Assessing the legacy of the Frankfurt School in the twenty-first
century
Although successive generations of the Frankfurt School have attempted
to adapt Critical Theory to new circumstances, the work done by its
founding members continues in the 21st century to unsettle conventional
wisdom about culture, society and politics. Exploring unexamined
episodes in the School's history and reading its work in unexpected
ways, these essays provide ample evidence of the abiding relevance of
Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Löwenthal, and Kracauer in our
troubled times.
Without forcing a unified argument, they range over a wide variety of
topics, from the uncertain founding of the School to its mixed reception
of psychoanalysis, from Benjamin's ruminations on stamp collecting to
the ironies in the reception of Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man, from
Löwenthal's role in Weimar's Jewish Renaissance to Horkheimer's
involvement in the writing of the first history of the Frankfurt School.
Of special note are their responses to visual issues such as the
emancipation of color in modern art, the Jewish prohibition on images,
the relationship between cinema and the public sphere, and the
implications of a celebrated Family of Man photographic exhibition. The
collection ends with two essays tracing the still metastasizing
demonization of the Frankfurt School by the so-called Alt Right as the
source of cultural Marxism and political correctness, which has gained
alarming international resonance and led to violence by radical
right-wing fanatics.
