Institute publications served to signal wartime solidarity while deferring theoretical work
Evidence
This showed the need which was being felt to produce a publishable consensus concerning the overall structure of the various individual projects and thought processes. It was a need for a text which would correspond to Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s image of the Institute, which stressed theory, while at the same time providing evidence, through the text’s educational and enlightening nature, of the Institute’s solidarity with the war effort and with the problem of coping with the post-war challenges facing a country that was fighting fascism. But the real theoretical work would only be continued afterwards. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 401
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: Captures the constitutive tension of the exile Institute: its public output was strategic-legitimating, its theory postponed — the anti-Semitism project was simultaneously scholarship, ideology, and survival.
- XREF: connects to: Government war work drained Institute members’ time and restricted their publishing — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 321; Institute research projects often served tactical legitimacy-building aims rather than pure science — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 688; Shifting an institute’s emphasis from history to theory marginalizes established research priorities. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 155
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Government war work drained Institute members’ time and restricted their publishing — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 321; Institute research projects often served tactical legitimacy-building aims rather than pure science — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 688; Shifting an institute’s emphasis from history to theory marginalizes established research priorities. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 155