EXPRESSIVE TOTALITY?

[Martin Spaul]

Now that we've all (me, especially) have been straightened out on the
basic provenance and definition of 'expressive totality', can we take
a look at what it means in terms of practical critique?

Is it right to see mid-period Frankfurt School critique (Dialectic of
Enlightenment, One-Dimensional Man, etc.) as driven by the idea that
modernity is an 'expression' of the basic idea of instrumentalism and
total administration? Or is this a misuse of 'expressive totality'?

This sort of 'single generating idea' critique doesn't seem to be
restricted to the (overt) Hegelian tradition. For example, Lewis Mumford's
idea that the clock was the defining technology of the industrial
revolution has spawned attempts to characterise modern technology, and the
life form that goes with it, as driven by the urge to subdivide and
regularise time and space (... I suppose we are also straying into
Foucault's territory here). Would this be an appropriate instance of
'expressive totality'?

Martin Spaul