Critical Theory, Adorno, and Failure

By Michael Malt-Cullen
Outline:

• A story
• Critical Theory vs critical theories
• The project of Critical Theory
• The history of Critical Theory
• Adorno’s metaphysics
• Assessments as ideology
 Learning Outcomes

• We want you to come away with

an understanding of what Critical
Theory is and what it aims to do
• We want you to apply Critical
Theory to your own educational
context to engage with the
mechanisms embodied in it
critically
• We want you to play with Critical
Theory, and to do so in dialogue
with others (both here and not
here)
 Failure in Education

• Smartly presented • Messy hair

• Educationally successful • Educational failure
• Bright future ahead • Rebelling against the system
 What is theory?

1. System of rules and

laws

2. The world 3. Progress!

 Critique of Enlightenment Reason

• The application of reason to what

end?
• A critique of ideology/culture
• Critique in conversation with the
world
 What is critical theory?

2. System of rules and laws

1. The world 3. Progress!

History of the Frankfurt School

• Established in 1923 by Felix Weil

• Developing Marxist ideas in
research
• Initially led by Carl Grünberg,
succeeded by Max Horkheimer
• Pursued Marxist research
• Relocated to America in 1933
• Relocated back to in 1951
• Continues today under Axel
Honneth
 What is Critical Theory?

• Emancipatory nature
• Politically motivated
• A combination of philosophical
thinking and social science
• Reason needed for truth and
morality
• A push toward greater, freer
democracy
Break
 Theoretical Development - Horkheimer

• Instrumental reason
• The mythology of the abstract
• Markets communicating
commodity logics
• Pseudo-individualism
Theoretical Development - Adorno

• The Culture Industry

• Desires shaped by capitalist
markets
• Goes against political participation
• F-scale – The Authoritarian
Mindset
• Ideological control of thinking and
being
Theoretical Development - Adorno

• The Culture Industry

• Desires shaped by capitalist
markets
• Goes against political participation
• F-scale – The Authoritarian
Mindset
• Ideological control of thinking and
being
Theoretical Development - Adorno

• The Culture Industry

• Desires shaped by capitalist
markets
• Goes against political participation
• F-scale – The Authoritarian
Mindset
• Ideological control of thinking and
being
Theoretical Development - Adorno

• The Culture Industry

• Desires shaped by capitalist
markets
• Goes against political participation
• F-scale – The Authoritarian
Mindset
• Ideological control of thinking and
being
 Theoretical Development - Habermas

• Theory of Communicative Action

• Public sphere
• Publishing increased, confusing
the boundaries of public and
private spheres
• Media as a facilitator of democracy
“Teaching”
“Learning”
“Education”
Theoretical Development - Paulo Friere

• Critical consciousness
• Pedagogy of the oppressed as
making oppressed internalise the
voice of the oppressor
• Banking education as passive vs
active problem-solving education
• Dialogic vs antidialogic approaches
• Education of the oppressed as well
as the oppressors
 Theoretical Development - Nancy Fraser

• Cannibal capitalism
• Capitalism isn’t confined to
markets in society, but comes with
a social structure
• This social structure is exploited by
capitalism, leading to boundary
struggles
• Boundary struggles contain non-
capitalist possibilities
 Activity: Playing with theory

• Work in pairs
• Using one of the theoretical perspectives above:
• Horkheimer – market commodities
• Adorno – the culture industry
• Habermas – the public sphere
• Friere – critical pedagogy
• Fraser – cannibal capitalism
• Choose an educational context that you are interested in and apply the theory
to see what it can reveal to you about that context.
Break
 Negative Dialectics

• Hegelian Dialectics
• The problems with Hegelian
dialectics
• Adorno’s negative dialectics
• So what does this mean for
individuals?
The name of dialectics says no
more, to begin with, than that objects
do not go into their concepts without
leaving a remainder, that they come
to contradict the traditional norm of
adequacy. (Adorno, 1983, p. 5)
Yet the appearance of identity is
inherent in thought itself, in its pure
form. To think is to identify.
Conceptual order is content to
screen what thinking seeks to
comprehend. The semblance and
the truth of thought entwine. The
semblance cannot be decreed away,
as by avowal of a being-in-itself
outside the totality of cogitative
definitions. (Adorno, 1983, p. 5)
• What we differentiate will appear
divergent, dissonant, negative for just as
long as the structure of our consciousness
obliges it to strive for unity: as long as its
demand for totality will be its measure for
whatever is not identical with it...
• Because of the immanent nature of
consciousness, contradictoriness itself
has an inescapably and fatefully legal
character. Identity and contradiction of
thought are welded together. Total
contradiction is nothing but the manifested
untruth of total identification. Contradiction
is nonidentity under the rule of a law that
affects the nonidentical as well. (Adorno,
1983, p. 5)
• This law is not a cogitative law,
however. It is real. Unquestionably,
one who submits to the dialectical
discipline has to pay dearly in the
qualitative variety of experience.
Still, in the administered world the
impoverishment of experience by
dialectics, which outrages healthy
opinion, proves appropriate to the
abstract monotony of that world.
(Adorno, 1983, p. 6)
 Interpreting the world through concepts

• Educators, policy makers, and

institutions have specific
conceptual structures that motivate
their choices.
• These structures are materially
constitutive of the world that they
(and we) experience.
• Where they encounter difficulties,
they seek to adjust their
conceptual schema to resolve
them.
• For example, the Scottish
attainment gap
Negative Dialectics

• The object should have priority over

concepts.
• Starting with objects allows us to start
without explicit conceptual
categorisation.
• As such, we need to give up ideas of
progress towards ‘best practice’,
recognising difference as the primary
driver of theoretical and material
understanding.
• In education, this means recognising
students and their needs first in creating
educational structures and policies,
courses, and pedagogical methods that
are responsive to change.
 Assessment and Failure

• Group 1 presentation
• Group 2 presentation
• Discussion
 Designing Assessments

• Creative engagements with knowledge

• Risky engagements with knowledge
Learning • An authentic expression of knowledge
involves: • Pushing up against the boundaries of
your understanding

How can we • For example:

design • How does Dungeons and Dragons
assessments to assess learning the rules?
encourage these • How is cooking assessed when you
learn a new recipe?
aspects of • How is learning a song on an
learning and not instrument assessed?
punish them?
 Conclusions

• Critical theory is an emancipatory, politically engaged tradition that puts

theoretical understandings of the world in dialogue with how the world
currently is
• Each theorist uses this theme in different ways and applies it to different
contexts as well.
• Adorno recognises the ontological impact of applying concepts to the world in
how it shapes what we do and how the world is.
• Therefore, we should take account of the world first to inform our
understanding and keep it open to revision and change.
• But how can this play out in practice in your context?
 References

• Adorno, T.W. (1983) Negative Dialectics. Translated by E.B. Ashton. New York: Continuum.
• Adorno, T.W. and Horkheimer, M. (2014) Dialectic of Enlightenment. [New ed.]. Translated by J. Cumming. London: Verso.
• Celikates, R. and Flynn, J. (2023) ‘Critical Theory (Frankfurt School)’, Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. University of Stanford. Available at:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/ (Accessed: 5 January 2024).
• Fraser, N. (2022) Cannibal capitalism: how our system is devouring democracy, care, and the planet - and what we can do about it. London New York (N.Y.): Verso.
• Freire, P. (1985) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Reissued. Translated by M.B. Ramos. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
• Habermas, J. (1999) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. 10. print. Translated by T. Burger.
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press (Studies in contemporary German social thought).
• Habermas: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (2017). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1K46oK3xTU (Accessed: 4 August 2023).
• Marxism after Marx: Critical Consciousness and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2020). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flKw98LQi3c (Accessed: 4
August 2023).
• McArthur, J. (2014) ‘The Learning–Feedback–Assessment Triumvirate: Reconsidering Failure in Pursuit of Social Justice’, in C. Kreber, C. Anderson, and N.
Entwhistle (eds) Advances and Innovations in University Assessment and Feedback. Edinburgh University Press. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748694549.001.0001.
• Philosophize This! (no date a) ‘Episode 108 - 114 - The Frankfurt School’. (The Frankfurt School). Available at:
https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/frankfurt-school-intro?rq=Frankfurt (Accessed: 4 August 2023).
• Philosophize This! (no date b) ‘Episode 108 - 114 - The Frankfurt School (Scripts)’. (The Frankfurt School). Available at:
https://www.philosophizethis.org/transcript/episode-108-transcript?rq=Frankfurt (Accessed: 4 August 2023).
• Radical thinkers: Max Horkheimer’s Critique of Instrumental Reason (2013). (Radical Thinkers). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpUeG9-7KvY
(Accessed: 4 August 2023).
• SOCIOLOGY - Theodor Adorno (2015). (SOCIOLOGY). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YGnPgtWhsw (Accessed: 4 August 2023).
• Tornel, C. (2023) ‘Cannibal Capitalism. How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet – And What We Can Do About It: by N. Fraser’. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2023.2190533.
• Zuidervaart, L. (2015) ‘Theodor W. Adorno’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. University of Stanford. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/
(Accessed: 4 August 2023).
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