Lilia Endter mit einer Rezension über »Im Schatten der Tradition«

01.04.2026 - Medienberichte [FRANCIA recensio]

Im Schatten der Tradition. Eine Geschichte des IfS aus feministischer Perspektive

Published on the occasion of the centenary of the Institute for Social Research, Im Schatten der Tradition (2025) advances a feminist historiography that challenges how the Frankfurt School has been canonized and received. Rather than treating gender as a supplementary topic, the volume approaches feminism as a critical standpoint from which the conditions of theoretical production themselves come into view. Its central concern is not only which women were present at the Institute, but how gender structured what could count as theory, how authority was attributed, and how intellectual labor was rendered visible or invisible. In doing so, the book situates itself within a recent turn in Frankfurt School scholarship, exemplified by Philipp Lenhard’s Café Marx (2024) reviewed in Francia-Recensio 2024/4), which shifts attention from philosophical self-interpretation to the everyday, institutional, and material conditions of academic work.