Critical theory itself has been captured by immediacy

Evidence

Immediacy, or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism presents immediacy as a master category for making sense of twenty-first-century cultural production. Immediacy rules art as well as economics, politics as much as intimacy. It’s at the art auction, in the boardroom, in the lingo, on the brain. Exacerbating this hegemony, immediacy animates even contemporary critical theory that now sidles too close to its objects, embracing rather than disarticulating dominant logics. Labeling this everythingness is a gesture toward reestablishing theoretical distance, though initially grasping the problem is tricky—a list-y, circuitous, roving vibeology. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 22

Categorization

• SEED: The claim that even critical theory has sides too close to its objects — embracing rather than disarticulating dominant logics — is the provocation the reader will fight with in the Antitheory chapter; good for an essay on theory’s complicity in immediacy.
• XREF: Directly anticipates the ‘Antitheory’ chapter the reader wants to argue with; also connects to ‘Communication as Culture’ on how critical discourse itself can collapse into the object. — connects to: Changed historical conditions forced critical theory from immanent to transcendent critique — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 190; Critical Theory risked ossifying into a mere counter-programme without empirical grounding — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2287; Critical theory reads ironic humor as pseudo-rebellion that masks conventionality. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 665