{"id":272,"date":"2019-09-24T15:07:47","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T19:07:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/?p=272"},"modified":"2019-09-25T15:11:50","modified_gmt":"2019-09-25T19:11:50","slug":"tyler-t-jankauskas-on-re-reading-first-generation-critical-theory-in-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/tyler-t-jankauskas-on-re-reading-first-generation-critical-theory-in-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Tyler T. Jankauskas | On Re-reading First-Generation Critical Theory in 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tyler T. Jankauskas <\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

The questions of scholarly intention, audience reception, and category definition are central to re-reading Horkheimer and Adorno\u2019s early, somewhat \u201cprogrammatic\u201d texts. In this essay, I will treat these two methodological interventions in turn, considering insights and limitations of the ideas expressed, and then lastly turn to their relevance for some well-known issues of 2019.<\/p>\n

Traditional and Critical Theory:\u00a0Method, and Appropriation<\/em><\/h2>\n

Horkheimer characterizes traditional theory as manifesting an internal\/external divide which drives both a practical na\u00efvet\u00e9 and a methodological error. Horkheimer situates the work of such theorists in an industrial context: their \u201c[b]ringing hypothesis to bear on facts is an activity that goes on, ultimately, not in the savant\u2019s head but in industry\u201d (Horkheimer 196). This na\u00efvet\u00e9 of the traditional theorist may be overstated, I believe. In my experience, there is little \u201cfalse consciousness of the bourgeois savant\u201d (Id<\/em>. 198). Pharmacologists know and embrace their work as a part of a pharmaceutical industry; computer scientists as part of a tech industry; and no one is surprised that competing experts retained in U.S. trials invariably provide expert testimony that supports the claims of the party retaining them. The scholar\u2019s role in economic life is no secret. Moreover, few scholars conceptualize their work\u2019s purpose as isolated from social life. It is not \u201cthe seeming self-sufficiency enjoyed by work processes\u201d that motivate scholars, but the intervention on and efficacy in the social world (Id<\/em>. 197). One becomes a medical researcher to cure cancer, not to study cells.<\/a>[1]<\/p>\n

The characterizations of traditional theory that have greater import are the methodologic ones in Horkheimer\u2019s internal critique. While I do not agree that \u201cbourgeois savants\u201d attempt idle neutrality in scholarship aimed only for the sake of knowledge itself, traditional theorists may nevertheless make a categorization error in their theory: that there is a methodological separation of means and ends. One may characterize the study of cells instrumentally as a means in order to cure cancer, rather than studying cells itself as curing cancer. This distinction gains salience in social studies, for example, when one is writing a study of tax havens\u2014the end of how one\u2019s work effects society must necessarily affect the means of how that study is undertaken. Research questions are shaped by the goal. A research agenda oriented toward domestic political change, international governance, or investment how-to are necessarily going to differ in their way of studying tax havens.<\/p>\n

This internal critique of traditional theory not only gestures towards a critique of instrumental reason, but also grants a foundational characteristic which separates critical theory from simply \u201cgood\u201d or accurate social science that takes observer bias into account.<\/p>\n

The collapsing of a means\/end distinction does come at a price: the normative foundation of critical theory. Emancipation, freedom from oppression and injustice, the organization of society around a common good\u2014these all are as fundamental to the Critical Theory tradition<\/em>, but they are external to Horkheimer\u2019s Critical Theory methodology<\/em>. It is notable that Horkheimer took a leap that the philosopher Adorno avoided: a philosophical conception of humanity. While Adorno explicitly refuses to rely on such a conception, Horkheimer is unafraid: \u201cIf activity governed by reason is proper to man [sic<\/em>], then existent social practice\u2026is inhuman, and this inhumanity affects everything that goes on in the society\u201d (Id<\/em>. 210). This idea of propriety may gesture towards a normative ground, but it is ultimately unreliable. Horkheimer states it as a presupposition rather than developed argument, and he ultimately repudiates the idea of rationality grounding norms in his later work.<\/p>\n

Problems familiar to Critique 13\/13 result from the detachment of Critical Theory method from Critical Theory norms, such as those problems faced in questioning the \u201ccorrect\u201d reading of Foucault, and on alt-right appropriations of critical theory. As much as Horkheimer emphasizes political-moral justice as a norm of Critical Theory, these normative ends are not inextricable from the rest of his Critical Theory method. The paradox is painful: Horkheimer intended a program ultimately oriented toward anti-oppression, but developed a method at risk of appropriation.<\/p>\n

The Actuality of Philosophy: Riddles, Interpretation, and Hegelian Baggage<\/em><\/h2>\n

Adorno\u2019s lecture confronts two intellectual frameworks\u2014philosophical idealism (as phenomenology) and scientism\u2014against whose failures and shortcomings he presents a critical philosophy of dialectical interpretation. While science\u2019s (Wissenschaft<\/em>) role is research, philosophy\u2019s is interpretation, Adorno writes (126). By interpretation, Adorno does not refer to addressing the problem of \u201cmeaning\u201d or of looking beyond the world of appearance to a world-in-itself (a role that science fulfills). Rather, Adorno argues that philosophic interpretation is meant to negate and sublate (aufzuhaben<\/em>) \u201criddles,\u201d which Adorno describes, without defining, as \u201cfirst findings\u201d perceived by philosophy as something that needs unriddling (in contradistinction to science, which makes findings rather than negates them). Given Adorno\u2019s use of Hegelian concepts in his interpretive dialectic, I tentatively take it to mean that \u201criddles\u201d are the contradictions of the world that interpretive dialectic confronts through immanent critique. In this reading, the praxis granted to interpretation, a \u201cchange-causing gesture of the riddle process,\u201d is then a powerful bridge of praxis and theory.<\/p>\n

Adorno\u2019s presents a philosophy with concerns distinct from science and with a method of immanent critique that carries with it an inherent mode of praxis. \u201cThe interpretation of given reality and its abolition are connected to each other, not\u2026in the sense that reality is negated in the concept, but that out of the construction of a configuration of reality the demand for its [reality\u2019s] real change always follows promptly<\/em>\u201d (Id<\/em>. 129, emphasis added). Iain MacDonald provides an illustrative example of this through the story of Rosa Parks. In her social setting, when Rosa Park stated \u201cI don\u2019t think I should have to stand up,\u201d Parks projected the possibility of a world where norms would preclude her being forced to move. Parks expressed to the police officer \u201cthough with the force of law you say I must [move], another organization of reality is both imaginable and realizable in which I would not have to\u201d (MacDonald 44). In this projection, Park\u2019s negated the false necessity of her given situation. The \u201criddle\u201d here is how the predominant legal and cultural value of equality and fairness is able to co-exist with blatantly unequal and unfair legal and cultural practices.<\/p>\n

If Park\u2019s story is a story of Adorno\u2019s proposal of aufgeheben<\/em>, questions remain. Most prescient is Adorno\u2019s unadulterated faith in his process\u2014\u201cout of the construction\u2026real change always follows promptly<\/em>\u201d (Adorno 129, emphasis added). Continuing with the United States civil rights movement, one might ask how this statement would be heard by the thousands of activists giving blood, sweat, and tears in decades of political demonstrating. Such a statement either means that change would have come regardless of their efforts, or that they were not agents but rather responding to some historical will or necessity. The first breeds political quietism and is unlikely to be true; the second also breeds quietism, but is perhaps more interesting in that it implicates the teleological tendencies of Hegelian thinking. Is Adorno\u2019s philosophy one in which oppressed people simply, inevitably, respond to the cunning of reason of the philosopher\u2019s dialectical interpretation? I doubt this is a proper extrapolation, because it was this exact issue that motivated the first-generation Critical Theory thinkers.<\/p>\n

Perhaps these implications take Adorno too literally. One reading may allow that \u201calways follow promptly\u201d is a phrase that, even if meant sincerely, can be cut without any collateral damage to Adorno\u2019s proposal. In such a case, dialectical interpretation offers a ground for philosophical criticism of societal contradictions that functions as a mode of consciousness raising through revealing these contradiction and, in so doing, projecting alternative possibilities.<\/p>\n

Today<\/em><\/h2>\n

It is a rare impulse to find philosophy more efficacious, but I see a more present role in Adorno\u2019s project compared with Horkheimer\u2019s. As Horkheimer notes, \u201c[u]nemployment, economic crises, militarization, terrorist regimes\u2026are not due\u2026to limited technological possibilities\u201d (Horkheimer 213). Indeed, the crises in the United States\u2014the neglectful ignoring of environmental cataclysm, mass incarceration, disinformation and propaganda campaigns in political discourse and other previously settled sites (i.e. the anti-vax movement), the resurgent popularity of white supremacy and domestic terrorism, daylight political corruption\u2014these problems are not due to limited technology or even limited understanding. They are organizational and political problems.<\/a>[2] Where Horkheimer sees a role for Ideologiekritik<\/em>, Adorno\u2019s proposal seeks to lay the situation bare. For example, an Adorno-inspired Sprachkritik\u00a0<\/em>exposing the contradiction in valuing freedom and autonomy while imprisoning 2.3 million people, working to get people to care, may do more than sociological inquiry on attitudes towards prisons.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that Horkheimer\u2019s project plays no role\u2014it plays a pivotal role, as the mechanics of change require the machinists of change. However, in major spheres, the role of social science appears to have been exhausted. The question then is how to motivate practice\u2014through targeted social research, or exposure and resolution of social contradictions.<\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/h1>\n

Adorno, Theodor W. \u201cThe Actuality of Philosophy.\u201d Telos<\/em>, vol. 1977, no. 31, 1977, 120-133.<\/p>\n

Horkheimer, Max. \u201cTraditional and Critical Theory.\u201d Critical Theory: Selected Essays. <\/em>Translated by Matthew J. O\u2019Connel and others, Continuum, 1977.<\/p>\n

Macdonald, Iain. \u201c\u2018What Is, Is More than It Is\u2019: Adorno and Heidegger on the Priority of Possibility.\u201d International Journal of Philosophical Studies<\/em>, 19:1, 2011, 31-57, DOI: 10.1080\/09672559.2011.539357. Accessible here: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/09672559.2011.539357<\/p>\n

Notes<\/h1>\n

<\/a>[1] Maybe this perspective is uniquely American, or otherwise out of touch with the notion of leisurely schol\u00e9. In an interview, Zizek observed how arguments insisting on the productionist nature of scholarship\u2014that scholarship must have \u201creal world effect\u201d\u2014was a notable characteristic of Soviet academia. There is certainly a slight irony that one such as Horkheimer, writing on how productionist ideology pervades social research, places such focus on efficacy.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[2] To be clear, I do not attribute all crises to organizational or political roadblocks. For example, there is a global loneliness epidemic that remains under-studied and under-theorized. In this case, social research has much ground to cover. However, in many if not most cases, societal problems reflect an inconsistency of cultural values applied to the crisis at hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tyler T. Jankauskas The questions of scholarly intention, audience reception, and category definition are central to re-reading Horkheimer and Adorno\u2019s early, somewhat \u201cprogrammatic\u201d texts. In this essay, I will treat these two methodological interventions in turn, considering insights and… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38962],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources-2-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}