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A Critical Hermeneutics of Subjectivity:
Cultural Studies as Critical Social Theory


Hans-Herbert Kögler, Associate Professor, Philosophy, University of North Florida

The claim that the research practices commonly labelled as “cultural studies” are the productive
continuation of the epistemic interests of the early Frankfurt School may surprise those who
consider Adorno’s culture-pessimistic essays as classic examples of bourgeois cultural elitism,
especially in analyses concerned with so-called ‘mass-culture,’ In contrast, if not open
opposition, to Adorno’s dismissal of the ‘Kulturindustrie,’ cultural studies appear to represent the
reflexive and creative diversity of agents engaged in everyday practices; they thus emphasize that
resistant and non-conformist attitudes are to be found in even the most standardized
‘entertainment-products’ and their respective consumption.
However, if we take a step back from that (not irrelevant) dissensus, we will soon realize
that an underlying commonality defines their epistemic and ethical perspectives. Both critical
theory and cultural studies are interested in culture as the medium in which power and
subjectivity intersect. For both, the analysis of symbolic forms of culture is not conceived
positivistically as a value in its own right, but is much rather motivated by the objective of critical
reflexivity with the intent at political transformation. For the two paradigms, then, the central
question is how social practices of power influence, by means of producing meaning, the self-
understanding of subjects, and how those subjects themselves are in turn capable of influencing
and changing the respective cultural and social practices. The question of the cultural construction
of selves through power, which provides us also with the guiding thread in our current analysis,
constitutes for both the research-orienting focus: how is power ‘anchored’ in the internal life of
subjects? How can we explain that individuals accept and even identify with life conditions that
are disadvantageous and oppressive for them? How, finally, can we conceive of the resistance of
subjects against the exercise of power, if we argue both that power is crucially effective in
establishing subjective self-understandings and yet do not want to buy into any self-refuting form
of social reductionism?

My contribution to the research logic of cultural criticism attempts to clarify the extent to
which the early Frankfurt School and the currently flourishing cultural studies conceive
differently the determination of culture through power. To be sure, both paradigms assume that
objective social processes and practices have a structuring impact on subjective self-
understanding, without, however, reducing the self-consciousness of the subjects to an epi-

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phenomenon of power or economy. Yet the conceptualization of the realm of mediation, which is
supposed to both allow for an analysis of effects of power on consciousness (say as ‘ideologically
distorted consciousness’) and still retain the relative autonomy of selves, is utterly different in
both. Critical theory explains ideological schemes through recourse to depth psychology, and then
grounds the force of criticism in the agent’s capacity to make conscious such implicit and hidden
schemes. In contrast, cultural studies, or so I will argue, conceive of mediation in terms of the
symbolic dimension of language, on the basis of which subjects make sense and interpret
themselves. The power for critical reflexivity as well as the capacity for creative social action
emerges as a potential built into the interpretive cultural practices as such.1

My thesis is that the symbolic paradigm of cultural studies constitutes a substantial
progress in comparison to the grounding of cultural criticism in a depth psychology of
consciousness, yet a complete and satisfying theory of symbolic mediation requires
socialpsychological elements. The quasi-archeaological reconstruction of the epistemic
frameworks of critical theory and cultural studies will reveal that, for one, the move from a depth
psychology of understanding to a symbolic theory of cultural meaning can free us from the
aporias of the early Frankfurt School. However, a truly adequate conceptualization of symbolic
mediation—that is, one that can both detect power effects in self-understanding and yet ascertain
the potential for creativity and reflexivity—asks for a critical hermeneutics of subjectivity that
can fuse symbolic forms and psychic aspects of meaning.

The analysis will proceed along the following path: to begin, I will introduce
Horkheimer’s early project of a critical social theory, according to which depth-psychological
mechanisms explain the (power-determined) integration of selves into (a highly stratified and
unjust) society. The need for social recognition and integration illuminates how ideological
distortions of experience can gain hold of subjective consciousness, while the existence of the
psychic mediation entails the possibility that agents become reflexive and critical with regard to
internalized ideological schemes. (1). At the time of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, however, the
earlier hope for resistance and critique has disappeared. Now convinced that in late capitalism
individuals have become unable to built up the psychic autonomy necessary for reflexive thought,
the ground for resistance and critique is lost. Yet with that result, the original project of a critical

1 Due to the fact that cultural studies represent a highly heterogeneous and complex field of research,
ranging from the effects of globalization to audience reception of mass media, from social power struggles
to ‘race, class and gender’ studies, the following analysis of methodological premisses of cultural criticism
must abstract from many particular issues. The emphasis I place on the symbolic mediation is by no means
intended to downplay the importance of bodily practices, as defined, say, by Foucault or Bourdieu;
however, the possibility of reflexive criticism and informed resistance, as much as the full cultural meaning
of social practices, are are based upon the linguistic dimension of our experience.

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theory of society aiming at a reflexive understanding of power by the agents themeselves
becomes aporetic; the ‘end of the subject’ thesis thus drives critical theory into deep and
devastating contradictions (II). In order to point to a way out of that pessimistic impasse, I claim
that the aporias resulting from the conceptual elimination of the psychic dimension can be
overcome if we turn to a hermeneutically inspired theory of symbolic mediation. Such a
conception, as we will see, can both integrate the argument concerning a power-shaped
schematism of experience and do justice to the specific utopian and ethical intuitions of openness
to otherness and subjective critical reflexivity which early critical theory introduced into the
discussion. (III). In the next step, I will show that the project of cultural studies, as conceived and
practiced by Stuart Hall and many others, is indeed the institutional realization of precisely that
perspective. The core problem of cultural studies consists in a non-reductive mediation of agency
and power, while its methodological imperatives are based on the most advanced tools
concerning symbolic forms and social practices (IV). However, the conception of cultural studies
thus introduced, attractive as it might be, still lacks a developed conceptual framework. I thus
present the sketch of a theory of linguistic understanding which allows for the methodological
reconciliation of power-shaped sense with reflexive and creative modes of interpretation (V). The
basic idea behind that perspective consists in the claim that a socio-psychic need for social
recognition leads to the the power-influenced pre-schematization of a potentially infinite and
open symbolic meaning; yet, due to the inherent openness and indeterminacy of symbolic world-
disclosure, schemes of understanding can always be challenged and overcome by reflexive and
creative practices. Thus, while cultural studies are analyses of power emphasizing that subjective
self-understanding is embedded in power-shaped contexts, the potential to reflexive self-
determination and creative self-interpretation is equally represented.

I. Horkheimer’s Early Program of a Critical Theory
According to Horkheimer’s opening address at the Institute for Social Research, critical social
theory should attempt to bring social philosophy and social research in fruitful contact with one
another.2 The aim is to reconstruct the constitution of subjective experience in the general societal
context without abandoning the self to social forces. Philosophical questions—such as the
relation between individual and society, the significance of culture, the formation of social
solidarity, and the structure of social life in general--are to be renewed in an empirical research
context. While Kantian and Mannheimian social philosophies are divorced from social reality,

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empirical research is fragmented into so many positivistic endeavors. A renewal of social
philosophy has to reunite philosophical questions and social research in a way “that philosophy—
as a theoretical understanding oriented to the general, the “essential”—is capable of giving
particular studies animating impulses, and at the same time remains open enough to let itself be
influenced and changed by the concrete studies.”3

Horkheimer’s claim for such an integration is motivated by the concern for a non-
reductive yet socially-situated theory of experience. In order to define the methodological
premises of that project, which needs to be laid out pragmatically rather than in a priori fashion,
we need to distinguish three levels: (1) the economic dimension of society, (2) the psychic
dimension of individual experience, and (3) the dimension of culture. According to Horkheimer,
the essential question for critical social theory consists in the analysis and determination of the
relations between those dimensions. At stake is “the question of the connection between the
economic life of society, the psychical development of individuals, and the changes in the realm
of culture in the narrower sense (to which belong not only the so-called intellectual elements,
such as science, art, and religion, but also law, customs, fashion, public opinion, sports, leisure
activities, life-style, etc.).”4

However sketchy this might appear, we can detect three essential claims. First, in contrast
to orthodox Marxist positions, economy, while an important factor, is not granted full
determining force. Horkheimer equally rejects a ‘bad Spinozism’ that explains the social in terms
of its spiritual expressions and a ‘misunderstood Marxism’ that would deduce the psychic and
cultural dimensions directly from economic life. Second, culture is not to be identified with ‘high
culture.’ Horkheimer accepts the late Dilthey’s fusion of Hegels absolute with the objective spirit,
thus acknowledging the equal importance of all cultural practices. Finally, and this will turn out
to be crucial for our discussion, a distinction between individual psyche and culture is introduced.
The emphasis on a psychic dimension that mediates culture and economy indeed defines the
major (yet controversial) contribution of the Frankfort School to social criticism.

It is important to understand properly the role of the psychic dimension in Horkheimer’s
early project. The psychic level gets introduced as the mediation between the economic ‘base’
and the cultural ‘superstructure.’ According to Horkheimer, culture cannot be connected directly
with economy because “such dogmatic convictions… presuppose a complete correspondence

2 See, “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research,” Max
Horkheimer, in: Between Philosophy and Social Science. Selected Early Writings, Cambridge: The MIT
Press 1995, p. 1ff.
3 Ibid., p. 9.
4 Ibid., p.11.

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between ideal and material processes, and neglect or even ignore the complicating role of the
psychic links connecting them.”5 Yet culture is nonetheless not to be idealized as a purely
autonomous realm of subjective self-expression. True, the reference of thought is the concrete
individual: “Thought, and thus concepts and ideas, are modes of functioning of human beings,
and not independent forces.”6 This forces us to take into account the psychological perspective.
However, since the self is itself socially situated, “economic (rather) than psychological
categories are historically fundamental.”7 The rejection of an abstract isomorphism between
economic life and cultural forms leads to the concrete, thinking and speaking individual, and thus
to psychology. Yet because the individual is situated in the context of economic social forces and
its historical expressions, economic categories take precedence over the psychological level.

At first, it might seem that Horkheimer is entangled in a problematic circle here. On the
one hand, economic reductionism is rejected by referring to the irreducibly subjective acts of
understanding which originate in the individual. Thus the necessity of the psychological
perspective. Yet on the other hand an abstract universalistic psychology is equally rejected,
because the individual is unavoidably situated in a concrete economic-historical constellation, and
thus subject to economic forces. The way out of this circle is provided by the dialectical function
that depth-psychology plays for Horkheimer. Psychological explanations of cultural beliefs and
practices are necessary because only they can account for how agents accept otherwise intolerable
and overtly absurd social conditions. The individual act of thought has to be seen as mediated by
a psychic apparatus in order to ‘make sense’ of the smooth adjustment of individuals: “That
human beings sustain economic relationships which their powers and needs have made obsolete,
instead of replacing them with a higher and more rational form of organization, is only possible
because the action of numerically significant social strata is determined not by knowledge but by
a drive structure that leads to false consciousness.”8
The reference to a “drive structure” should not be construed as a unsophisticated
biological essentialism, but rather as the indication of co-determining emotive and affective
factors in experience. Horkheimer’s model of how socially situated experience takes shape
involves the following steps. To begin, we have to see that accounting for ideological distortions
of reality and experience requires the explanatory help of a depth-psychological perspective.
Obvious contradictions, counter-evidence and false generalizations remain inexperienced and
undiscovered by the situated selves—thus forcing us to assume that a particular mode of

5 Ibid., p.12.
6 “History and Psychology,” in: Max Horkheimer, Between Philosophy and Social Science, p. 116.
7 Ibid., p. 118.
8 Ibid., p. 120.

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experiencing reality systematically overlooking those distortions is involved.9 In order to account
for this phenomenon, we have, in a second step, to introduce the idea of an implicit pre-
structuration of thought and perception. Obviously, reality must be constructed in a certain
manner of disclosure so as to adjust agents to otherwise problematic social conditions. Naming
Kant’s concept of schematism, Horkheimer claims that capitalist society preconstructs experience
differently for differently situated social individuals: “On the basis of their psychical apparatus,
human beings tend to account of the world in such a way that their action can accord with their
knowledge… Psychology must explain that particular preformation, however, which has as its
consequence the harmony of worldviews with the action demanded by economy.”10 And he adds:
“it is even possible that something of the ‘schematism’ referred to by Kant might be discerned in
the process.” The deeper source of acceptance of such partial interpretive schemes is, finally,
taken to be located in a basic need for social recognition and acceptance. The concept of need is
not, again, to be reduced to mere bio-sexual functions, but includes instead truly social wants like
security in the group and social recognition.11 Basic survival or self-preservation, then, becomes
the question of one’s social integration in the collective which requires the adjustment to the
symbolic as well as practical structures that define one’s concrete environment.
I want to emphasize the dialectical tension with which that model attempts to capture
how social power gets internalized and reproduced on the subjective-experiential level. The
depth-psychological analysis gives us a tool for understanding how subjects can adapt to
objectively challenging and problematic situations. However, the mediating dimension of the
psyche equally entails the possibility of a reversal and displacement of the objective socio-
economic structure. Horkheimer’s theory, which looks at times like an anticipation of Bourdieu’s
conception of social habitus, precisely foregrounds the psychic in order to avoid and reject a
complete isomorphism between subjective agency and social fields.12 Such an isomorphism
would deliver the individual entirely to social formations, while the existence of a psychic
mediation entails the seeds for a political subversion, the potential for the expanded establishment
of subjective and rational autonomy: “The disclosure of psychical mediations between economic

9 These early assumptions have later been supported by analyses with regard to Amercian antisemitism. See
T. W. Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality, New York, London, 1950/1982, esp. p. 297 ff.
10 Horkheimer, “History and Psychology,” p. 122, 123.
11 Ibid., p. 120 ff.
12 Indeed, Horkheimer even refers to the concept of ‘l’habitude’ in (contenporary) French sociology.
However, Horkheimer discussion remains extremely sketchy at this point, and will need to be specified. In
particular, there is no clear distinction between (a) the need to identify with one’s social situation so as to
accept one’s objective social chances by being socialized into a specifically constrained social identity (as
woman, as Jew, as worker) as defined by the whole society; and (b) the need to be accepted and recognized

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and cultural development… may lead not merely to a critique of the conception of the functional
relations between the two, but instead to a strengthening of the suspicion that the sequence may
be changed or reversed in the future.”13
Indeed, the very distinction between “traditional” and “critical” theory is modeled on the
promise that the (ideologically necessary) construction of culture through psychic adjustments
also entails the hope for a critical reversal, for a resistance and ‘dis-entanglement’ from existing
economic and social conditions.14 The possibility, as we have seen, for such a critique and
resistance is grounded socio-ontologically in the psychic mediation of experience.

II. Dialectic of Enlightenment/Dialectic of Critical Theory
Experiencing fascism, state-socialism, and mass culture changed the position of the Frankfort
School theorists. Instead of a social-philosophical synthesis undertaken in revolutionary spirit, the
Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944/47) now projects a skeptically-distanced, somewhat withdrawn
theory of total reification. Instead of the empirical analysis of relations between economic power,
psychic attitudes, and symbolic forms, we now encounter an analysis of the master concept of
“instrumental reason.” To be sure, classifying thought itself is now supposed to exercise the
functions of social power and the organization of subjective experience. We also find the idea of
a correlation between socially schematized experience and the need for social recognition
acknowledged at the very core of the introduction: “The dutiful child of modern civilization is
possessed by a fear of departing from the facts which, in the very act of perception, the dominant
conventions of science, commerce, and politics—cliché-like—have already molded; his anxiety
in none other than the fear of social deviation.“15 Yet the very suggestion of the identity of
cognitive and social conformism already indicates that the socialpsychological perspective has
given way to the historical-philosophical meta-narrative of “identifying thought.”

The basic principle of identifying thinking consists in the synthesis, or better,
subsumption of anything particular under a general concept. Early traces of mimetic experiences
in magical contexts (that imitated the other instead of subsuming it under a general category) get
reduced and integrated into mythological, metaphysical, and positivistic systems of thought.
According to this “negative dialectic” of Western cultural history, the complete eradication of the
“Non-Identical” leads to the complete subsumption of the particular under the general. Yet the

as a member within one’ concrete social environment, and thus to have to adjust to the specific norms,
values, practices, rules of conduct that are essential for one’s social group.
13 Ibid., p. 120.
14 See Max Horkheimer, Traditional and Critical Theory,’ in Collected Writings, Vol., 4.
15 Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, New York: Continuum 1996, p. xiv.

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materialist source of total symbolic classification is to be found in the need for dominating nature.
Objectifying thought derives its structure from the subjugation of nature, the unity of which it
discloses and constitutes in the same breadth. The control of external nature through labor (which
indeed was essentially supported by scientific reasoning—Bacon!—) excludes, besides the
negation of mimetic attitudes toward the concrete other, the free development and expression of
one’s own ‘inner nature.’ The domination of objective nature, which is the condition of
possibility for subjective freedom, thus produces the domination of subjective freedom, for the
sake of which the domination of nature would make sense. The condition of subjective self-
realization, the domination of outer reality, thus undermines its very ‘raison d’etre’ of subjective
freedom, and thus turns into the ‘dialectic of Enlightenment.’

The (nowadays fashionable) rejection of that ‘pessimistic turn’ of critical theory can
easily hide the true conceptual change from the early to the mature position. The concept of
“schematism,” borrowed from Kant and reinterpreted as a category of symbolic reification of
experience, is central for both positions. In the early paradigm, as shown, schematism is meant to
designate a depth-psychological process that (a) explains the conformistist adjustment and
socialization of individual agents to a stratified social reality, and (b) allows, due to its mediating
function in-between economic position and cultural expressions, for the possibility of a critical
break from the quasi-determinism of existing power relations. In the Dialectic of Enlightenment
the concept of schematism undergoes a twofold transformation.
On the one hand, the psychological idea of an experiential scheme is redefined in terms
of a cultural category of the symbolic construction of experience. This move is justified with
reference to the pervasive character of late-capitalistic mass culture which erased any difference
between individual-psychological and social-symbolic mechanisms: “Kant’s schematism still
expected a contribution from the individual, who was thought to relate the varied experiences of
the senses to fundamental concepts; but (culture) industry robs the individual of his function. Its
prime service to the customer is to do the schematizing for him.“16 Economic processes (we shall
return to that point) are now seen as undermining the possibility of autonomous ego-identities.
“The stunting of the mass-media consumer’s powers of imagination and spontaneity does not
have to be traced back to any psychological mechanisms“17— and this because there is no longer
any relatively autonomous psychic level. The force of experiential synthesis, once (however
unconscious) achieved by the subject, is now exercised by stereotypical cultural production.

16 Ibid. p. 124 (translation modified)
17 Ibid, p. 126.

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On the other hand, the cultural sphere is now totally identified with the conformist pre-
schematization of experience. Schematism not only becomes the category of culture, it now
becomes its only essential feature whatsoever. The cognitive mode of the paranoiac, introduced
as the ideal type of fascist world disclosure, is taken to exemplify the conceptual totalitarianism
permeating every intentional act. Its basic feature is the endless repetition of the ever-same
pattern without any capacity at reflexive thematization or mimetic openness toward the concrete
experiential content: “Since the paranioaic perceives the world about him only as it corresponds
to his blind purposes, he can only repeat his own self which is denatured into an abstract mania.
The naked pattern of power as such, which dominates all around it as well as its own
decomposing ego, seizes all that is offered to it and incorporates it, without reference to its
specific nature, into its mythic fabric.“18 Symbolic world disclosure, which due to the psychic
mediation allowed for a potentially open and reflexive relation to the world, is now fully
determined by reification. Experience has become schematism without a gap.

For our discussion, it is important to see how this reinterpretation of the schematism of
experience leads to the dialectic, or even self-dissolution, of critical theory. In contrast to a
widespread assumption, holding that critical theory’s aporias stem from its radical break with the
early model, the problem rather derives from an underlying continuity. Indeed, the contradiction
results from the assumption that resistance needs to be grounded in the psychic autonomy of
subjects while the Dialectic of Enlightenment equally holds that the exclusive source of
resistance, the autonomous individual, has been eradicated by late capitalism. Precisely by
clinging to the idea of a “psychic center” as basis for resistance, Horkheimer and Adorno lead
their early project into a deadly impasse.19

Indeed, early as well as mature critical theory hold that resistance and critique require
support in an autonomous ego-identity. The unquestioned assumption is that only the psyche can
function as stronghold against social power. Empirically, given that outlook, we then need to
analyze the extent to which the economic-historical situation (see part I) allows for the
construction of such autonomous and resisting structures of selfhood. Faced with the almost
unconstrained fascist and capitalist power, Horkheimer and Adorno draw their radically
pessimistic conclusions with regard to the modern psyche: in fact, the very level of autonomous
psychic mediation is now seen as eliminated: “Psychology is nothing but the folly to believe that

18 Ibid., p. 190, (my emphasis).
19 I am aware that at several points in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, usually at the end of the chapter, the
hopefull resources of human reason are invoked. However, the unmediated, abrupt nature of those pleas,
which are as desperate as they are unreconciled with the rest of the text, rather support the impression of a

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we can change the individual, or that we can change society, if we concern ourselves with that
which the individual has become by being the monad of this society… the individual is merely a
battle field.”20

Confronted with the explanation of the pervasive standardization of culture (as well as
with the lack to any substantive resistance to fascism), Horkheimer and Adorno propose the
hypothesis of the ‘end of psychic mediation of experience.’21 (In this regard, we are of course
witnessing a theoretical break from the early conception). Drawing on Freud’s triad of ego, super-
ego, and id, the amazing lack of resistance is explained with the elimination of the level of super-
ego. Internalization has come to an end in late capitalism,22 meaning that the macro-structural
constellations of late-capitalism have effectively undermined the micro-structural conditions
necessary for the (familial) development of ego-strength. The family provided, as it were, a
socializing threshhold, a lifeworldly buffer-zone against an all-too-pervasive influence of social
power on self-constitution. Through identification with a strong father and a loving mother, the
constitution of internalized authority, which could oppose external authority and influence, has
been possible: “There was a force in the life of the child which allowed her to develop, inasmuch
as she adjusted to the external world, her unique individuality as well.“23 The internalized
institution of self-control via the super-ego provided ego-strength, because it allowed the self to
control its desires and thus to conduct herself autonomously, to practice self-control. According
to Horkheimer and Adorno, the destruction of (male) economic independence in late-capitalism,
in the course of which the familial autonomy of the father gets dissolved, leads equally to the
deconstruction of the micro-constellation necessary for successful socialization. Self-governed
ego-identity—and thus resistance against power—have now become impossible.

There are two versions of this theory. In the stronger account, the ‘end of internalization’
suggests the end of psychic mediation as such. Fascist propaganda as well as “Kulturindustrie”
have now direct and unmediated access to the desires, emotions, and dispositions so as to employ
the individual for their strategic purposes. In the less radical version, the development of an
internalized super-ego is still asumed, but a weakended ego is now taken to be fully determined
by an overpowering and strong super-ego; ideals of leadership and star-cult are seen as hooking
onto the internalized authority-schemes of a weak ego, which the child—again because of the

utterly pessimistic work. See also Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, (1947), Continuum: New York
1996.
20 Max Horkheimer, Collected Writings, Vol. 12, “Ursprung und Ende des Individuums,” discussion with
Th. W. Adorno, Suhrkamp: Frankfurt 1987, p. 440.
21 Max Horkheimer, “Autorität und Familie in der Gegenwart,”in: Collected Writings Vol. 5, p. 377ff
22 See Jessica Benjamin, “The End of Internalization: Adorno’s Social Psychology,” in: Telos 32, (1977), p.
42 ff.

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Document Outline

• A Critical Hermeneutics of Subjectivity:
  • • Hans-Herbert Kögler, Associate Professor, Philosophy, University of North Florida
• The claim that the research practices commonly labelled as cultural studiesŽ are the productive continuation of the epistemic interests of the early Frankfurt School may surprise those who consider Adornos culture-pessimistic essays as classic examples
• However, if we take a step back from that (not irrelevant) dissensus, we will soon realize that an underlying commonality defines their epistemic and ethical perspectives. Both critical theory and cultural studies are interested in culture as the medium
• I. Horkheimers Early Program of a Critical Theory
• II. Dialectic of Enlightenment/Dialectic of Critical Theory
  • III. The Necessity to Turn to Symbolic Mediation
  • IV. The Project of Cultural Studies
  • V. Critical Hermeneutics as Implicit Paradigm of Cultural Studies

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