A Critical Theory of Social Domination
Marxism, The Frankfurt School, and the Critique of Capitalism
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publishing:18th Feb '27
£85.00
This title is due to be published on 18th February, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
A Critical Theory of Societal Domination offers a major reinterpretation of Frankfurt School Critical Theory and its relation to Marx’s critique of political economy.
Challenging the dominant Anglophone narrative that portrays early Horkheimer and late Adorno as pessimistic cultural critics superseded by Habermasian theory or contemporary “Marxism as Critical Theory,” Chris O’Kane reconstructs their work as the foundation of a distinctive, heterodox Marxian critical theory of capitalist social domination.
At the centre of the book is the argument that Horkheimer and Adorno developed an immanent, self-reflexive critique of capitalism grounded in Marx’s critique of political economy. Far from abandoning political economy or praxis, their critical theory understands capitalist society as a historically specific concrete negative totality in which economy, state, culture, family, and subjectivity are internally mediated by the exchange relation. Capitalist domination is thus conceived not as an external force imposed on otherwise emancipatory social spheres, but as a form of objective and subjective domination reproduced through free and equal capitalist social practice itself.
Moreover the book challenges the view that Horkheimer and Adorno's critical theory was superseded, underlining their influence on the twentieth century's resurgence in Marxian thought by mapping their influence on the work of Alfred Schmidt, Hans-Georg Backhaus, Helmut Rechelt, Moishe Postone and Werner Bonefeld – all thinkers who critically developed this approach into an active research programme in critical theory.
Finally, O’Kane outlines this further development of the critical theory of capitalist social domination and demonstrates its central importance for a critical theory of capitalism today by drawing thon the work of these figures and other contemporary critical theorists.
Some dismiss the critique of capitalism altogether. Others are convinced that the Frankfurt School took a cultural turn away from economism, and bemoan that it never provided that critique. Enthusiasts of the Frankfurt School, meanwhile, celebrate it for the same reason. Chris O’Kane’s careful and superb reconstruction suggests that all are wrong; at key moments across the twentieth century, Frankfurt School founders and successors have contributed a great deal to mounting the very critique of capitalism the left needs. * Samuel Moyn, Kent Professor of Law and History, Yale University, USA *
One of the many welcome turns of (what Chris, himself, dubbed) the post-2008 Marx revival has been the collective reanimation of Frankfurt School critical theory in its combustion with new readings of Marx’s critique of capital. O’Kane’s most important contribution with this book is to deliver exactly what it promises: a new and deeply studied narrativization of Frankfurt School Critical Theory as research program—its premises and commitments, its continuity as conceptual trajectory, its active meaning and stakes, for today. * Beverly Best, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Canada *
In A Critical Theory of Social Domination, Chris O’Kane demonstrates the exigency of putting Marx and critiques of political economy back as the beating heart of Critical Theory: no Marx, no critique of political economy, no meaningful understanding of Critical Theory as a critique of capitalist social domination in its totality. Taking off from two nodal points—the early Horkheimer of the 1930s and the late Adorno of the 1960s—O’Kane shows how this critical agenda is taken up by Schmidt, Backhaus, Rechelt, Postone, and Bonefeld and, more importantly, provides a crucial source for dismantling social domination in the twenty-first century. * Paul Fleming, L. Sanford and Jo Mills Reis Professor of Humanities, Cornell University, USA *
ISBN: 9781350459380
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
240 pages