Frankfurt School

(Minor Field)
Frankfurt School Theorists and Their Interlocutors

RATIONALE

This list includes work by figures directly involved with the pre-World War II Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt (Institut für Sozialforschung), specifically Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, as well as those loosely associated with the Institute and those with whom they engaged in critical dialogues, such as Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Georg Lukacs Ernst Bloch, and Bertolt Brecht. While the Frankfurt School represents a fertile encounter of Marxism, philosophy, psychoanalysis and critical sociology, which has continued to influence the practice of cultural criticism and ideology critique, it was no school. No set of doctrines bound these theorists, nor did their work represent a single paradigm of thought. Seeking to reflect both the diversity of thought and debate, I have created a list that highlights critical dialogues concerning tendential versus autonomous art, totality and the dialectic, and the political implications of modernist (particularly expressionist) and realist cultural expression. Issues to be addressed include theories of the nature and etiology of national socialism, anti-Semitism, and authoritarianism, critiques of instrumental rationality, mass culture, the culture industry and modernity and in particular, the critical study of literature.

PRIMARY READINGS

Adorno, Theodor W.
— Aesthetic Theory. Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. Theory and History of Literature, v. 88. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
— "Commitment." The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. Ed. Andrew Arato & Dike Gebhardt. New York: Continuum, 1982. 300-318.
— "Culture Industry Reconsidered," trans. Anson G. Rabinbach. New German Critique, 6 (1975), 12-19.
— "Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda." The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. Ed. Andrew Arato & Eike Gebhardt. New York: Continuum, 1982. 118-127.
— Negative Dialectics. Trans. E.B. Ashton. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973.
— Notes to Literature, V I-II. Trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. New York: Columbia. University Press, 1991-2.
— Noten zur Literatur III. Bibliothek Suhrkamp, 165. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1965.
— Noten zur Literatur IV. Bibliothek Suhrkamp, 395. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974.
— Prisms. Trans. Samuel Weber and Shierry Weber. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983.

Adorno, Theodor W. and Max Horkheimer.
— Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, 1982.

Benjamin, Walter.
— "The Author as Producer." Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Ed. Peter Demetz. Reflections. New York: Schocken Books, 1978. 220-238.
— Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. Trans. Harry Zohn and Ouintin Hoare. London: New Left Books, 1973.
— "Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death." Trans. Harry Zohn. Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken, 1968. 111-140.
— "The Image of Proust." Trans. Harry Zolm. Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken, 1968. 201-216.
— "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century." Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Reflections. Ed. Peter Demetz. New York: Schocken Books, 1978. 146-162.
— "Surrealism." Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Reflections. Ed. Peter Demetz. New York: Schocken Books, 1978. 177-192.
— "Theses on the Philosophy of History." Trans. Harry Zohn. Illuminations. Ed. Hanah Arendt. New York: Schocken, I 968. 253-264.
— Understanding Brecht. Trans. Anna Bostock. Introd. Stanley Mitchell. London: New Left Books, 1973.
— "What is Epic Theater?" Trans. Harry Zohn. Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken, 1968. 147-154.
— "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." trans. Harry Zolm. Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken, 1968. 217-252.
— Zur Kritik der Gewalt und andere Aufsätze. Mit einem Nachwort versehen von Herbert Marcuse. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1965.

Bloch, Ernst.
— "Discussing Expressionism." Trans. Rodney Livingstone. Aesthetics and Politics. London: Verso, 1994. 16-27.

Brecht, Bertolt.
— "Against Georg Lukacs." Trans. Stuart Hood. Aesthetics and Politics. London: Verso, 1994. 68-85.
— Über den formalistischen Charakter der Realismustheorie." Gesammelte Werke, V. 19. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967.
— Über den Realismus, 1934-1941." Gesammelte Werke, V. 19. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. 1967.

Horkheimer, Max.
— "Art and Mass Culture." Critical Theory: Selected Essays. Translated by Matthew J. O'Connell and others. New York: Continuum. 1992.
— "The Authoritarian State." The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. Ed. Andrew Arato & Eike Gebhardt. New York: Continuum, 1982. 95-117.
— "Authority and the Family." Critical Theory: Selected Essays. Translated by Matthew J. O'Connell and others. New York: Continuum, 1992. 47-128.
— "The End of Reason," The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. Ed. Andrew Arato & Eike Gebhardt. New York: Continuum, 1982. 26-48.

Kracauer, Siegried.
— From Caligari to Hitler, a Psychological History of the German Film. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947.
— The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays. Trans. & ed. by Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Lukacs, Georg.
— "Franz Kafka or Thomas Mann?" Realism in Our Time. Trans. John and Necke Mander. New York, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1964. 47-92.
— "Grösse und Verfall des Expressionismus." Marxismus und Literatur, V. 2. Ed. by Fritz Raddatz. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1969.
— History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971.
— "The Ideology of Modernism." Realism in Our Time. Trans. John and Necke Mander. New York, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1964. 17-46.
— "On Bertolt Brecht." New Left Review, 110 (July-August 1978).
— "Realism in the Balance." Trans. Rodney Livingstone. Aesthetics and Politics. London: Verso, 1994. 28-59.

Marcuse, Herbert.
— "Some Social Implications of Modern Technology." The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. Ed. Andrew Arato & Eike Gebhardt. New York: Continuum, 1982. 138-162.
— "A Note on Dialectic." The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. Ed. Andrew Arato & Eike Gebhardt. New York: Continuum, 1982. 444-451.

SECONDARY READINGS

— Aesthetics and Politics. Ed. Perry Anderson et. al. Trans. Ronald Tayler. London: Verso, 1994.

— Buck-Morss. Susan. The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt Institute. New York: Macmillan, 1977.

— Die Expressionismus Debatte: Materialen zur eine Marxistische Realismus Konzeption. Ed. Hans-Jurgen Schmitt. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp-Verlag, 1973.

— Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971.

— Jay, Martin. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social Research. Boston: Little, Brown, 1973.

— Lunn, Eugene. Marxism & Modernism: An Historical Study of Lukacs, Brecht, Benjamin and Adorno. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982.

— Wiggershaus, Rolf. The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance. Trans. Michael Robertson. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994.

— Wolin, Peter. Walter Benjamin, an Aesthetic of Redemption. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.