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The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance, by Rolf Wiggershaus. Translated by Michael Robertson. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994. 787 pp. $60.00 cloth. ISBN: 0-262-23174-3.
For all their fame, members of the Frankfurt School who participated in its project of critical theory have never been particularly well understood by American sociologists. They reached a peak of appreciation in the 1970s, driven by a wave of translations initiated in response to the 1960s' awakening of interest in a more critical sociology and, especially, the influence of one-time associates like Marcuse and Fromm. But those with the capacity to grasp their deeper theoretical project remained a fairly small minority, partly because few shared the Frankfurt theorists' determination to integrate critical theory with empirical social research. A number of secondary studies and historical accounts appeared, most notably Martin Jay's The Dialectical Imagination, but until the translation of Rolf Wiggershaus's monumental study, there was no really comprehensive source on the Frankfurt School.
Wiggershaus's book is "monumental" in its mass (its hardback weight compares favorably to that of Grant's tomb) and its sense of the historical importance of those whom it addresses. It is encompassing in scope, though much weaker in its treatment of such secondary but still influential figures as Friedrich Pollock than of the main protagonists, Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno. It admirably combines biographical and institutional information with intelligent readings of some major texts. Given his stature as monumental German theorist, it is nice to learn that Adorno's friends often called him "Teddy." It is informative to see how the core Frankfurt theorists struggled to maintain control of their project, keeping even Walter Benjamin--perhaps their most brilliant associate--at arm's...