In Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno’s theory of the ‘culture industry’, the concept of ‘schema’ fundamentally explains the substantive identity concealed beneath the appearance of differentiation in cultural products, and constitutes an essential component of the culture industry as a totalising model. With the actual transformation of the forms of cultural products, however, the classical concept of schema can no longer adequately account for the homogenising mechanism of today’s culture industry. Yet the concept of schema has not become silent. Rather, it participates directly in the cultural practices of the masses in a more concealed and dynamically generative form, namely as Procedural Schema. Through the transition from ‘model’ to ‘process’, schema reshapes the basic structure of the culture industry and becomes a more internalised force of identity.
Yunxiao Zhang (Fri,) studied this question.