The domestication of critical theory

Abstract

The Frankfurt tradition of critical theory (henceforth Critical Theory/CT) has been enduring a crisis. Many are trying to renew its once-compelling emancipatory impetus. Michael J. Thompson's The Domestication of Critical Theory is no exception to this burgeoning trend. Thompson is not only suspicious of Habermas's linguistic-pragmatic turn but also dissatisfied with the aporetic CT introduced in Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944). Instead, he assigns enduring critical power to earlier first-generation Critical Theory scholarship for it took seriously the critique of political economy, not just the critique of superstructures, as constitutive of the larger framework within which emancipation is sought. Furthermore, Thompson's book/project runs contrary to most other present attempts, which target specific conceptual formations within CT's edifice. It seeks no less than to lay the ground for 'a critical metaphysics understood as an attempt to grasp the nature of social reality… as well as grant the individual cognitive access to a more rational form of sociation in order to define the higher purposes and ends that social life can yield for the development of the individual and the collective interest of the community as whole' (p. 4, emphasis in original). I understand the book's overall statement as embodying three related claims: (1) the hermeneutic-pragmatic CT falters in confronting the socio-structural domination produced by (post-)neoliberal capitalism; (2) the conceptual assemblage of first-generation CT does not suffice for reinvigorating the enterprise; and (3) the way forward for CT passes through integrating 'structural-functionalist' premises and arguments into a rearticulated Hegelian-Marxian conceptual framework. The book is effectively composed of four parts. The outer chapters (the Preface-Introduction; Part III/chapter 7) preach more than problematize or unlock CT's domestication puzzle. The inner chapters, however, suggest a thoughtful recon-structive arc. Their argumentative strategy juggles between the introduction of new terms/devices and subsequent alterations of their perspectives and emphases. That