Eros and Civilization’s unpolitical framing was a deliberate rhetorical strategy.

Evidence

I would like to spend the remaining years of my life in such a way that I can dedicate them to our proper work without having any real material worries. This can best be done where you areprovided that you have time for such work. The question of the location depends on us and on the world spirit … If you are willing to spit in the face of the world spirit, I am happy to help youbut the spitting must be worth it. In the meantime, I will certainly work to be able to come over next summer for a longer spell. I hope to have ready the manuscript of the book on Freud [Eros and Civilization, published in 1955] and to be able to go through it with you. I am working on it intensively: the apparently unpolitical framework is intended to enable as much as possible to be said as clearly as possible. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 487

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the Frankfurt School’s debates about indirection, esoteric writing, and how Critical Theory smuggled political content past its audience.
• QUESTION: How consciously did other Frankfurt figures (Adorno in Minima Moralia, Horkheimer in Eclipse of Reason) also use an ‘apparently unpolitical framework’ as cover?