The Changing Function of Critical Theory

TLDR: 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 as mentioned in this paper, and therefore, discussions of critical theory need not become unwarranted wanderings into "the night in which all cows are black," if the focus is shifted from the particular theoretical tenets whose contradictory multiplicity resists systematization to the odyssey of the problematic itself.

Abstract: To speak of "critical theory" as a systematically elaborated account of social reality entails such a distance from the subject as to blur all significant differences existing among the various members of the 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 "critical theory" need not become unwarranted wanderings into "the night in which all cows are black," if the focus is shifted from the particular theoretical tenets whose contradictory multiplicity resists systematization to the odyssey of the problematic itself. Such a trajectory begins with critical theory's emergence from the first generation of Hegelian Marxists (Lukics and Korsch), moves through the interpretations of Stalinism, fascism and the New Deal, the attempt to provide a theory of American society, and closes with its final inability to come to grips with the new state-regulated, capitalist social formation precisely because of key theoretical choices made earlier in the 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 the very spirit of that tradition requires first and foremost, to grasp the particularity and specificity of its problematic by not forcefully reconciling internal contradictions, conflicts and shifts, while, secondly, critically locating its onesidedness from the privileged vantage point of the present, after history has clarified for us what was necessarily confused and ambiguous at the time of the theory's formulations and reformulations. Such an account must explain the theory's conscious esoteric thrust, its "planned" failure to have a broad lasting impact, and the reasons why a different social analysis must be derived from it which does not precipitate its popularization into the 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 the cultural reception that it would seem to deserve. This state of affairs is neither primarily the result of conspiratorial efforts on the part of traditional theorists to ignore its emancipatory content, nor of the administrative apparatus' attempt to repress its revolu-