The School’s cultural focus, not its economics, explains its postmodern appeal

Evidence

In fact, there is little in the work done by the Institut on economic issues, it has to be admitted, that illuminates the post-1973 restructuring of capitalism.” It is, however, on the level of its cultural correlate that the rise of the post-Fordist system of flexible accumulation may help explain the Frankfurt School’s staying power. For, if Harvey is right, what has become known as postmodernism is a cultural condition that somehow expresses and reflects-as well as at times resists-the economic changes that can be dated from around 1973. In contrast to many of the other variants of Western Marxism, Critical Theory has found this new climate relatively hospitable, if more so in America than in Germany, where the battle lines between post-modernists and second generation Critical Theorists have been sharply drawn. As questions of political economy and political praxis have been marginalized and those of culture and aesthetics gained center stage, the School’s varied and far-reaching explorations of these domains have stirred renewed interest and controversy. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 20

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to debates about postmodernism and late capitalism that surface in many cultural-studies and critical-theory readings; echoes David Harvey’s condition-of-postmodernity argument.