Continuities and Discontinuities: Critical Theory of Society and Empirical Research on Antisemitism Reinterpreted

Although Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno became world famous as the authors of Dialectic of Enlightenment, the extensive empirical studies on antisemitism they carried out in American exile have often been overlooked.  Those who have paid attention to these studies usually see them as proof that Critical Theory stopped being Marxist during the 1940s (as it had been in Europe in the 1930s). The Authoritarian Personality (1950), a classic work of research on prejudice, is generally interpreted in this way.  My Antisemitism and Social Theory – The Frankfurt School in American Exile (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2009) presents a new interpretation by tracing the hidden connections between the philosophical and empirical works of the Frankfurt School in the 1940s.  On the one hand, I argue that the major theoretical assumptions of early Critical Theory continued to guide these works.  On the other hand, I demonstrate the important discontinuities that emerged in their understanding of the social function of antisemitism. My paper also examines the new impulses Horkheimer, Adorno and other European exiles gained while working with Americans (particularly American Jews) and with political organisations like the Jewish Labor Committee and the American Jewish Committee. Critical Theory nowadays has an influential, if not singular importance for understanding antisemitism and its social function. My paper aims to show, however, that Critical Theory is inevitably misunderstood if one fails to grasp the historical specificity of both its theoretical and empirical work.