Pseudo Individualisation Essay

What we find to be most enjoyable in life are what we recognised the most or what we are familiar with. These enjoyments with familiar objects leads to standardisation or in other words, the products obtain the form common to all commodities but it somehow converse its own sense of individuality, which leads to pseudo-individualisation. Pseudo-individualisation is a concept coined by German sociologist and philosopher Theodore W. Adorno. He is well known for his inquiry regarding “Culture Industry” in his book Dialectic of Enlightenment which he wrote with his friend Max Horkheimer. This essay will discuss the process of enjoyment in recognition; recognition leads to standardisation and how standardisation leads to pseudo-individualisation.

He makes a point that the culture industry is equivalent to the capitalists’ entertainment industry and business. The culture industry is responsible for recreating products that people associate with the most in the same format as previous products, which become standardised which then leads to pseudo-individualisation. According to Adorno and Horkheimer, the culture industry repeatedly expose products of pleasure which become standardised in society. In his article titled “A Social Critique of Radio Music”, Adorno discusses how the reproduction and recreation of music have become standardised and that listener virtually have no choice as products are being forced upon them. People enjoy listening to the kind of music that they know and familiar with and by doing so consumers become standardised as well as the product. Therefore consumers and people are characterized by the merchandises they use or enjoy. Adorno claimed that products produced by the culture industry “fuses the old and familiar into a new quality”. In other words most of what we find enjoyable or recognizable are not authentic because we are blind to see that we already have experienced with these