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Reflexive Social Critique. On the Dialectical Criticism of Ideology According to Marx and Adorno

From the book Thinking Critically: What Does It Mean?

  • Peggy H. Breitenstein

Abstract

For a long time philosophers would avoid addressing the subject of ideologies, steering clear even of the critique of ideology. In the last few years, however, positions attempting to implicitly or explicitly revive this method have been on the rise again. The criticism of ideology has been rediscovered and is now practiced as a means of social criticism-among others, by thinkers such as Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, Sally Haslanger, Nancy Fraser or Slavoj Žižek, and also by some representatives of the younger generation of the Frankfurt School, such as Rahel Jaeggi, Robin Celikates or Titus Stahl. However, to date, hardly any of the existing analyses of the assumptions and claims of this particular method of social critique, or clarifications if how it works exactly, prove to be satisfactory. The present article aims at shedding light upon these questions by referring back to Marx and Adorno. More specifically, the dialectical concepts of “ideology” and of the “critique of ideology”-which both thinkers employ, but which neither of them specifically explicates-are hereby clarified and subjected to methodological reflection.

© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston
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