No, as of this post I have only scanned the article. I did so to make a point- that popular representations of critical theory tends to steer your thought toward wingnuts like serial killers and Nazis and the like.
I look forward to reading it.
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So, if I understand correctly, you don’t deny that the field exists, but rather, that it can be characterized as any thing resembling a conspiracy?
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it’s best understood by consulting primary sources.
Jaques Derridda and Jürgen Habermas have written several books together. Why don’t you pick one up?
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I’m reading N.O. Browns Life Against Death now. I may just take your recommendation. Why this one?
I find some of the titles mentioned by @andy_hilmer interesting.
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I agree, I have read some primary sources. Now, at this point let me make my own recommendation.
Check out Orwells essay Politics and the English Language ( there is a link at the bottom to the essay ) and then check the Critical Theory “primary sources”.
I wont ruin it for you - the journey of discovery is more important than the destination.
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From Orwell:
Each of these passages has faults…a lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not.
yeah, pot, kettle, etc.
Look, if you want to have conversation, precisely and crisply state your position.
Otherwise, you keep ducking and hiding behind the hidden meaning you attribute to other writers, hinting at the breadcrumbs for the worthy who grok you.
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Of course not, not sure how thats relevant.
But, should you ever get frisky and decide to read the CT “primary sources” I want you to keep that essay in mind.
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Well, those quotes were replies to a few different people.
Read my first post on this thread. I just wanted to know why the reaction was what it was.
For your benefit, I reiterate my gist of my inquiry:
Critical Theory is a very esoteric subject. I notice that its mention here is often greeted with mockery, but never with inquiry. To me this seems a little odd.
I stated earlier that I didnt chime in on this thread to argue, but to inquire. For someone so familiar with my comment history I thought you would have seen that.
As to this “hidden meaning” I don’t think its hidden at all.
I have posted a vid for you to watch at your leisure that explains well.
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I think this is insightful.
As someone who claims a Marxist past can you opine on the work of the Frankfurt School to further this cause in the West?
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No, I can’t, really! My claim of a Marxist past is a tenuous one. As a thoughtful but basically uneducated small-town child, I became interested in revolution and recognition of expanded possibilities for people. I detested the idea that I was being trained for a meaningless adult world of being exploited through work, soaked in rationalizations of poor morals and ideology, and trained by people who were complicit with this system despite lacking trust or belief in it. The first writings I found in my teens which touched upon Marx’s work were “Che Guevara Speaks” and Wilhelm Reich’s “Sex-Pol”. From there I read Marx and Engel’s “Communist Manifesto” - which I enjoyed, but probably did know enough to fully appreciate at the time. From there I went on to read some various Nietzsche and Freud, before I became “lost in the wilderness” for a few years. I would like to read more Marx, but giving something such as Das Kapital my full attention seems like a big commitment.
Resuming my reading of philosophy, critical theory, and other things years later, I have had to deal with dwindling time and optical difficulties. Also, I skipped forward in time to reading a little Debord, Foucault, Deleuze, and other more recent writers. The early 20th century is more or less missing from my reading here. Although I have read some of Adorno’s writing on music, which appealed to my sensibilities as a self-indulgent avant garde cacophonist. My understanding of dialectic is somewhat informed by Buddhist philosophy, which also involves working towards emancipation by juggling what appear to be innate contradictions. Although I do not know to what extent this may resemble similar-sounding thought as put forth in German philosophy. I do agree generally that trying to understand culture and historical contexts is crucial.
My own outlook, contrasted with what little I know of the Frankfurt School… they would probably dismiss my ideas as a positivist bastardization of Marx. I think that history and subjectivity and hermeneutics can be invaluable in understanding culture, but that they have a negligible role in the creations of social superstructure in the present, which then shape the ideas and goals of its inhabitants in the future. Revolution occurs by providing parallel structures that allow for smaller groups to usurp some of the autonomy of larger groups. Providing templates for DIY family structures, companies, currencies, religions, countries, schools, etc which are recognized to the extent that they are non-coercive. The less they bother the ecosphere, or other groups with their ideology, the stronger they are. Groups which grow larger with more impact weaken and dissolve. This reverses historical incentives which have been towards aggregation into larger groups, which strive for permanence by geographical dominance, indoctrination, assimilation - making the autonomy of the individual subordinate to an ever growing State. Instead, people are encouraged to devise their own diverse systems, based upon affiliation with others. A person could be a citizen of thirty countries they subscribe to, each of no more than a thousand people, and with no specific geographical center or boundaries. This happens by making not the issues of the society democratic, but the actual societal structures themselves.
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Popehat is getting some related reactions now to his gg piece that Cory linked.
Of course, this one tickles me.
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You guys are hilarious. 
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Alright, I’m trying to figure out the long arm of the Frankfurt School. Are we supposed to be worried that something that started in the 1920s is going to make us all communist in spite of the fact that in the last century capitalism has come into such ascendency that mainstream media essentially doesn’t even question the idea that people with more money deserve to have more say in how everything works?
Or maybe the currently subversive notion that democracy is better as one-person-one-vote than one-dollar-one-vote is an example of cultural maxism waiting in the wings?
Or maybe communists are secretly running the world along with The Jews™?
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i don’t know, is it possible that by referencing the frankfurt school they’re working on the optics of their grievances? think about it this way–
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it’s a fairly obscure reference so it might seem to give some academic heft to their complaints.
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it’s a safer target than most ethnicities, genders, etc.
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it allows them the opportunity to continue to conflate literary-style criticism with radicalism.
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Not really. Not a lot of people major in it in college, but some do.
I have not seen that. I have seen mis-representations of it greeted with mockery, particularly those who think they can throw the term “Cultural Marxism” around willy-nilly. That’s always amusing. In a car-crashy sort of way. But I do tend to enjoy how the narrative thread unravels to reveal a twisted counter-narrative of counter-assertions clamoring to be allowed to order clamato from the same counter, countering exclusionary language omnipresently promulgated in a (n un)conscious réal of “neo-baseline” pandering (see below) vis-a-vis a paleo-symbolic logical re-tread of care-worn epitomological concerns that have largely been dis/credited once the quasi-original collision damage was noted and the narrative declared “totalled.” Plus, I carpool.
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Also, depending on which socialist group you ask, the Frankfurt School stopped being relevant in 1968-9.
I should be encouraging this. Get the right wingers ranting about out of date political theories whilst we get on with actually fixing the problems.
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