In the neoliberal world of the twenty-first century, the progressive academy urgently needs a vehicle for normative social research. Critical theory once answered this call, but today its programme is in crisis. The pathologies of recognition approach, popular among contemporary critical theorists, aids neoliberalism rather than challenging it, in part because it is unable to grasp the structural nature of power.
To offer an alternative, this book returns to the work of Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse, using it as the basis for a revivified social theoretical foundation. As the first generation of critical theorists knew, thought itself can be reified, our imaginations debased, and our desires artificially induced. We need to thinkbeyond recognition and embrace a more potent and aggressive form of social critique, true to the founding spirit of the Frankfurt School.
Introduction: on the battle for critical theory
Part I: Social pathology and the crisis of critical theory
1 Social pathology: the explosive charge of critical theory
2 Distorted by recognition
3 Pathologies of recognition
Part II: Foundations of pathology diagnosing critique
4 Rousseau and the foundations of pathology diagnosing social criticism
5 Hegelian-Marxism: pathologies of reason, pathologies of production
Part III: A Fromm-Marcuse synthesis
6 Erich Fromm and pathological normalcy
7 The pathological normalcy of what? Towards a Fromm-Marcuse synthesis
Conclusion: the Frankfurt School beyond recognition
Index
