FS & Praxis

[Neil McLaughlin]

Calling American society today totalitarian is an example of the problems
with the followers of the critical theory tradition. Can we pull out and use
the insights the tradition holds for understanding the propoganda apparatus,
media system and culture and the social psychology of capitalism and
imperial systems in ways that avoid some of the problems in mainstream
social science? Can we do this without falling prey to exagerations,
rhetorical overkill and the relative weakness of critical theory in terms of
putting their ideas to empirical tests (and by empirical, I do not mean
simply quantiative data, but also rigerous historical/comparative and
qualitative research)? Can we use the insights of the various critical
theorists, without insisting on making them in "intellectual heroes" whose
work we use uncritically? And can we be philosophically sophisticated, while
doing a critical analysis of the world (as opposed to doing analysis of
various texts about texts, writing about the world?).

I have not seen all that much evidence on this list discussion (although
there is some!) that
critical theorists today are up to the task that the world very desperately
needs. This is an even more serious problem with our discussion that the
various "spam" wars that wasted serious people's time...

Neil McLaughlin

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Rovira" <jrovira@drew.edu>
To: <frankfurt-school@lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 05, 2003 9:24 AM
Subject: Re: FS & Praxis


> Bob Scheetz said:
>
> > isn't marcuse confirmed as
> > never yet by this latest masterpiece of  "lib western democracy,"
fictitious
> > war, on fictitious grounds, for fictitious freedom, by a fictitious prez
> > with a real military power, propaganda apparatus and intelligence system
so
> > vast and irresistable as gives new meaning to the word, totalitarianism.
>
> Nah, we don't have a totalitarianism here by a longshot. Slightly over
(around
> 51%) half the country didn't vote for Bush the first time around, and I
expect
> it's going to be at least that close next year.
>
> Not wanting to denigrate the strength and potential threat of the real
military
> power, propoganda apparatus, and intelligence system, but it's far from
> omnipotent.
>
> Jim
>
>