The goal of the text is to analyze the critical dimension of the cultural industry concept as proposed by Adorno and Horkheimer, starting from the psychoanalytical notion of narcissism such as Adorno has interpreted it. The mass culture is to be seen as offering the radically illusory pleasure of satisfying the anxiety of magnification of the ego, exactly in the moment when it keeps the individual within the inertial tendencies of the social unity.
Culture Industry; Narcissism; Adorno; Mimesis; Tragic