RETHINKING THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL RETHINKING THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL Alternative Legacies of Cultural Critique Edited by Jeffrey T. Nealon and Caren Irr State University of New York Press Cover illustration: Andy Warhol, “Soup Can with Dollar Bills” © 2002 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ARS, New York Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2002 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 Production by Dana Foote Marketing by Patrick J. Durocher Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rethinking the Frankfurt School : alternative legacies of cultural critique / edited by Jeffrey T. Nealon and Caren Irr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-5491-6 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5492-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Frankfurt school of sociology. 2. Culture—Philosophy. 3. Culture—Study and teaching. I. Nealon, Jeffrey T. (Jeffrey Thomas) II. Irr, Caren. HM467 .R48 2002 306′.01—dc21 2002070658 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Rethinking the Frankfurt School 1 Jeffrey T. Nealon and Caren Irr I THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL TODAY 1 The Theoretical Hesitation: Benjamin’s Sociological Predecessor 11 Fredric Jameson 2 The Frankfurt School and British Cultural Studies: The Missed Articulation 31 Douglas Kellner 3 The Limits of Culture: The Frankfurt School and/for Cultural Studies 59 Imre Szeman 4 The Frankfurt School and the Political Economy of Communications 81 Ronald V. Bettig II ADORNO 5 Of Mice and Mimesis: Reading Spiegelman with Adorno 97 Andreas Huyssen 6 Why Do the Sirens Sing?: Figuring the Feminine in Dialectic of Enlightenment 111 Nancy Love 7 On Doing the Adorno Two-Step 123 Evan Watkins 8 Maxima Immoralia?: Speed and Slowness in Adorno 131 Jeffrey T. Nealon v vi Contents III BENJAMIN, HORKHEIMER, MARCUSE, HABERMAS 9 The Negative History of the Moment of Possibility: Walter Benjamin and the Coming of the Messiah 145 Richard A. Lee Jr. 10 The Frankfurt School and the Domination of Nature: New Grounds for Radical Environmentalism 153 Kevin DeLuca 11 One-Dimensional Symptoms: What Marcuse Offers a Critical Theory of Law 169 Caren Irr 12 The O¨ffentlichkeit of Ju¨rgen Habermas: The Frankfurt School’s Most Influential Concept? 187 Thomas O. Beebee IV CONCLUSION 13 The Frankfurt School 207 Agnes Heller About the Contributors 223 Index 225 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The editors are grateful for permission to reproduce the following essays: Fredric Jameson, Winter 1994, “The Theoretical Hesitation: Benjamin’s So- ciological Predecessor,” Critical Inquiry 25, 267–88. Douglas Kellner, 1997, “The Frankfurt School and British Cultural Studies: The Missed Articulation” in Cultural Methodologies, ed. Jim McGuigan (London: Sage): 12–41. Andreas Huyssen, Fall 2000, “Of Mice and Mimesis: Reading Spiegelman with Adorno,” New German Critique 81. The online journal Theory & Event published earlier versions of the essays by Nancy Love (volume 3.1, 1999) and Jeffrey T. Nealon (volume 4.3, 2000). We would also like to thank the Department of English at the Pennsylvania State University and the provost’s office of Brandeis University for their support of this project. vii Introduction Rethinking the Frankfurt School Jeffrey T. Nealon and Caren Irr The essays in this volume “rethink” the relationship between the Frankfurt School and theoretical scholarship on contemporary culture, asking what consequences such a rethinking might have for study of the Frankfurt School on its own terms. This question arises because of the paradoxical situation of the Frankfurt School in relation to the humanistic interdiscipline known as “Theory.” On the one hand, in the humanities, the Frankfurt School is often taught as an approach that can and is studied alongside other “approaches” (such as poststructuralism, feminism, de- construction, and cultural studies). On the other hand, the critical theory of the Frankfurt School is also treated as a somewhat dated, slightly ossified predecessor to theory per se. As both contemporary and antecedent to theoretical approaches to culture, then, the Frankfurt School as a topic urges a retrospective reconsideration of the pedigree and genealogy of Theory itself. In recent literature devoted to the Frankfurt School, such a retrospective view is prominent, and in this project three major trends emerge. First, we find numerous commentators situating the Frankfurt School in relation to problems or themes that have preoccupied the American academy generally. Postmodernism, feminism, sex- uality: these and other topics are addressed generally with the sense that they have emerged “after” the Frankfurt School’s heyday and thus introduce concerns addressed only partially or as latent issues. It is not uncommon to find essays that look back to the Frankfurt School with a desire to make use of underappreciated resources. For instance, Randall Halle locates tensions between Erich Fromm and Herbert Mar- cuse’s theories of sexuality, locating in the latter means for dissociating the former’s metaphorical linkage of homosexuality and fascism. A second major trend in recent Frankfurt School scholarship involves reading the school internally whether by means of biographical or textual criticism on indi- vidual figures, rescuing the reputations of minor contributors, revisiting debates or theses of major figures, or identifying various heirs to the first generation of critical theorists. The first two of these tasks have been, of course, greatly facilitated by the republication and translation into English of major works of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Marcuse. For instance, a significant number of pieces re- considering critical theories of technology have recently appeared perhaps in response to massive technological transformations in cybernetics over the past twenty-odd years. On the question of heirs, an enormous body of scholarship has of course been devoted to discussion of Ju¨rgen Habermas’s work, and a smaller body to the work of Axel Honneth and Alexander Kluge; but a major reevaluation of Adorno and Adornian-influenced scholars also seems to be underway. With substantial recent works on Adorno from Martin Jay, Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Fredric Jameson, Shierry 1