The Frankfurt school, authority, and the psychoanalysis of utopia

C. Alford

pp. 425-441

in: The Palgrave handbook of critical theory, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

The chapter first examines Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's well-known critique of authority and the family. One aspect of this groundbreaking work is its exclusive focus on men and boys. In the 1970s, Jessica Benjamin wrote two seminal essays critiquing this focus, showing how it resulted in the idealization of the bourgeois father and a punitive superego. This critique is part of the chapter's study, before it moves on to Marcuse's dialectical transformation of Freudian psychoanalysis into a ground of utopia. Arguably, there is no more important work in Marcuse's oeuvre than Eros and Civilization. It represents the utopian spirit in critical theory at its strongest, a spirit, the author argues, that has been lost in the next generation of critical theorists, particularly in the early work of Habermas in Knowledge and Human Interests.

Cited authors

Horkheimer Max

Freud Sigmund

Habermas Jürgen

Adorno Theodor

Benjamin Jessica