Workshop on: The Internationalization of Critical Theory: Frankfurt School Receptions in Europe, the Americas and East Asia

Book presentation and workshop

This volume presents new historical research on the receptions of Critical Theory in different countries in Europe, the Americas and East Asia from the 1950s to the present. Guided by Max Horkheimer’s seminal distinction between Critical and Traditional Theory, the essays examine the changing social, political, historical and intellectual historical conditions that shaped the reception of Critical Theory in these different contexts, while at the same time reflecting upon the role Critical Theory has played in transforming those conditions.

The essays reveal and the workshop will focus on the local diversity of the receptions, but also on common themes and tendencies that emerge across continents and globally. Whereas the local diversity of receptions was shaped by different political and economic systems, different stages in social modernization, and different intellectual traditions, certain common themes and responses to common global historical tendencies emerge clearly. In many different countries, early Critical Theory appealed to those looking for alternatives to both Soviet Communism and Western capitalism, and to those looking for criticisms of modernization theory in the 1950s and 1960s, and neoliberalism in the 1990s and 2000s. Habermas’s ideas often appealed to intellectuals in countries transitioning from authoritarianism to democracy, such as Greece, Spain, and Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s, or in countries searching for democratic paths beyond “real-existing socialism” in the 1980s, such as Yugoslavia.

John Abromeit (Professor of History, State University of New York, Buffalo State) will open the workshop with a discussion of the methodological presuppositions of the volume and with an overview of the results of the research. Nenad Stefanov (Research Associate in History, Leipzig University) will discuss the history of the reception of Critical Theory in Yugoslavia, but also the personal and institutional exchanges that took place between Yugoslav and West German intellectuals, which decisively shaped the Yugoslav reception. Karin Stögner (Professor of Sociology, University of Passau) will discuss the history of the feminist reception of Critical Theory in Germany. Isabelle Aubert (Associate Professor of Philosophy, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University) will discuss the history of the receptions of Herbert Marcuse and Theodor W. Adorno’s writings in France, arguing that a serious reception began much earlier there than is commonly known. José Manuel Romero (Professor of Philosophy, University of Alcalá) will discuss the history of the reception of Critical Theory in Spain, with a particular emphasis on the outsized role Habermas played in Spain in the 1980s. Rúrion Melo (Associate Professor of Political Science, University of São Paulo) and Luiz Repa (Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of São Paulo), will discuss the history of the reception in Brazil, with an emphasis on the role of the protest movements in the 1960s and the transition from authoritarianism to democracy in the 1970s and 1980s. Jaeho Kang (Professor in the Department of Communication, Seoul National University) will discuss the history of the reception in South Korea, also with an emphasis on the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and the transition from authoritarianism to democracy in the 1980s.

The Internationalization of Critical Theory: Frankfurt School Receptions in Europe, the Americas and East Asia. Edited by John Abromeit, Rúrion Melo, and Luiz Repa (Bloomsbury, 2016)