I," and a fragmented body thus becomes whole. This is the infant's first identification process in chronological order; this identification is subject to the symbolic seduction of its own holistic image and is confirmed through the "mirror"—this Other.
While it can be said that The Mirror Stage, first published in 1936, represents Lacan’s initial innovation in the field of psychoanalysis, it actually remained within the discernible boundaries of established theory and practice. However, the report he delivered at the 17th International Psychoanalytical Congress in 1953, titled The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis (later famous as the Rome Report), can be regarded as the manifesto of the Lacanian school. From then on, Lacan’s core concern shifted to the level of language. According to the psychoanalytic tradition, the subject can only exist within the unconscious, but since the unconscious can only exist "elsewhere" in a "scene," the subject can only confirm its own existence through various scenes located "elsewhere" that reveal the unconscious. Freud first discovered this and simultaneously indicated several important scenes where the unconscious is revealed, such as slips of the tongue, dreams, errors in everyday language, and so on. Lacan made use of many popular 20th-century trends in philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, and art—primarily structuralism, existentialism, Hegel as interpreted by Kojève, and the Surrealist movement—to comprehensively rewrite psychoanalysis. He further pointed out: "the unconscious is structured like a language," and "the unconscious of the subject is the discourse of the other." The description of the mode of operation of the unconscious in traditional psychoanalysis was thus infused with the dimension of language.
Although the "Mirror Stage" gives the infant its first experience of identification within the symbolic, at this time the infant is still within the "Register of the Imaginary." While there is the phenomenon of symbolic identification at this stage, its internal causes are directly related to the seduction of space and images, as well as the narcissism complex. The acquisition of language opens the door to the "Register of the Symbolic" for the infant. The "Name-of-the-Father," signaling symbolic meaning, breaks the intimate relationship with one of the parents in the Imaginary under the effect of the "Oedipus complex." Authority, laws, and customs begin to be introduced into the process of growth, causing the infant to gradually establish its own subjective identity while adapting to the confirmation of layers of symbolic order. This identification is a continuous process, which Lacan explains using the concept of the "signifying chain" from structural linguistics: the reason the symbolic order can continuously capture the subject is precisely because the signifier gains priority over the signified in the language of daily life; meanwhile, the signifier itself has absences and vacancies in meaning, resulting in one signifier being able only to slide continuously toward the next signifier to obtain the elucidation of its own meaning.
Lacan refers to all orders within the Symbolic that play a role in confirming the subject as the "little other" (autre), believing it to be the governor of the individual. It not only governs the individual's daily life, consciousness, and unconscious activities at this stage, but what is regarded by traditional psychological schools (including Freud) as the most intrinsic desire is also revealed as the desire of the other: "Desire is always the desire of the Other." This determination by Lacan dictates the total dominance of the "little other" of the Symbolic over the individual, which directly leads to two consequences: first, the comprehensive establishment of the individual's subjective status. If a person can be captured by more symbolic orders and governed by more "little others," that person will appear more successful and more dazzling in the eyes of the secular world; second, the confirmation of the subjective identity by the "little other" directly leads to the total disappearance of Reality and truth within the Symbolic because they are repressed by layers of symbolic order. The manifestation of the "Real" is only possible in the Register of the Real, which contains an irreducible traumatic kernel; this kernel was later identified by Lacan as jouissance [7]. On one hand, this kernel forms a misalignment with the symbolic order, constituting a "parallax" that reveals truth (this is an important starting point for Slavoj Žižek's later theory); on the other hand, it transforms into an irreducible "Big Other" (Autre), thereby ensuring the stability of the "little other's" rule in the Symbolic and fundamentally confirming the existence of the subject's "alterity." It is precisely here that Lacan's theory exhibits a very strong post-subjective quality, and this post-subjectivity is accomplished through the scientific falsification provided by the structuralist method.
III. The Internal Invalidity of the Logic of Distinction
After developing these foundational explanations of the respective theoretical logics of Adorno and Lacan, it becomes clear in what sense Lacan’s theory constitutes a rebuttal to Adorno’s critical theory. That is, the pseudo-subject confirmed by Lacan in its imaginary and symbolic relations with the Other fundamentally negates the internal basis of Adorno's logic of distinction. It should be pointed out that in the context of post-Marxism, many thinkers, in the process of appropriating and stitching together various theoretical resources to synthesize them into their own theoretical creations, have gradually blurred the intellectual boundaries between Lacan and Adorno—or between the Frankfurt School and structuralist thought. For example, Žižek psychoanalyzes the "critique of identity" that Adorno launched based on real abstraction, interpreting it as a "Register of the Real" repressed beneath a realistic fantasy. This theoretical synthesis ultimately serves the theorist's own intellectual creation. Žižek’s purpose in psychoanalyzing Adorno’s "critique of identity" is to absolutize the moment of "non-identical resistance" in Adorno’s negative dialectics, thereby establishing an absolute antagonistic relationship between the value-form and the subject—this is the core contention of his own thought, rather than an objective interpretation of Adorno’s and Lacan’s theories. We believe that Lacan's theory fundamentally negates the basis of Adorno's logic of distinction based on the theoretical cores of the two thinkers; of course, for many divergent ideas within the two schools, there exists the possibility of connection and synthesis, and actual theoretical innovation indeed requires such connection and synthesis.
In fact, Adorno's persistent critique and total negation of the culture industry and mass culture already displayed a strong sense of arrogance and prejudice, as well as an elitist temperament belonging to the intellectual class. This elitism is also closely related to the reality of the Frankfurt School’s own complete academization and institutionalization. Facing this pervasive elitism, there has been no shortage of criticism within the half-century of academic reception and history of critique regarding critical theory. These critiques take several strategies: first, a direct critique of Adorno's elitism. For example, Martin Jay pointed out in his important work on the intellectual history of the Frankfurt School, The Dialectical Imagination, that the fact that almost all major members of the Frankfurt School came from upper-class bourgeois families resulted in an actual existence characterized by direct access to wealth and an absence of social interference. They could all be described as "anti-bourgeois sons of the bourgeoisie," because such comfortable living conditions would inevitably produce a loyalty to comparable cultural values and a cultural-aristocratic elitism. The overall sense of loss, decay, and pessimistic gloom embodied in the works of Frankfurt School members, including Adorno, also originates from this specific social position and self-elitist positioning. Another important member of the Frankfurt School, Walter Benjamin, also identifying in his correspondence with Adorno that "Adorno lacked a basic empathy for commodities and exchange value." [8]
The second strategy involves using other theoretical resources to supplement Adorno and the Frankfurt School’s purely negative understanding of mass culture. In this regard, the thoughts of cultural materialists in the British Marxist tradition, such as Raymond Williams, and representative figures of the "Birmingham School" like Stuart Hall, are the most frequently utilized resources. On one hand, they emphasize the positive role played by mass culture in the formation and subjectification of the working class; on the other hand, they emphasize that the working class can actively engage in struggle with the bourgeoisie in the fields of culture and ideology to contend for "hegemony." For instance, Hall once emphasized the resistance of "subcultures" popular among British working-class youth against post-war capitalist culture.
The third strategy proceeds from the practical influence of the Frankfurt School’s mass culture theory, primarily targeting the "misalignment" that occurs when the theories of Adorno and others are introduced into developing countries where the economy and society are developing rapidly and material life is gradually becoming abundant. In the mid-to-late 1990s, Chinese scholars such as Xu Ben, Tao Dongfeng, and Li Zehou pointed out that mass culture emerging during China’s social transition played a positive role in dissolving monolithic and despotic ideological discourse and promoting political democratization, marketization of the economy, and cultural diversity. It was progressive and in line with historical trends. However, mass culture theory founded on the highly developed industrial society of Western capitalism actually has a huge misalignment with China's social reality and cultural production. Faced with this misalignment, we must "recontextualize" this theory based on our own social reality.
However, it must be admitted that although the aforementioned critical strategies directed at Adorno and the Frankfurt School’s critical theory point out and critique the elitist tendencies of this critique of mass culture from various angles, they do not, in fact, constitute a fundamental refutation. This is because these critiques fail to touch upon the theory’s logical foundation: the internal distinction discussed in the first section. We can therefore state that if one does not launch a critique against this logic of internal distinction, all critiques of Adorno’s critical theory will remain at the level of values. So long as Adorno and his peers continue to uphold the value of things that are distinct from the objects of their theoretical critique, all the aforementioned criticisms will remain fundamentally ineffective, providing at most space for supplementary discussion and multi-angled reflection.
Distinct from the aforementioned critical strategies, the intervention of structuralism—especially Lacanian theory—offers us the possibility of fundamentally dismantling this internal logic of distinction. This is because all distinctions essentially occur within what Lacan defines as the "Symbolic Order." Between so-called mass culture and high culture, popular music and classical music, autonomous art and heteronomous art, or the dialectic of identity and negative dialectics, there exists only a difference in positional potential within the symbolic order, rather than a distinction of essence. Consequently, the distinctions made by Adorno and others between them are fundamentally untenable. Simultaneously, using Lacanian theory as a reference, all things expressed through culture and forms of consciousness—whether high-brow, niche, autonomous, and tasteful, or mass, heteronomous, kitsch, and popular—are essentially signifier-symbols in the form of the petit objet a [9] that dominate the subject within the Symbolic realm. What they ultimately confirm is the subject's state of existence in the sense of the Other; they are all false. Therefore, neither side can embody the subject's autonomy, nor do they represent so-called alienation or "falling" [10]. There is only comedy, as defined and demonstrated by Slavoj Žižek, who was deeply influenced by Lacan: "The comic space is the space between the noble-sublime symbolic mask and the ridiculous-vulgar reality of mundane life." "The true comic step consists not only in tearing away the noble mask (or mission or sublime passion) through the intrusion of everyday reality but in performing a kind of structural short-circuit or simply swapping their positions." Žižek once gave the example of a leader walking into a hall to preside over a formal meeting, only to step on a banana peel and fall heavily to the ground—this creates a comic effect. However, the true comedy lies in the fact that, after falling, he must still maintain his nobility and continue forward. In such a joke, the mask of nobility is thoroughly shredded by the intrusion of daily life, revealing itself only as a pathetic quirk and a complete human weakness.
Lacan’s critique and negation of Adorno’s internal distinction at the level of theoretical logic thoroughly dissolves the elitist temperament and the occasionally revealed self-righteousness and arrogance of Adorno and the entire Frankfurt School. In essence, this represents a comprehensive settlement of accounts by the scientism of the structuralist movement against the humanist logic of the Frankfurt School: all internal distinctions upon which the Frankfurt School based its sharp critiques of mass culture and the culture industry are fundamentally invalid. Of course, there is a degree of controversy in academic circles regarding whether the Frankfurt School adhered to a humanist logic. Professor Zhang Yibing [11] once viewed the totalizing critique of industrial civilization and instrumental or technical reason in Adorno’s Negative Dialectics as a post-anthropological discourse that transcends humanism, defining it as the rupture point between Western Marxism, Post-Modern Marxism, and Post-Marxist trends of thought. However, considering the rationalist tendencies manifested by the Frankfurt School as a whole and its exploration of how humans might regain freedom and emancipation under the logic of late capitalism, it is reasonable to judge it as a school of thought based on humanist logic. Humanist discourse cannot be defined by the single criterion of whether one adheres to industrial civilization or the logic of production. From this perspective, it was only through the dismantling and subversion of discourse systems such as "logocentrism," "foundationalism," and "essentialism"—and the formation of a brand-new discourse system based on new scientific epistemological methods (with primary intellectual sources stemming from Georges Canguilhem, Gaston Bachelard, and others)—that structuralism truly established an intellectual distance from traditional humanist discourse. This can also serve as another intellectual basis for distinguishing the Frankfurt School from structuralism. The immense theoretical power of this refutation and critique can be clearly seen in the late Louis Althusser’s systematic reconstruction of his theory of ideology. After realizing the important role of ideology in maintaining the reproduction of labor power and the mode of production, and accepting the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Lacan, Althusser explicitly defined the subject as a product of ideological "interpellation/hailing": "all ideology interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning of the category of the subject." That is to say, all things expressed in cultural forms are essentially integrated by the bourgeois ideological state apparatuses and function to transform concrete individuals into subjects of capitalist society through individual recognition/misrecognition. Quite clearly, what Althusser presents to us through a clear functionalist explanatory path is essentially identical to what we see in Lacanian theory.
Having discussed how the intervention of Lacanian theory renders the internal distinction logic of Adorno’s cultural critique theory untenable, we must also make the following two supplementary points. First, this does not mean that structuralism or Lacanian theory unilaterally critiques and corrects the Frankfurt School’s critical theory. The relationship between the two is reciprocal. When viewed through the lens of the Frankfurt School, Lacanian and structuralist theories also expose many significant problems. For example, structuralism’s total dismantling of the logic of subjectivity and its complete negation of humanist logic causes it to lose internal active factors. Consequently, a progressive theory characterized by scientificity, revolutionary character, and rupture quickly degenerated in the 1960s into a conservative theory that upheld existing orders and structures. During the "Red May" storm of 1968 [12], it made extremely erroneous political judgments, leading to the rapid disintegration of its own theory. Furthermore, if we use Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to peer through our daily lives, that symbolic dominance of the Other might, in a sense, truly exist—meaning the bourgeois Enlightenment logic and what existentialist philosophy calls "authentic," "non-alienated" life are essentially an imaginary fantasy of the Other. However, can the truly "Real" only be glimpsed, according to Lacan, in the contingent ruptures of symbolic relations or in the traumatic encounter between the subject and the structural parallax (constituted by the misalignment of the Symbolic and the Real)? We can imagine that, in Lacan's eyes, even the most intense emotions of a pair of lovers are symbolic and false; the true expression of their relationship only emerges in the parallax of love and betrayal by one party, which clearly inflicts permanent, almost incurable trauma on the other who remains in the loving relationship and witnesses this parallax. The problem is not only that such an encounter is painful, terrifying, and even unbearable for the subject, but also: if this is the case, does a real romantic relationship still exist? How exactly does it exist? Second, although structuralism and the Frankfurt School oppose each other, they still share certain theoretical premises, and it is precisely these shared premises that constitute the theoretical space and foundation for our discussion and comparison of the two. Both take the speculative structure of identity and grand totalizing narratives, along with individualism, relativism, and the increasingly popular tide of positivism dominated by instrumental reason, as their objects of critique. In this critical process, they formed similar dialectical or speculative qualities. The dialectical-imaginary style of Adorno’s philosophical writing arose both from a strong aversion to the opposing tide of positivism and from the internal requirements of the matter itself: while fiercely critiquing identity and totality, he clearly identified relativism and individuality as mere ideological expressions of bourgeois individualism. He sought to complete the rupture with traditional idealism through speculation rather than positivism or naive empiricism—that is, using concepts to achieve the transcendence of concepts. Similarly, Lacan held a fairly explicit attitude of rejection towards positivism. Even within the more philosophically oriented psychoanalytic schools, the speculative quality of Lacan’s thought is very prominent. It was precisely because of this quality that Lacan developed completely heterogeneous theoretical results when facing nearly the same level of empirical observation as other more positivist psychological schools of his time, such as ego psychology and comparative psychology.
IV. Brief Reflections
The capitalist-dominated process of globalization and the modern technological revolution, centered on information and photoelectric technology, have caused the whole of capitalist society to develop at "accelerated" speeds. Theories today have become highly susceptible to becoming "outdated." The Frankfurt School and Adorno, introduced during the 1980s background of intellectual enlightenment and "Culture Fever" [13], as well as structuralism and Lacanian theory, which began to be widely discussed in the 1990s, naturally seem somewhat old and dated. However, after the clamor has subsided, time has also given us the opportunity to settle, absorb, and re-examine and re-position them within the process of historical development. After explaining the internal logic of these two theories and discussing the possibility of their mutual critique and supplementation, we believe the following four related issues merit further reflection.
First, the refutation of the internal theoretical logic of the Frankfurt School’s critical theory does not mean canceling the practical role of critical theory. Especially today, in developing countries and Third World countries represented by China, high-speed economic and social development and the improvement of the people's actual standard of living have led to various symptoms at the cultural and ideological levels that critical theory was originally directed against. The abundance of material life has begun to form a total contrast with the poverty of the spiritual world, the expansion of material desires, and the atrophy of sensibility. Cultural forms have become thoroughly popularized, commercialized, and kitsch, while capital-manipulated media exerts total control over the cultural life of the masses. The cultural reality of social development no longer suffers from the misalignment discussed in the 1990s in relation to the Frankfurt School’s critical theory. Therefore, the Frankfurt School’s critical theory can become an important resource for our direct utilization and will produce certain positive effects. That is to say, we cannot blindly use structuralist theory to negate this practical role; however, the beneficial supplement of structuralist theory can dissolve the condescending sense of elitism and arrogance generated when critical theory is applied, making it better accepted by cultural workers and the masses.
Second, in the discussion of structuralism and the Frankfurt School, one must have insight into their ideological essence and conduct a holistic investigation by combining the Marxist standpoint, viewpoints, and methods, using classic Marxist theory as a reference. In this sense, both have actually departed from Marx and gone quite far: as cultural and ideological theories, they have themselves detached from the core spirit of Marxism—which, under the guidance of the methodological principles of historical materialism, launches scientific political-economic analyses of concrete social realities, combines this scientific theory with practice, effectively organizes active revolutionary action, and shapes the revolutionary subject within that action. Ideological critique is an important component of Marxism, but when it exists in isolation without this core spirit as its foundation, its tragic fate of being co-opted by the totalizing power of capitalism is inevitable. This so-called critique then becomes a mere posture, possessing only symbolic power and signifier value. It is worth noting that this is not a problem unique to structuralism or the Frankfurt School, but a widespread defect among most thinkers in Western Marxist schools. On this issue, Perry Anderson’s holistic comment on Western Marxism hits the nail on the head: "Western Marxism ... has maintained a specialized silence on those areas most central to the classical traditions of historical materialism: the detailed study of the economic laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production, the serious analysis of the political machinery of the bourgeois state, and the strategy of the class struggle necessary to overthrow it."
Third, it is imperative to discuss and develop theories based on changed real-world conditions, social life, and conceptual ideas. To be sure, those members of the Frankfurt School represented by Adorno lashed out at the systems of idealism represented by Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger by emphasizing the negativity, non-identity, priority of the object, non-totality, and non-continuous homogeneity of philosophy. This approach accorded with the capitalist social reality of the time and the developmental trends of modern Western philosophy as a whole during the 20th century. Similarly, by emphasizing the sense of autonomy, elitism, trauma, and the critical essence of artistic forms, they opposed the popularization, vulgarization, numbing, and uncritical identity [14] characteristic of pop culture. This aligned with the actual situation of the time, where the cultural and ideological spheres of capitalist society were dominated by a "culture industry" supported by instrumental and technical reason, leading to the total reification of the aesthetic and spiritual life of the masses. However, as times have progressed and social reality has continuously shifted, people’s philosophical concepts, understandings, and cultural lives have undergone tremendous changes. In philosophy, alongside the shift in contemporary Western philosophy’s attitude toward Hegel from rebellion to return, people have gradually realized that Hegel’s entire philosophical system is one in which deconstruction and construction proceed simultaneously. Deconstruction and negation are indispensable links for Spirit [15] to realize itself. Hegel’s philosophy is a system and a totality, yet it simultaneously contains the power to subvert that very system and totality. In culture, with the rapid proliferation of the mobile internet and the empowerment of network technology, social networks and convergent media have become the primary carriers of contemporary cultural and spiritual products. The main sites of cultural and spiritual consumption—and indeed the entire system of the culture industry—have consequently undergone structural changes. Faced with these changes, while the rule and infiltration of commercial capital in the cultural sphere persists, emerging cultural forces characterized by subcultures and mutual-aid sharing communities, which oppose mainstream commercial pop culture and popular art, have already assembled in cyberspace. They have constructed a subtle resistant force that contests the culture manufactured by commercial capital, achieving a degree of resistance to and dissolution of that culture. In short, all these new situations and changes provide a new foundation and space for our contemporary discussion and development of Frankfurt School critical theory (including structuralism).
Fourth, through the large-scale importation of Western theory over the past few decades, combined with the keen observation and independent reflection of a group of outstanding theorists from Third World countries facing the actual changes and problems occurring in their own nations, ethnicities, and societies, we have in fact produced a large number of excellent theorists holding a Marxist standpoint. These theorists embody a clearer and more uncompromising Marxist stance and a stirred, militant spirit. This is because they are backed not only by the nourishment of Western theory but also by the precious practical resources provided by the drastic social transformations that occurred in 20th-century East Asian society and the Third World as a whole (a point of advantage not possessed by European and American left-wing intellectuals). At the same time, they maintain a persistence in socialist convictions and a firm faith in communism; thus, many of their theoretical reflections and propositions are often more authentic and powerful.
In summary, faced with these rich theoretical legacies left by China, developed Western countries, and Third World countries, as well as our changed social reality and ongoing social practices, we must clarify our own theoretical logic on this basis. Defining their practical functions and influences to ensure that the journey of Western theory across Eastern lands truly bears original academic fruit is an important task of the times [16] facing the broad mass of theoretical workers.
(Author’s affiliation: Center for Basic Research in Philosophical Theory and the School of Philosophy and Sociology, Jilin University) Online Editor: Tongxin Source: Marxism & Reality, 2021, No. 5.