Critical theory and political possibilities : conceptions of emancipatory politics in the works of Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Habermas
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Critical theory and political possibilities : conceptions of emancipatory politics in the works of Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Habermas
(Contributions in sociology, no. 111)
Greenwood Press, c1995
Available at 40 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
ISSN:0084-9278
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Alway identifies and assesses new models of emancipatory politics in the Frankfurt Schools Critical Theory. She outlines the complexities of Critical Theory, and clarifies the logical connections between assumptions that inform the critical theorists' analyses of social conditions and their views on the possibilities for radical political practice.
Alway examines the works of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Jurgen Habermas to argue the relevance of Critical Theory to contemporary efforts to reconceptualize radical politics. Indeed Alway argues that these theorists anticipate and point to new models of emancipatory politics. Unpacking the complexities of the critical theorists' writings and outlining them in a straightforward manner, Alway identifies the assumptions about human actors and history that inform their analyses of contemporary conditions. The explication of how these background assumptions inform their analyses then allows the author to clarify and assess the critical theorists' positions concerning the possibilities for radical social change, as well as their views on the issues and agents of such change.
The author concludes that to the extent that the critical theorists abandon the notion of a revolutionary subject, their work leads us toward a new conceptualization of radical politics. The first generation of critical theorists, however, never fully extricate themselves from a subject-object framework that ultimately limits their efforts. Habermas's transposition of Critical Theory onto new foundations extricates it from the subject-object framework of the philosophy of consciousness, but also fundamentally alters accepted notions of radical politics. The first generation's reconceptualization of radical politics becomes with Habermas a radical reconceptualization of politics itself.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Marxian Emancipatory Vision and the Problem of Revolutionary Agency
Departures from Traditional Marxism: Origins and Development of Critical Theory
Dialectic of Enlightenment: The Eclipse of the Emancipatory Vision
Horkheimer and Adorno: Despair and Possibility in a Time of Eclipse
Marxism Revisited: Marcuse's Search for a Subject
Habermas: Reconstructing Critical Theory
Reconceptualizing Radical Politics
References
Index
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