The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and Reproduction of Value

The Frankfurt School of Critical theory and Reproduction of Value
Herman Gosson's Law of Diminishing marginal value states that the marginal utility
of a commodity diminishes with every act of consumption and reproduction.
The Frankfurt school of value criticism and Marxist/post marxist theory can be used
in order to discuss and dissect such a notion of the work of art(as a commodity with
value) thus reversing the question and evaluation of value from being an 'act of
consumption' into a reproductive process that results in an ever increasing surplus of
value creation.
This assertion of the process of artistic reproduction doesn't only preserve
value(historical, cultural and artistic) but also gives rise to a social consciousness that
reflects and acknowledges its own past during its construction of a future to come.
My proposal strives to explain this movement away from the consumption of value to
the reproduction of the same through a critical study and understanding of two texts-
Simon Reynold's Retromania and Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida.
I.
1. Retromania traces the current pop culture's association and addiction to its own
past.
2. It reveals that the 21st century popular culture wrt music and other liberal arts is
self reflexive in nature and thus constantly invocates and conjures up the past in its
search for meaning and in its construction of value.
3. The book can be used to explain that the marginal value/utility of all artistic
productions is constructed around an economic non-value.
4.This marginal value is always ahistorical, decentered and is therefore prone to
mediation into culture through the use of memory, nostalgia and history, thus
preserving singular units of value and utility from being lost, conserving them in their
spectral/virtual form.
Retromania thus explains that value is created by the individual's relationship to
his/her socio-historical reality.
II.
1. Walter Benjamin in his essay The Work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction
proclaims that the aura or essence of the work of art reduces with every reproduction
of the same.
2. Benjamin's stance can be contested by a thorough reading of Barthes' text Camera
Lucida. The book promotes the idea that a text is created around an absent centre and
its essence can be reduced to a non-presence.
3. Camera Lucida is a text that talks about a photograph that is never present in it and
always exists outside of it.

4. Thus, camera lucida is a text with an absent center that initiates a chain of
signification that results in its own mechanical reproduction through a conscious self-
reflection of its own textual absence.
Thus, textual value is again constructed not by a predetermined essence but by the
constant and potentially unending process of signification.
The proposal finally reasserts Herman Gassons law of diminishing marginal utility in
post structural terms, no more as a loss of a particular utility,but as tracing a
movement away from "the absent center"/"economic non-value" i.e. every act of
observation, reception, consumption and reproduction becomes an act of decentering,
'making different' or distancing the work of art from its original non-value/absent
center into a differential reproduction of value and meaning.
Abstract
Walter Benjamin, in his seminal essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction discusses the decreasing aura of the original Work of Art with every act
of reproduction that it undergoes under the capitalist modes of production. Benjamin's
claim validates Hermann Heinrich Gossen's first law of Economic Utility which states
that the marginal value of an economically produced object diminishes at every
moment of consumption or reception. The law of diminishing marginal value thus,
based on the homogeneity of consumption predicts the complete exhaustion of the
work of art in the economic market with its eventual arrival at a zero value.
The post structuralist/deconstructivist ideas of ‘supplementarity’ and
‘superabundance of the signifier’ proposed by Jacques Derrida in his essay Structure,
Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, on the other hand relocates the
value of the Signifier/sign as being generated within the differences created through
its repetitions in cultural history. Thus implyimg that the cultural and historical value
of the Signifier/sign always increases through time under the process of
supplementarity and differance, which not only assigns a complete value to the
Signifier but always adds on to it/which results in a process of continuous and
heterogeneous process of signification and value creation.
Along with explaining how the formation of artistic models in a given
economy correspond to the process of historical Signification, and primarily drawing
upon Karl Marx’s critique of Value, Hermann Heinrich Gossen’s laws of Modern
Economics, the Tradition of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory including the
works of Marxist critic Walter Benjamin and Post-Marxist value critic Robert Kurz,
my proposal strives to investigate and scrutinise the two conflicting ideas of value
production, resting on the dual ethics of diminishing marginal value and consumption
on one hand and the increasing historical value through production on the other hand-
finally, the proposition that value is always Consumed Economically and Produced
Historically and the subsequent need for a historio-economic approach towards the
evaluation of the Work of Art (that Benjamin's formulations of the essence of art can
not only be represented through the laws of modern economics but also can be
understood in the terms of post structuralist ethics, the complications arising out of
such a study and its consequent implications) sum up the chief concerns of my paper.
1. How does individual and collective memory along with the presence/discourses
of cultural and political ideology contribute to the reception of the Work of Art?
2. What are the fundamental differences between the Mechanical Reproduction of
Art and the Spectral Reproduction of the same(through mood and memory) in the
context of aesthetic and economic value?
3. How far does Walter Benjamin’s conception of the Work of Art and Jacques
Derrida’s handling of the Signifier correlate to each other?
4. To what extent does Labour-in-Production, as opposed to Economic
Consumption determine the value of the Work of Art? Is the nature of Value thus
created aesthetic, cultural and historical in qualification or purely Economic in its
operation?

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The Frankfurt School of Critical theory and Reproduction of Value

of a commodity diminishes with every act of consumption and reproduction.

consumption' into a reproductive process that results in an ever increasing surplus of

This assertion of the process of artistic reproduction doesn't only preserve

Simon Reynold's Retromania and Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida.

search for meaning and in its construction of value.

productions is constructed around an economic non-value.

4.This marginal value is always ahistorical, decentered and is therefore prone to

Retromania thus explains that value is created by the individual's relationship to

his/her socio-historical reality.

2. Benjamin's stance can be contested by a thorough reading of Barthes' text Camera

its essence can be reduced to a non-presence.

always exists outside of it.

reflection of its own textual absence.

constant and potentially unending process of signification.

post structural terms, no more as a loss of a particular utility,but as tracing a

observation, reception, consumption and reproduction becomes an act of decentering,

center into a differential reproduction of value and meaning.

of reproduction that it undergoes under the capitalist modes of production. Benjamin's

that the marginal value of an economically produced object diminishes at every

moment of consumption or reception. The law of diminishing marginal value thus,

based on the homogeneity of consumption predicts the complete exhaustion of the

‘superabundance of the signifier’ proposed by Jacques Derrida in his essay Structure,

of the Signifier/sign always increases through time under the process of

Signifier but always adds on to it/which results in a process of continuous and

heterogeneous process of signification and value creation.

Along with explaining how the formation of artistic models in a given

economy correspond to the process of historical Signification, and primarily drawing

2. What are the fundamental differences between the Mechanical Reproduction of

context of aesthetic and economic value?

Derrida’s handling of the Signifier correlate to each other?

4. To what extent does Labour-in-Production, as opposed to Economic

created aesthetic, cultural and historical in qualification or purely Economic in its

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