Rethinking the Frankfurt School: Alternative Legacies of Cultural Critique

237 Pages·2002·1.26 MB·English

by  Jeffrey T. Nealon

RETHINKING THE
FRANKFURT SCHOOL

RETHINKING THE
FRANKFURT SCHOOL
Alternative Legacies of Cultural Critique
Edited by
Jeffrey T. Nealon and Caren Irr
State University of New York Press
Cover illustration: Andy Warhol, “Soup Can with Dollar Bills”
© 2002 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ARS, New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rethinking the Frankfurt School : alternative legacies of cultural critique / edited by
Jeffrey T. Nealon and Caren Irr.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-5491-6 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5492-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Frankfurt school of sociology. 2. Culture—Philosophy. 3. Culture—Study and
teaching. I. Nealon, Jeffrey T. (Jeffrey Thomas) II. Irr, Caren.
HM467 .R48 2002
306′.01—dc21 2002070658
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Rethinking the Frankfurt School 1
Jeffrey T. Nealon and Caren Irr
I THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL TODAY
1 The Theoretical Hesitation: Benjamin’s Sociological Predecessor 11
Fredric Jameson
2 The Frankfurt School and British Cultural Studies:
The Missed Articulation 31
Douglas Kellner
3 The Limits of Culture: The Frankfurt School and/for
Cultural Studies 59
Imre Szeman
4 The Frankfurt School and the Political Economy of Communications 81
Ronald V. Bettig
II ADORNO
5 Of Mice and Mimesis: Reading Spiegelman with Adorno 97
Andreas Huyssen
6 Why Do the Sirens Sing?: Figuring the Feminine in Dialectic of
Enlightenment 111
Nancy Love
7 On Doing the Adorno Two-Step 123
Evan Watkins
8 Maxima Immoralia?: Speed and Slowness in Adorno 131
Jeffrey T. Nealon
v
vi Contents
III BENJAMIN, HORKHEIMER, MARCUSE, HABERMAS
9 The Negative History of the Moment of Possibility: Walter Benjamin
and the Coming of the Messiah 145
Richard A. Lee Jr.
10 The Frankfurt School and the Domination of Nature: New Grounds
for Radical Environmentalism 153
Kevin DeLuca
11 One-Dimensional Symptoms: What Marcuse Offers a Critical
Theory of Law 169
Caren Irr
12 The O¨ffentlichkeit of Ju¨rgen Habermas: The Frankfurt School’s Most
Influential Concept? 187
Thomas O. Beebee
IV CONCLUSION
13 The Frankfurt School 207
Agnes Heller
About the Contributors 223
Index 225
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The editors are grateful for permission to reproduce the following essays:
Fredric Jameson, Winter 1994, “The Theoretical Hesitation: Benjamin’s So-
ciological Predecessor,” Critical Inquiry 25, 267–88.
Douglas Kellner, 1997, “The Frankfurt School and British Cultural Studies:
The Missed Articulation” in Cultural Methodologies, ed. Jim McGuigan (London:
Sage): 12–41.
Andreas Huyssen, Fall 2000, “Of Mice and Mimesis: Reading Spiegelman with
Adorno,” New German Critique 81.
The online journal Theory & Event published earlier versions of the essays by
Nancy Love (volume 3.1, 1999) and Jeffrey T. Nealon (volume 4.3, 2000).
We would also like to thank the Department of English at the Pennsylvania
State University and the provost’s office of Brandeis University for their support of
this project.
vii

Introduction
Rethinking the Frankfurt School
Jeffrey T. Nealon and Caren Irr
The essays in this volume “rethink” the relationship between the Frankfurt School
and theoretical scholarship on contemporary culture, asking what consequences such
a rethinking might have for study of the Frankfurt School on its own terms. This
question arises because of the paradoxical situation of the Frankfurt School in relation
to the humanistic interdiscipline known as “Theory.” On the one hand, in the
humanities, the Frankfurt School is often taught as an approach that can and is
studied alongside other “approaches” (such as poststructuralism, feminism, de-
construction, and cultural studies). On the other hand, the critical theory of the
Frankfurt School is also treated as a somewhat dated, slightly ossified predecessor to
theory per se. As both contemporary and antecedent to theoretical approaches to
culture, then, the Frankfurt School as a topic urges a retrospective reconsideration of
the pedigree and genealogy of Theory itself.
In recent literature devoted to the Frankfurt School, such a retrospective view is
prominent, and in this project three major trends emerge. First, we find numerous
commentators situating the Frankfurt School in relation to problems or themes that
have preoccupied the American academy generally. Postmodernism, feminism, sex-
uality: these and other topics are addressed generally with the sense that they have
emerged “after” the Frankfurt School’s heyday and thus introduce concerns addressed
only partially or as latent issues. It is not uncommon to find essays that look back to
the Frankfurt School with a desire to make use of underappreciated resources. For
instance, Randall Halle locates tensions between Erich Fromm and Herbert Mar-
cuse’s theories of sexuality, locating in the latter means for dissociating the former’s
metaphorical linkage of homosexuality and fascism.
A second major trend in recent Frankfurt School scholarship involves reading
the school internally whether by means of biographical or textual criticism on indi-
vidual figures, rescuing the reputations of minor contributors, revisiting debates or
theses of major figures, or identifying various heirs to the first generation of critical
theorists. The first two of these tasks have been, of course, greatly facilitated by the
republication and translation into English of major works of Theodor Adorno,
Walter Benjamin, and Marcuse. For instance, a significant number of pieces re-
considering critical theories of technology have recently appeared perhaps in response
to massive technological transformations in cybernetics over the past twenty-odd
years. On the question of heirs, an enormous body of scholarship has of course been
devoted to discussion of Ju¨rgen Habermas’s work, and a smaller body to the work of
Axel Honneth and Alexander Kluge; but a major reevaluation of Adorno and
Adornian-influenced scholars also seems to be underway. With substantial recent
works on Adorno from Martin Jay, Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Fredric Jameson, Shierry
1