Critical Theory’s humane vocabulary could function as ornamental rhetoric rather than emancipatory analysis.

Evidence

With its requirement that the principle of self-assertion and individual and collective egoism should be transcended, and its demand for more humane social conditions, was the Institute simply able to embellish itself better, with words that merely sounded less hollow than other people’s ready-made gala speeches? — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 457

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The deflationary reading of Critical Theory as rhetorically superior gala speech is the sharpest self-implication in the whole book — hard to shake.
• XREF: connects to: Academic canonization may domesticate critical theory’s radical edge — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 30; Contestatory rhetoric about fiction can mask a directive monologue that suppresses critical engagement — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 237; Critical Theory risked ossifying into a mere counter-programme without empirical grounding — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2287 (+1 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Academic canonization may domesticate critical theory’s radical edge — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 30; Contestatory rhetoric about fiction can mask a directive monologue that suppresses critical engagement — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 237; Critical Theory risked ossifying into a mere counter-programme without empirical grounding — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2287 (+1 more)