The Frankfurt School is a retrospective construction mixing two distinct phases

Evidence

For me there was never a consistent theory. Adorno wrote essays on the critique of culture and also gave seminars on Hegel. He presented a certain Marxist backgroundand that was it. … This was how Jürgen Habermas, Adorno’s research assistant at the Institute in the later 1950s, saw things in retrospect. When the image of a `school’ did appear in the 1960s, it was a mixture of the idea of a critical sociology represented in Frankfurt by Adorno and Habermas, and the idea of an early, radically social-critical, FreudianMarxist period of the Institute under Horkheimer’s direction. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 10

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘Frankfurt School’ label as a retrospective fabrication rather than a coherent doctrine — useful reference material for institutional history.
• XREF: connects to: The Frankfurt School label originated with 1960s outsiders and gained mythical status through Marcuse — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2; The Frankfurt School’s institutional forms shifted across three distinct eras and three geographic sites — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 21; Frankfurt School theory resists phase division because its internal tensions drifted unsynchronized — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 21 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• The Frankfurt School’s institutional forms shifted across three distinct eras and three geographic sites #qualifies (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 21
• Frankfurt School theory resists phase division because its internal tensions drifted unsynchronized #corroborates (0.82) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 21