The Changing Function of Critical Theory

Abstract

To speak of as a systematically elaborated account of social reality entails such a distance from subject as to blur all significant differences existing among various members of Frankfurt School and thus fall victim to that identity theory Adorno spent so much time attacking. In fact, a close examination reveals that there are at best only critical theorists confronting a common problematic within a more or less shared cultural tradition. Yet, discussions of need not become unwarranted wanderings into the night in which all cows are black, if focus is shifted from particular theoretical tenets whose contradictory multiplicity resists systematization to odyssey of problematic itself. Such a trajectory begins with critical theory's emergence from first generation of Hegelian Marxists (Lukics and Korsch), moves through interpretations of Stalinism, fascism and New Deal, attempt to provide a theory of American society, and closes with its final inability to come to grips with new state-regulated, capitalist social formation precisely because of key theoretical choices made earlier in effort to alter as little as possible that tradition which they sought to revitalize and make historically relevant once again. Thus, to provide a general evaluation of critical theory that does not violate very spirit of that tradition requires first and foremost, to grasp particularity and specificity of its problematic by not forcefully reconciling internal contradictions, conflicts and shifts, while, secondly, critically locating its onesidedness from privileged vantage point of present, after history has clarified for us what was necessarily confused and ambiguous at time of theory's formulations and reformulations. Such an account must explain theory's conscious esoteric thrust, its planned failure to have a broad lasting impact, and reasons why a different social analysis must be derived from it which does not precipitate its popularization into self-contradiction in which it would have fallen in its original formulations. Notwithstanding its surprisingly powerful conceptual content, critical theory has hitherto failed to receive anything close to cultural reception that it would seem to deserve. This state of affairs is neither primarily result of conspiratorial efforts on part of traditional theorists to ignore its emancipatory content, nor of administrative apparatus' attempt to repress its revolu-