Frankfurt School in New Times – serie

Conspiracy Theories and Extremism in New Times outlines a cadre of alt-right groups, conspiracy theories, and other forms of stigmatized knowledge threatening our society. In an era dominated by the pervasive influence of social media, the scholarly gaze has often overlooked the ways far-right factions leverage these platforms to propagate anti-democratic ideologies. From the denial of the moon landing to the enigmatic labyrinth of QAnon, and a myriad of other alt-right groups in between, this anthology presents a compelling case for the continued relevancy of the Frankfurt School of Critical Social Theory. Uncover the intricate web connecting these ideologies to everyday life, and arm yourself with the critical insights needed to navigate the turbulent currents of our modern socio-political landscape.

Conspiracy Theories and Extremism in New Times outlines a cadre of alt-right groups, conspiracy theories, and other forms of stigmatized knowledge threatening our society. In an era dominated by the pervasive influence of social media, the scholarly gaze has often overlooked the ways far-right factions leverage these platforms to propagate anti-democratic ideologies. From the denial of the moon landing to the enigmatic labyrinth of QAnon, and a myriad of other alt-right groups in between, this anthology presents a compelling case for the continued relevancy of the Frankfurt School of Critical Social Theory. Uncover the intricate web connecting these ideologies to everyday life, and arm yourself with the critical insights needed to navigate the turbulent currents of our modern socio-political landscape.

Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) was one of the most recognizable and controversial public intellectuals throughout the 1960s until his death in the late 1970s, but today Marcuse’s work largely stands in the shadows of other Frankfurt School members and critical thinkers. Despite having once held a prominent and influential position amongst scholars, activists, and readers in the twentieth century, it is argued that Marcuse’s work nevertheless remains largely misunderstood. The Dialectic of Herbert Marcuse offers a new interpretation of Marcuse, one that attempts to show how Marcuse’s work has so often been turned into something else—into its opposite. In shining a light on parts of the unknown Marcuse, through the use of archival material and published works, this book reveals Marcuse’s Critical Theory to be one of hope, not one of pessimism, as it is so often portrayed to be. Ultimately, it is argued that Marcuse’s Critical Theory remains a vital and important body of work for present-day society and ought to be revisited.

QAnon, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Meaning diagnoses a particular social challenge facing Americans in the 21st century: the rise and spread of dangerous conspiracy theories across the internet.Rather than dismiss such theories as the product of delusions, this book argues that the true conspiracy these theorists are trying to uncover is really located in a critique of neoliberal capitalism, austerity, and economic precarity. The authors contextualize QAnon as a misguided response to larger economic conditions endemic to late capitalism. Such a scholarly approach provides unique insight into some of the salient factors that make conspiracy theories such as QAnon so popular at a time of unprecedented information literacy. In their assessment, fighting conspiracy theories thus requires a radical realignment of the social, political, and economic priorities of the United States.

This book aims to extract a kind of Critical Humanism from the works of prominent members of the Frankfurt School. Oliver Kozlarek argues that what is compelling about this kind of restitution of humanism is the fact that it sought to be understood not as a conceptual-theoretical construction, but as a practice of critical social and cultural research. This means that it does not orient itself to an ideal image of the human being, but to making inhuman conditions of our current societies visible. It is above all in this sense that humanism is no longer understood in a Humboldtian, educational sense. Rather, it is about using critical social research as a political practice.

Longstanding debates about neoliberalism in the United States center around whether it has created a culture of entrepreneurial selfhood or a carceral state. Credit, Cops, and Cages presents a novel theory and relevant empirical evidence arguing that capitalist individualism combines both of these tendencies.The book’s interdisciplinary authors first derive a critical framework and set of social-psychological hypotheses from the long-neglected criminological writings of the early Frankfurt School. They then test and explore these hypotheses with new data and analyses in a series of chapters that guide the reader down the ladder of capitalist individualism. In the process, the authors synthesize and critically examine scholarship of Constitutional law; big data on indebtedness, segregation, and police militarization; psychological surveys capturing and comparing attitudes and emotions around debt and policing; and the intimate testimony of those who are deeply in debt or are currently incarcerated. Unique in its combination of philosophy and social scientific research, this book restores the relevance of the Frankfurt School’s ideas and methods to a comprehensive understanding of contemporary U.S. society.

A Las Vegas megachurch transforms faith into spectacle to attract the unchurched, even as its iconoclastic approach strains longstanding religious and cultural traditions.Drawing on critical theory, media studies, and the sociology of religion, Josiah Kidwell situates the church’s evolution within broader patterns of rationalization in civil society and the spectacle-driven urban landscape of Las Vegas. Using extensive fieldwork, he chronicles the church’s shift into an entertainment-oriented religious franchise and unpacks the cultural trade-offs that accompany this change. Kidwell explores how the leadership’s organizational approach and use of new media and popular culture reshape place attachment, recast communal life, and introduce the one-dimensional logic of the culture industry. Throughout, Kidwell resists deterministic accounts, highlighting how members interpret, negotiate, and sometimes push back against these changes while also revealing the subtle erosions they produce in social life. Ultimately, this book offers a sharp, multilayered portrait of religion’s adaptation to an entertainment-saturated society—and will be of interest to scholars of religion, media studies, cultural sociology, and anyone curious about the future of communal life in an age of spectacle.

The Spectacle of Online Life offers a groundbreaking exploration of the digital age's most pressing paradoxes: connection and isolation, democratization and control, authenticity and performance. Edited by Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo, Christopher T. Conner, and Matthew N. Hannah, this volume assembles a diverse array of scholars to critically examine how online technologies shape, reflect, and amplify the complexities of modern society.Chapters in the text draw on insights from the Frankfurt School, Situationist International, and contemporary media studies. This collection delves into topics as varied as promotional livestreaming, climate change conspiracy theories, beauty influencer culture, and the role of artificial intelligence in content moderation. As the authors show, digital platforms are a double-edged sword both empowering grassroots movements and reinforcing systemic inequalities.

For a long time Western reason, of which capitalism embodies the most accomplished and radical form, seemed able of acquiring a growing capacity to control the world. Social turmoil and the ecological crisis appear to question such capacity, while in social theory ‘new materialisms’ are committed to denounce its engine – the separation and hierarchization of subject and object, language and matter, cognition and thing, living and inanimate, technology and nature. But what if, with new biotechnologies, geoengineering, ecosystem services, human enhancement, artificial intelligence, and more, the overcoming of this separation is celebrated, and world domination increasingly hinges on the unpredictable? Nature, Neoliberalism and New Materialisms: Riding the Ungovernable brings this elusive strategy into focus, reconstructing its genealogy and showing its correspondence with neoliberal governmental rationality. If anti-dualism is endorsed by an increasingly pervasive logic that panders to, and incites, planetary turbulence in order to extract value, how to combat it? Sticking with, or returning to, traditional naturalism does not work. One is rather to build on the irreducibility of the real to its description, and of nature to mere environment. A theoretical key lies in Adorno and in the concept of form of life, while prefigurative activism constitutes a promising field of experience.

The Image of Africa in Italian Music proposes an innovative, fresh, provocative study, delving inside the common mentality of Italians, through their popular music and the way it has represented Africa and Africans. Italian music has largely followed national history, representing Africa as a mere object, from an inferior and inferiorized land of conquest to a slow process of decolonization of this image, which began around the 1980s and culminated with the irruption of second-generation Afro-Italian rappers into the Italian music scene. Through a careful analysis of the lyrics that is never detached from the historical context and sociological implications, the author shows how it was only with second-generation Afro-Italian rappers that provincial Italy had to come to terms with its present and its past. This musical movement gave rise to cultural, social and political debates that went far beyond the mere fact of music, involving other types of art, as well as proposing changes - such a new citizenship law - that are still struggling to take hold. Far beyond the image of ‘Italians as good people’, these rappers challenge us on a complex and slippery terrain: the construction of a new Italianness, overcoming clichés and stereotypes that one part of the country stubbornly continues to defend.

Can we move beyond the religious–secular divide and live together ethically in a shared political world?Adorno and the Question of Theology: Religion and Reason Beyond Foundations says yes—and shows how. Through close readings of Dialectic of Enlightenment, Negative Dialectics, and Aesthetic Theory, Rachel R. Rosner examines how Adorno reconfigures the relationship between reason and theology to confront modern fragmentation. Drawing on Adorno’s usage of constellation—a way of thinking that connects ideas without locking them into fixed systems—Rosner offers a way to move beyond entrenched dichotomies. In doing so, the book intervenes in contemporary debates on postsecular theory, critical reason, and political theology by rethinking how normativity and critique operate without foundations. Accessible to newcomers and illuminating for specialists, this book serves as both an introduction to Adorno’s comprehensive philosophy and a path beyond enduring paradoxes in his reception.