Abstract
Perhaps there is something about despair, pessimism and melancholy in critical theory, as Robyn Marasco argues so convincingly. Despair in critical theory occurred despite Walter Benjamin’s ‘only for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been given hope’, who was – albeit somewhat neglected by Marasco – perhaps next to Adorno one of the key representatives of despair. Overall, however, it appears as if despair might be more a reflection of Adorno’s life situation (‘the subdued sadness about the untold horrors of his lifetime’, Marasco) and perhaps even more so a reflection of general societal movements than a theoretical development within critical theory. While some might be able to feel some level of despair in Hegel’s philosophy, his dialectics of freedom represents rather the opposite of despair. It remains a progressive-emancipatory epistemology. Critical theory during Adorno’s lifetime was, as Hegel would say, ‘a child of its time’ that saw the world moving along a ‘highway of despair’. But it was also a time when its inner most central masterpiece –’Traditional and Critical Theory’ – defined critical theory as emancipatory.
This was set against critical theory’s three objects of analysis – Germanic Nazism, American capitalism and Soviet state-socialism. These didn’t offer hope but despair. In all three, people remained asphyxiated: in Germany, a sabotaged 1918/19 revolution (Haffner’s Failure of a Revolution) did not result in a progressive society but in authoritarian parliamentarianism constantly challenged by fascistic forces (Kapp, etc.) leading to Auschwitz. In the USA, the exiled Frankfurt School experienced rampant consumerism leading to yet another seminal writing on ‘the cultural industry’ which was later theoretically enhanced by Adorno’s friend Enzensberger in The Consciousness Industry. Meanwhile, and this remains somewhat undervalued by Marasco, Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man might testify to despair when revolutionary soviets ended up one-dimensionality and Stalinist gulags.
But to illuminate the ‘highway of despair’ Marasco starts with Hegel viewing Hegelian philosophy as early ‘wounds’ but elects not to continue with the usual suspects – left-Hegelians – perhaps because writings like those of Marx, Bauer, Feuerbach, Ruge, Stirner and Gans were on the whole not defined by despair but by emancipation. To avoid those, Marasco’s ‘Critical Theory after Hegel’ quickly jumps to a non-critical-theory (Kirkegaard). After the historical, theoretical and philosophical gap of excluding Hegelianism and also excluding one of critical theory’s immediate frontrunners (George Lukács), Part Two on ‘Dialectical Remains’ starts with the most prominent writer of despair – Adorno – while neglecting the, at times, more pessimistic writings of Walter Benjamin. Marasco does not appear to seek supportive evidence within critical theory providing a balanced account and a critical reflection of despair within critical theory. His claim that ‘Critical Theory after Hegel’ was and perhaps still is on a ‘Highway of Despair’ excludes many key writers – Pollock, Horkheimer, Kirchheimer, Marcuse, Fromm, Reich, Neumann, Löwenthal, etc.
The second part of the book quickly moves to two non-Frankfurt School writers (Bataille and Fanon). One gets the impression that there is also somewhat of a late realization that post-Adorno critical theory cannot be totally excluded and thus a ‘Concluding Postscript’ is added. This is not a classical conclusion but rather another chapter on the post-Adorno Frankfurt School including Habermas while totally excluding Honneth.
Undeniably, there is despair in the Frankfurt School – perhaps best signified in Lukács’ ‘Grand Hotel Abyss’ – but to claim, for example, that Hegel’s ‘master-slave dialectics’ represents a ‘failure to secure human freedom but actually consolidates dependence and reinforces the bold of servitude’ is either a gross misreading of Hegel or a non-understanding of Karl Marx, Kojève, Holz’s ‘Herr und Knecht bei Leibniz und Hegel’, and many others. The hopefulness and emancipatory character of Hegel’s ‘master-slave-dialectics’ has most forcefully been shown in, for example, Anderson’s Hegel’s Theory of Recognition – From Oppression to Ethical Liberal Modernity. Perhaps much of Marasco’s exclusions and peculiar interpretations are done to suit an overall idea that is perhaps not, and this means following Hegel and the Frankfurt School, found in the emancipation of the slave, according to Marasco.
As a consequence, Habermas’s rescuing of critical theory in ‘communicative action’ is marginalized and shelved in a ‘Postscript’ while Honneth’s equally non-despair-enhancing but in its finality highly emancipatory concept of mutual and equal recognition is also eliminated. Virtually the same goes for more contemporary writings such as Freyenhagen’s Adorno’s Practical Philosophy advocating to ‘live less wrongly’. Marasco needs to exclude them, otherwise the overall theme of Critical Theory after Hegel no longer drives smoothly along ‘The Highway of Despair’ but becomes what it actually is: a critical philosophy of emancipation.