Rethinking The Frankfurt School

A reexamination of key Frankfurt School thinkers—Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse—in the light of contemporary theory and cultural studies across the disciplines, Rethinking the Frankfurt School asks what consequences such a rethinking might have for study of the Frankfurt School on its own terms. Ironically, contemporary theorists find themselves turning back toward the Frankfurt School precisely for the reasons it was once scorned: for a notion of subjects whose desires are less liberated and multiplied than they are produced and regulated by a far-reaching, very-nearly totalizing global culture industry. Indeed, as new questions concerning globalization and economic redistribution emerge, while analyses of identity politics and subjective transgression become less central to contemporary theory and cultural studies, the future of the Frankfurt School looks as promising and productive as its past has proven to be.

What has become known as the Frankfurt School is often reduced to a small number of theorists in media communication and cultural studies. Challenging this limitation, Revisiting The Frankfurt School introduces a wider theoretical perspective by introducing critical assessments on a number of writers associated with the school that have been mostly marginalized from debate. This book therefore expands our understanding by addressing the writings of intellectuals who were either members of the school, or were closely associated with it, but often neglected. It thus brings together the latest research of an international team of experts to examine the work of figures such as the social psychologist Erich Fromm, the philosophy of Siegfried Kracauer, the writer on media and communication Leo Lowenthal, introducing Hans Magnus Enzenberger to the debate, whilst also shedding new light on the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin and Jürgen Habermas. A critical reassessment of the contributions of the Frankfurt School and its associates to cultural, media and communication studies, as well as to our modern understanding of new media technology and debate within the public sphere, this book will appeal to those with interests in sociology, philosophy, social psychology, social theory, media and communication, and cultural studies.

The Frankfurt School' refers to the members associated with the "Institut fur Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) " which was founded in Frankfurt in 1923. The work of this group is generally agreed to have been a landmark in twentieth century social science. It is of seminal importance in our understanding of culture, progress, politics, production, consumption and method. This set of six volumes provides a full picture of the School by examining the important developments that have occured since the deaths of the original core of Frankfurt scholars. All the major figures--Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Benjamin--are represented. In particular, the important post-war work of Jurgen Habermas is fully assessed. The collection also covers the work of many of the minor figures associated with the School who have been unfairly neglected in the past, resulting in the most complete survey and guide to the "oeuvre" of the Frankfurt School.

Public space, both literally and figuratively, is foundationally important to political life. From Socratic lectures in the public forum, to Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring, public spaces have long played host to political discussion and protest. The book provides a direct assessment of the role that public space plays in political life.

This Critical Theory and Contemporary Society volume analyzes how cinema can help critical theory repoliticize culture and society. >

“Marvelously entertaining, exciting and informative.” —Guardian “An engaging and accessible history.” —New York Review of Books This group biography is “an exhilarating page-turner” and “outstanding critical introduction” to the work and legacy of the Frankfurt School, and the great 20th-century thinkers who created it (Washington Post). In 1923, a group of young radical German thinkers and intellectuals came together to at Victoria Alle 7, Frankfurt, determined to explain the workings of the modern world. Among the most prominent members of what became the Frankfurt School were the philosophers Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. Not only would they change the way we think, but also the subjects we deem worthy of intellectual investigation. Their lives, like their ideas, profoundly, sometimes tragically, reflected and shaped the shattering events of the twentieth century. Grand Hotel Abyss combines biography, philosophy, and storytelling to reveal how the Frankfurt thinkers gathered in hopes of understanding the politics of culture during the rise of fascism. Some of them, forced to escape the horrors of Nazi Germany, later found exile in the United States. Benjamin, with his last great work—the incomplete Arcades Project—in his suitcase, was arrested in Spain and committed suicide when threatened with deportation to Nazi-occupied France. On the other side of the Atlantic, Adorno failed in his bid to become a Hollywood screenwriter, denounced jazz, and even met Charlie Chaplin in Malibu. After the war, there was a resurgence of interest in the School. From the relative comfort of sun-drenched California, Herbert Marcuse wrote the classic One Dimensional Man, which influenced the 1960s counterculture and thinkers such as Angela Davis; while in a tragic coda, Adorno died from a heart attack following confrontations with student radicals in Berlin. By taking popular culture seriously as an object of study—whether it was film, music, ideas, or consumerism—the Frankfurt School elaborated upon the nature and crisis of our mass-produced, mechanized society. Grand Hotel Abyss shows how much these ideas still tell us about our age of social media and runaway consumption.

Contrasting aesthetic versus linguistic centered visions for critical theory and the analysis of contemporary democratic theory and society, Martin Morris draws special attention to the concept of communicative freedom. He problematizes the paradigm shift within critical theory from the "philosophy of the subject" to the communicative action theory championed by Jürgen Habermas by opposing Habermas's reconstruction of critical theory to that of Theodor W. Adorno.

Thomas Wheatland examines the influence of the Frankfurt School, or Horkheimer Circle, and how they influenced American social thought and postwar German sociology. He argues that, contrary to accepted belief, the members of the group, who fled oppression in Nazi Germany in 1934, had a major influence on postwar intellectual life.