Ebook: Reappraisals: shifting alignments in postwar critical theory

Reappraisals is a provocative account of the development of modern critical theory in Germany and the United States. Focusing on the period since World War II, Peter Uwe Hohendahl explores key debates on the function of critical theory, illuminating the diverse positions and alliances among the participants. Bringing together six essays, as well as new introductory and concluding chapters, Hohendahl interprets and subjects to critical scrutiny many of the central ideas of the Frankfurt School. He first maps the trajectory of neomarxist criticism in Germany to the 1980s. Individual chapters then focus on the work of Georg Lukacs, Theodor W. Adorno, and Jürgen Habermas, and on such issues as the politicization of German criticism after 1965 under the influence of the Frankfurt School.;Introduction: Marx, the Frankfurt School, and West German history -- 1. Neoromantic anticapitalism : Georg Lukács's search for authentic culture -- 2. Art work and modernity : the legacy of Georg Lukács -- 3. Autonomy of art : looking back at Adorno's aesthetische theorie -- 4. Dialectic of Enlightenment revisited : Habermas's critique of the Frankfurt School -- 5. Habermas's philosophical discourse of modernity -- 6. The politicization of aesthetic theory : the debate in aesthetics since 1965 -- 7. Reappraisals of critical theory : the legacy of the Frankfurt School in America.