This is meant, in the first instance, as a discussion forum for this paper by René Buchholz: "Grand Hotel Abyss? - On the Actuality of Theodor W. Adorno's Critical Theory". Please download the paper from here: Article [translation:] René Buchholz: "'Grand Hotel Abyss?' On the A...
I would contend that the Frankfurt School has a lot to offer. On a somewhat related note, the ubiquity of fake news and alternative facts demonstrates the utility of Baudrillard’s thought.
https://baudrillardstudies.ubishops.ca/alternative-facts-trump-reality-in-american-presidential-politics-a-baudrillardian-analysis-of-the-present-crisis-of-simulation/
I'd be most interested in specific comments on this paper by Buchholz. Sure, Baudrillard has much to contribute - that's one of the problems with this type of discussion. We all read different literatures. This here is specific to the following issue: is there a kind of 'left' distortion to the way the 'Frankfurters' have been handled in the secondary literature?
Keith Moser - I think the difference between Baudrillard (and so many from the French side of things) and the Frankfurt group of theorists lies in the word 'dialectic'. It's very difficult to talk about this word without dealing directly with Hegel, with Psychoanalysis, with 'universalgeschichte', all kinds of things. I know them a lot better than I do the French theorists, though I did study both the structuralists and the functionalists for many years. I think, if one were to pursue this, we would have to start talking about the different meanings of the word 'power'. It means something very different in the French and Anglo-Saxon context, than it does in the one formed by German Idealism. (That goes as far back as Leibniz versus Newton, Kant against Descartes and Hume ...) That Buchholz paper is a direct critique of those who think that if one says 'power', surveys the world from this vantage point, that one has gained a great deal...
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