Isolation, assimilation, and opposition: A reception history of the Horkheimer Circle in the United States, 1934--1979.

摘要

This dissertation focuses on Max Horkheimer's Institut fur Sozialforschung as a case study in the recent transatlantic history of ideas. By examining the encounters between German and U.S. thought during one of the most fruitful periods of cross-fertilization, this project charts the rise of our academic Atlantic culture, which has flourished in the wake of the Second World War. No doubt communication and information technology have provided the material basis for this development, but the face-to-face roots of this relationship extend back to the "Intellectual Migration," when Germans and Americans struggled to learn from the intellectual and cultural differences that separated them.;Settling in the United States in 1934, the members of the Horkheimer Circle charted an uncertain course from isolationism to assimilation and in the process became an intellectual phenomenon---the so-called "Frankfurt School." While a great deal of research has been devoted to the intellectual and institutional history of the Institut fur Sozialforschung , relatively little attention has focused on the interactions that took place between members of the Horkheimer Circle and the communities of American scholars and readers that came in contact with them.;My narrative concentrates on the main crossroads of transatlantic exchange in the Horkheimer Circle's history. Chapter one presents a summary of the history of the "Frankfurt School," and offers an introduction to Critical Theory; chapter two explores the primary institutional relationship that dominated the exile experience of the Institut fur Sozialforschung , Columbia University; chapter three uncovers the web of inter-relationships and discussions about culture that arose between the Horkheimer Circle and the "New York Intellectuals;" chapter four explores the complex world of post-war sociology---the awkward disciplinary home of the "Frankfurt School" in exile; and the final portion of the dissertation, chapter 5, examines the complex relationship between the Horkheimer Circle and the American New Left---specifically, untangling Herbert Marcuse's connections to the student radicalism of the late 1960s and thus trying to distinguish between the myths and realities regarding Critical Theory at the high point of its U.S. reception.