ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abromeit, John. "Frankfurt School Critical Theory and the Persistence of Authoritarian Populism in the United States." In Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism, edited by Jeremiah Morelock, 3-28. London: University of Westminster Press, 2018. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv9hvtcf.5.Copy 

        This article, written by John D. Abromeit, uses the writings of the Frankfurt School to explain the rise of authoritarian populist movements in the United States. Abromeit, an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Buffalo State, says that during the “Golden Age” of capitalism in the United States, authoritarian movements rarely came to power. However, this didn’t stop the Frankfurt School from investigating the possibility that they could, having experienced firsthand the rise of fascism in Europe themselves. They proposed several traits that are common among authoritarian populist movements, for example patriotism, anti-government and anti-intellectual sentiments, and support for the police and law-and-order. Another central element of their theory was the concept of producers versus parasites, which authoritarian leaders adopt and use to scare their followers. Abromeit connects these traits to the right-wing populist movements of today, referencing the Tea Party and the rise of Trump. This article was helpful in answering my question and framed the parallels between the past and present clearly.

Fuchs, Christian. "Conclusion: Advancing a Dialectical, Humanist, Critical Theory of Communication and Society." In Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory, 353-70. London: University of Westminster Press, 2020. doi:10.2307/j.ctv12fw7t5.19.    

        In this concluding chapter of Christian Fuchs’s Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory, Fuchs explores Habermas’s theory of communicative action in an attempt to propose a modernized critical theory. Habermas declared that “the reproduction of life is determined culturally by work and interaction”—essentially, in the ways humans communicate (353). However, unlike Marx’s historical materialism, Habermas’s theory is non-dialectical and dualistic, overly separating communication, work, and action. Another criticism of this theory is that it does not acknowledge how significant a role communication plays in capitalist societies, influencing advertising, work, and most significantly culture. While Habermas believes that communicative action is morally and politically good, he feared that “linguistic and symbolic products and spaces of communication can be treated and sold as commodities” (e.g. books, movies, music, newspapers) which can maintain class and power dynamics (357). He believed that in a socialist society, communicative action would be beneficial, but failed in Fuchs’s view to address its barriers under capitalism—as Fuchs argues, it can not exist outside of the economy. He ends the book with two paths forward: “humans either accept their own enslavement and a media system that upholds this enslavement or struggle for democratic communications in a commons-based society” (370).

Fuchs, Christian. Critical Theory of Communication: New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet. London: University of Westminster Press, 2016. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book1 

        Fuchs’s book explores a modern interpretation of the theories of the Frankfurt School, reflecting the new technological developments of the internet, social media, and other communication technologies. Each chapter focuses on a different key member of the Critical Theorists, namely Georg Lukács, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Axel Honneth, and Jürgen Habermas, though other thinkers like Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Leo Lowenthal, and Erich Fromm are discussed as well. The chapters delve into each theorist’s philosophy and how it can be applied to today, which offers valuable insight as to the modern relevance of the School’s analyses. The director of the Communication and Media Research Institute at the University of Westminster, Christian Fuchs is an expert on critical communications theory and its applications today. His central argument is that, while Marxists have generally paid less attention to communications and culture with regard to the end of capitalism, today’s digital climate brings these topics front and center in the progression of society.

Gunderson, Ryan. "A Defense of the ‘Grand Hotel Abyss’: The Frankfurt School's Nonideal Theory." Acta Sociologica 58, no. 1 (2015): 25-38. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24569636.  

        Ryan Gunderson, an Assistant Professor of sociology and social justice studies at Michigan University, argues in this journal article that the Frankfurt School’s “nonideal” theory is actually the best to maintain hope. This article proposes that the School’s pessimism—for which it receives criticism—is reflective of the nonideal oppression in reality, unlike the often optimistic predictions of Marxism. The Frankfurt School’s members had experienced the rise of fascism in Europe, watched as opportunities for socialist revolution were missed, and saw the rise of Stalinism and the “culture industry” in the United States, leaving few signs of hope for the future. However, rather than ignoring the suffering and the obstacles in the path to a better society, the members analyzed the root of the issues that plagued society. The “Grand Hotel Abyss” referenced in the title of this article is from Georg Lukács’s 1971 criticism of Theodor W. Adorno—that Adorno had taken up residence in Arthur Schopenhauer’s “Grand Hotel Abyss” where he could “enjoy a nihilistically detached yet aesthetically pleasurable life without mounting any real challenges to the miseries of the real world” (29). Schopenhauer, a German metaphysician known for his pessimism, is criticized for his lack of hope. On the other hand, argues Gunderson, the Frankfurt School finds a balance between utopian Marxism and the gloomy views of Schopenhaeur by analyzing the nonideal conditions in society. Even in times with no apparent hope, identifying the problems is the first step to make hope possible, and that was the goal of the School.

Gunster, Shane. "Revisiting the Culture Industry Thesis: Mass Culture and the Commodity Form." Cultural Critique, no. 45 (2000): 40-70. doi:10.2307/1354367. 

        Shane Gunster is an associate professor in Simon Fraser University’s School of Communication. In this journal article, he laments the “dense, fatalistic” approach taken by the Frankfurt School, which “spends as much time mourning the death of autonomy as it does explaining why it has occurred” (40). He criticizes the “Eurocentric elitism” of the School and seeks to explore how Adorno and his colleagues reached their conclusions (41). Through this, Gunster seeks to evaluate the relevance of the School’s theses today, especially regarding the “seemingly diverse postmodern culture that often seems to bear little resemblance to the monolithic simplicity of the mass culture that summoned forth such a devastating polemic from the Frankfurt School in the first place” (42). One of the Frankfurt School’s key criticisms of popular culture is its formulaic nature—the narratives told are often the same in form even if they appear different, which fools consumers into excitement about seemingly new material. And, because material is repetitive, consumers obsess over superficial changes in our desperate attempt to find something genuinely new. Over time, as Adorno feared, entertainment simply reflects everyday life under capitalism, perpetuating complacency and rejecting the possibility of truly different realities. The culture industry falsely advertises its products as “escapes” or “leisure time,” when they in fact continue the suffering of the work day under capitalism. Gunster claims that “culture is made specifically for the purpose of being sold; production is subordinated to distribution and the promise of art is thereby dissolved” (48). These elements are what keep humans from consciousness and allow for the rise of fascism.

Hassan, Robert. "The Culture of Digitality." In The Condition of Digitality: A Post-Modern Marxism for the Practice of Digital Life, 129-58. London: University of Westminster Press, 2020. doi:10.2307/j.ctvw1d5k0.8. 

        In “The Culture of Digitality,” Robert Hassan explores how the digital age impacts human condition, interaction, and culture. Hassan leads the Media and Communications program at the University of Melbourne, and is an expert of media theory and its connections to politics. He argues that the past analyses of capitalist society’s culture—including the works of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer—are no longer applicable critiques of today’s culture, because they did not have digital technology in mind. The impacts of digitality extend to the markets and consumption (which, Hassan notes, is now deeply embedded in culture), and have shaped the very definition of what it means to be human. The evolution of technology over time has also influenced human interaction, specifically in terms of social reliance, by reinforcing the alienation that preserves capitalism. Hassan states that politics are determined by the digital world—“and so, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, progressive and collective ‘political struggle’ is almost everywhere facing defeat or is in retreat” (135). Digital culture and communication is fundamentally different from “analogue” culture, rejecting tradition and creativity. Hassan notes that the Frankfurt School’s theories were seen as devastating to working-class hope, if all people were slaves to manipulative media in this dystopian vision. In a more positive view, Herbert Marcuse suggested that art was the hope for salvation, but ultimately his optimism faded as well. Modern analyses of culture, Hassan argues, must fall between the pessimism of the Frankfurt School and the utopian optimism of other Marxist thinkers, to reflect the unique and significant predicament of the digital age.

Hohendahl, Peter Uwe. "Reappraisals of Critical Theory: The Legacy of the Frankfurt School in America." In Reappraisals: Shifting Alignments in Postwar Critical Theory, 198-228. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 1991. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1g69xjd.11. 

        In this chapter, Peter Uwe Hohendahl lays out the lasting philosophy of the Frankfurt School, specifically in the United States. Hohendahl is a professor emeritus of German Studies at Cornell University, with a focus on Critical Theory and the works of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Jürgen Habermas. He argues that, in the United States, Critical Theory is primarily associated with the 1950s-60s works of Herbert Marcuse, Leo Lowenthal, and Erich Fromm. In the 1980s, Critical Theorists like Habermas broke from the traditional Frankfurt School to explore new aspects of social theory. Hohendahl describes the reflection upon Habermas, Marcuse, and Adorno and their differences as crucial to understanding the progression of Critical Theory. He also explains that the works of these earlier philosophers greatly impacted the American postmodernism debates in the 1980s. Another factor in the School’s American legacy is the distinct separation between Critical Theory and feminist theory—however, more recently, American feminists have worked to use Critical Theory from a feminist perspective. This piece was written in 1991, and reflects mostly upon the 1980s, but it shows the legacy of the Frankfurt School in America in that decade.

Hullot-Kentor, Robert. "The Exact Sense in Which the Culture Industry No Longer Exists." Cultural Critique, no. 70 (2008): 137-57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25475490. 

       Robert Hullot-Kentor is a professor of philosophy, literature, and the arts at Long Island University, but has also taught at Harvard, Stanford, and Boston Universities. He is also a leading translator of Theodor Adorno’s works, including Aesthetic Theory. In this article, Hullot-Kentor argues that Theodor Adorno’s writings no longer fit in the context of the modern world. He argues that the “culture industry,” a central element of Adorno’s thesis, has taken on a different meaning in recent times that is not the same as Adorno intended at the time of his writing. Hullot-Kentor argues that the phrase is now said simply to sound meaningful, while its significance is forgotten quickly—“the spell is broken” (141). He separates the phrase into its two components: “culture” and “industry.” The former is a broad concept of communication and relationships, while the second is a specific term relating to production and labor. Hullot-Kentor’s quote that relates the two words in Adorno’s writings is “the manufacture of culture as the production of barbarism is the culture industry” (145). The meaning of this phrase has been lost over time. This article dives into philosophical ideas, but the central explanation for why the culture industry no longer exists seems to have gotten lost in the jargon. Nevertheless, this was a valuable source in terms of contextualizing Adorno’s writings in his time period.

Jay, Martin. “Trump, Scorsese, and the Frankfurt School's Theory of Racket Society.” Los Angeles Review of Books. April 5, 2020. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/trump-scorsese

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        Martin Jay, professor emeritus of history at University of California, Berkeley and leading expert on the Frankfurt School, argues in this article that the idea of the “racket society,” an often overlooked element of the School’s explanation of the origins of fascism, is relevant today. To lay out the relevance of the theory, he uses the 2019 film The Irishman, which he argues “doesn’t really immerse us in mafia culture.” Instead, the film’s most important depictions are of society as a whole, showing how the gangsters are involved in many aspects of life. This connects to Max Horkheimer’s theory of the “racket society,” which started from an observation of organized crime in 1930s America. The Frankfurt School wondered what society would look like if all morals and laws were determined based on “personal loyalty,” creating other forms of hierarchy than class differences. He argues that we see this today through monopoly capitalism, where power agreements rarely represent general interests or “universal principles.” We also see this in our current president and the group of people he surrounds himself with. One of the most stand-out lines from the article states that, “Kim Jong Un may be mockable as ‘little rocket man,’ but Trump has no less richly earned the nickname ‘big racket man.’” This article puts another element of the Frankfurt School’s philosophy into the context of today.

Lowenthal, Leo. "Historical Perspectives of Popular Culture." American Journal of Sociology 55, no. 4 (1950): 323-32. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2772293.

       In this journal article, Leo Lowenthal proposes various approaches to the study of popular culture, which he notes can avoid the difficulties of empirical research by using a philosophical and historical frame of reference. Lowenthal, a German sociologist and key member of the Frankfurt School, offers what he believes to be “basic” requirements for communications study that are often overlooked by social scientists. He expresses fear at the leisure activities of the masses—specifically, listening to the radio—and how they distract us from our loneliness, depression, and suffering. These methods of escape, he notes, have been around since the sixteenth century, so debates of popular culture have been historically relevant for centuries. He contrasts popular culture with art, which is being replaced by popular culture, a mere replication of reality. He posits that when Nietzsche said “God is dead,” he meant that popular culture is trying to fill the void of religion. He criticizes 1950s social science for ignoring the moral context of research in popular culture, and the many writings that preceded that era going back centuries. Lowenthal believes that individuals no longer hold a role in highly mechanized modern civilizations, and therefore mass culture consists of “standardization, stereotypy, conservatism, mendacity, [and] manipulated consumer goods” (331). Lowenthal is critical of the influence of mass culture, but also the approaches of those who study it.

Murphy, John W. "Art and the Social World: The Frankfurt School." Studies in Soviet Thought 26, no. 4 (1983): 269-85. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20099280. 

        In this article, John W. Murphy explains that while Marx never formulated a theory of art, many subsequent Marxist thinkers like the Frankfurt School have. A professor of sociology at the University of Miami, Murphy analyzes Marxist art and aesthetics and its various perspectives over time. He explores one explanation—that the purpose of art is to reflect reality (social realism)—which was supported by Lenin, as reflecting reality holds potential for class awakening and eventual revolution. Similarly, Trotsky argued that truly “revolutionary” art must reflect the individual struggles of humans, not an abstract condemnation of a larger theme. Murphy contrasts these earlier ideas with the “critical realism” of the Frankfurt School, led by Georg Lukács. Lukács did not think that art should simply reflect the material conditions which perpetuate capitalism, but it should provide a means of overcoming them. Simply showing the struggles of life in a capitalist system, Lukács argued, would not lead to consciousness and revolution. Art must therefore, in his view, unify subjectivity and objectivity to advance society. Later members of the Frankfurt School went further to argue that art should present alternative realities, rather than reflecting this nonideal reality, to show the possibility of liberation. In conclusion, Murphy suggests that revolutionary art in the view of the School should not be a reflection of society passively observed but a pathway to liberation that is critically engaged with.

Schmidt, James. "Language, Mythology, and Enlightenment: Historical Notes on Horkheimer and Adorno's ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment.’" Social Research 65, no. 4 (1998): 807-38. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40971288. 

        At the fifty year anniversary of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, the Boston University professor of political science James Schmidt reflects on the text’s relevance today. The book itself was unlike many at the time in 1947—which Adorno critiqued for looking “more like advertisements for books than actual books—because it was complex, fragmented, and unconventional (809). The text loses the Frankfurt School’s original Marxist flair, where Schmidt notes that phrases like “capitalism” are replaced with “the economic system” and “class society” becomes “society” (812), but he argues that this could be intentional to ensure that the theories apply to societies over time. Schmidt uses quotes from Horkheimer’s letters, recounting hearing Hitler’s speeches broadcast on the radio, to support the origins of his theories about mass communication, language, and fascism. The second half of this article focuses more on the connection between myth and enlightenment, which does not serve as well to answer the guiding question. And, while the intention of this piece is to reflect on the text from today, Schmidt focuses mostly on the past, only briefly connecting Adorno’s theories to the trend of wearing clothing that “sports the logo of its manufacturer” today (808). This text is valuable in sharing information but less important to my study.

Schuetz, Arnold. "The Frankfurt School And Popular Culture." Studies in Popular Culture 12, no. 1 (1989): 1-14. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23414449.  

        In this 1989 journal article, Arnold Schuetz evaluates the Frankfurt School’s critiques of popular culture in the United States, taking into consideration how their origins in Europe may have influenced their perception of U.S. culture. A German native and former student of history at the Universities of Frankfurt, the professor was the director of Virginia Tech’s International Studies Program. Schuetz explains the common criticisms of the Frankfurt School, citing Adorno’s occasionally-overreaching rebukes of music, the perception that the Frankfurt School was elitist and far-removed from the “masses” for which they expressed such concern, and more. He also notes that, while the School often worried that fascism was a natural result of American mass culture, fascism came to Europe where mass culture was less if not non-existent. Ultimately, Schuetz argues that the views of the members of the Frankfurt School were shaped by their backgrounds, their experiences in Europe and in exile in the United States, and their overall perception that culture is manipulative and counterproductive for the advancement of society, preserving the capitalist system which had allowed for fascism in their home continent.

Solty, Ingar. “Max Horkheimer, a Teacher Without a Class.” Jacobin, February 15, 2020. Ht

tps://jacobinmag.com/2020/02/max-horkheimer-frankfurt-school-adorno-working-class-marxism 

        This article explores the ways in which the founders of the Frankfurt School—specifically, Max Horkeimer—were influenced by their time. Ingar Solty, the author of this article, is a German political journalist and Senior Research Fellow in Foreign, Peace, and Social Policy at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Institute for Critical Social Analysis in Berlin. He is an expert on Marxism, socialism, and the left. In this article, Solty explains how Horkheimer’s Critical Theory differed from the traditional intellectual practices of his time, diverging from what he believed would reinforce capitalism. However, Horkheimer also diverged from traditional Marxism, as his theories were less about political economy and more about culture, an often overlooked element. This article was helpful because it illuminated some criticisms of the school: elitism, over-pessimism, and a general sense of the School being out-of-touch with the working class. Lastly, Solty explores the loss of prominence or enthusiasm within the School, as praxis was abandoned and hope for working-class action was lost. This article was helpful in my understanding of the historical context of the School, which clarifies how their theories could be applied to today.

Strate, Lance. "Fatal Amusements: Contemplating the Tempest of Contemporary Media and American Culture." Educational Technology 56, no. 2 (2016): 17-24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44430455.  

        Lance Strate, a writer and professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University, alludes to and builds on Neil Postman’s 1985 Amusing Ourselves to Death in this article. Strate proposes that the “media ecology” of the modern age has negative effects on Americans, in terms of politics, religion, and education. He posits that if the Founding Fathers were to see America today, with its instantaneous information sharing, decontextualized imagery, and online obsessions, they would be concerned. Echoing Postman’s argument from thirty years earlier, Strate declares that the distinguishing line between amusement and seriousness has disappeared, and our media provides us primarily with trivial entertainment. The three main factors that have shaped public discourse over the past 150 years are listed as follows: images replacing words in our culture, constant stimulation by information, and instant information transmission which abbreviates content. Since Postman’s book, Strate emphasizes, the media environment has dramatically changed with the Internet and social media. Though published in 2016, this article connects these factors to Donald Trump’s election, the shifting treatment of television journalism, and the shift of religion to online platforms. In 2016, Strate deemed the media environment a “tempest”—and it is not realistic to imagine we abandon technology. Though he never references the Frankfurt School, his theories are related to those of the School, and his pessimism produces a similar sense of hope that could be found in the “gloomy Marxism” of the Frankfurt School.