Invention et réinventions transatlantiques de la "Critical Theory"

Abstract

Where does the label «Critical Theory» come from that circulates on American campuses and libraries but has no equivalent in continental Europe ? This article recounts the origins of the concept and label coined by the German philosopher, Max Horkheimer, in 1937 during the exile in America of the Institut für Sozialforschung; and describes the circumstances and the reasons of its abandonment soon afterwards and of its reinvention in 1968 both in Germany and the United States. The reasons of this abandonment and of this rebirth can only be understood at the scale of an international academic field whete questions arose for Adorno and Horkheimer about their dual outsider status of emigrants and about the new asymmetry of international intellectual relations that weighted on European science and culture after the 1940s. The switch for thirty years in Adornos and Horkheimer's self-presentation was the subjective price to pay in order to maintain their status and identity despite the loss of position during exile and the risk to lose their position upon return in Germany. Variations in the use of the label «Critical Theory» by its creators enabled them to accumulate the symbolic profits from both loyalty and criticism towards the American academic elites becoming dominant worldwide. This strategy helped them occupy a position of transatlantic academic brokers while denouncing the consequences of American cultural and scientific hegemony. It is argued that the social and subjective conditions of the circulation of ideas and labels, the «migration of concepts»and cultural globalization are more generally important.