Winter Week 3 - Frankfurt School

Question 1

Who are some of the people that make up the Frankfurt school? What was their field of interest?

Answer 1

• Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse
• interested in how both capitalism and fascism (in Nazi Germany) were able to come into being in what were understood to be ‘advanced’ societies
• believed that critical theory could help to both explain and change this.

Question 2

What is Horkheimer’s critique of traditional theory?

Answer 2

• criticizing traditional theory for failing to critique the origins of social problems.
• traditional theory does not go far enough to critique social problems and is unable to result in real social change
• traditional theory sets out its own subject matter and uses old ways of knowing to find answers, without letting in other critiques, reinforces the status quo
• gives us facts that are socially performed
• the economic foundations of our society support traditional theory and traditional theory supports economics in so far as it doesn’t challenge it

Question 3

What is the problem with a ‘totalizing worldview’?

Answer 3

• traditional theory supports the view of the world as a “sum-total of facts”
• if our view of the world doesn’t challenge any social injustice then it is false
• facts are socially performed because the object we perceive as legitimate is false, social performance is the process by which we convince ourselves and others that a ‘fact’ is true or meaningful, ex. climate change, truth of oral stories for First Nations