Splinters in Your Eye: Frankfurt School Provocations

Description

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 twenty-first 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, Loewenthal, 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 Loewenthal'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 colour 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 an essay tracing the still metastasising demonisation 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.

Martin Jay is Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught Modern European Intellectual History and Critical Theory for forty-five years. Among his works are The Dialectical Imagination; Marxism and Totality; Adorno; Permanent Exiles; Fin-de-siecle Socialism; Force Fields; Downcast Eyes; Cultural Semantics; Refractions of Violence; Songs of Experience; The Virtues of Mendacity; Essays from the Edge; Kracauer: l'exile; and Reason after Its Eclipse. He has been a regular columnist for Salmagundi since 1987.

Praise for Reason After its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory: In a book of enormous erudition, rare theoretical acuity, and finely tuned critical intelligence, Jay has brilliantly accomplished a necessary and urgent revision of the history of reason, Habermas's contribution to this history, and the Frankfurt School's legacy in the wake of reason's eclipse. , -- Robert Doran * Journal of the Philosophy of History * Praise for Reason After its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory: Jay's new work is the culmination of an assiduous career committed to mapping social theory, with a mind to and beyond the Frankfurt School, and its relevance to any interpretation of the world. When his first book, The Dialectical Imagination, appeared in 1973 it signaled 'theory's' beginnings in the Anglosphere. This work of intellectual history set a standard which others followed or eschewed-a contextualized, theoretically rigorous introduction to a then fashionable social philosophy. Reason After its Eclipse follows a similar style, though now, as with Jay's other impressive works, the theory, or should I say philosophy, is front and centre. His mastery of the topic is second to none. -- Michael Temelini * Thesis Eleven * Praise for Reason After its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory: Jay succeeds admirably in highlighting the intra-philosophical stakes of Habermas's project and the significance of his achievement for contemporary thought. He also highlights the extent to which German thinkers-from German Idealism to the Frankfurt School-form the essential matrix of antinomies and dilemmas to which Habermas's most essential philosophical maneuvers are a response. Jay's account of Habermas succeeds remarkably well. -- Matthew Specter * Modern Intellectual History * Praise for Reason After its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory: Martin Jay is the most eminent American intellectual historian of the Frankfurt School. He writes with enormous erudition, insight, fairness, good judgment and clarity. He is an exemplar of an intellectual historian who treats the fundamental ideas of important thinkers with nuance and subtlety. Anyone interested in the vicissitudes of the history of the understanding of reason in the Frankfurt School, anyone interested in gaining an overview of Habermas's communicative theory of rationality, anyone interested in the ambiguous legacy and future prospects for critical theory will benefit enormously from Martin Jay's masterful study. -- Richard J. Bernstein * History and Theory * Praise for Reason After its Eclipse: On Late Critical Theory: Jay's is an ambitious and important project. For the long view of the Frankfurt School's legacy, it is hard to imagine a better version than Jay's. -- Horace L. Fairlamb * symbloke * In this sizzling collection of essays, Martin Jay demonstrates again that he is the unsurpassed reader of the group of thinkers known as the "Frankfurt School." In fact, he challenges the false unity and coherence of ideas and views often imposed upon them, including his own earlier writings on the subject. Practicing episodic and fragmentary historiography, he uncovers astonishingly novel angles of interpretation as well as demonstrating brilliant re-readings of known texts. An absolute pleasure to read -- Professor Seyla Benhabib With this collection of brilliant and insightful essays Martin Jay has returned to the topic that defined his early career: Critical Theory, i.e. the lives and works of theorists such as Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, Kracauer, and Marcuse. Based on deep historical knowledge and endowed with great sensitivity for theoretical nuances, Jay traces the unfolding of what is commonly called the Frankfurt School. He succeeds in this endeavor by his refusal to treat their thought as the expression of a unified school. For this difficult task one could not have found a more suitable critic than Martin Jay. This book is a precious gift to America in these troubled times. -- Peter Uwe Hohendahl Splinters in Your Eye provides ample evidence of the abiding relevance of Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Loewenthal, and Kracauer in our troubled times. -- Ryan Tripp * New Books Network * In elegant essays on subjects ranging from Benjamin's stamp collecting to the [Frankfurt School's] engagement with emerging psychoanalytic thought, Jay shows that its writings are not only historical curios, but indispensable for understanding our own age. -- Stuart Jeffries * New Statesman *