Engage-wl-4219-Critique in Dark Times:Centenary of Frankfurt School Critical Theory and its Global Relevance

The year 2023 marks the centenary of the Frankfurt School Critical Theory and being besieged today with ongoing sectarian violence, rising authoritarianism, crisis of liberal democracy and brutal economic Darwinism, how much do we gain by revisiting the fundamentals of Frankfurt School social critique which brilliantly explained ethnocentrism, the Second World War and global capitalism? Along with its founding fathers, how do we approach contemporary members of the Frankfurt School whose critical hermeneutics strike a balance between the past and the present? How effectively can the Frankfurt School constellate new insights for contemporary emancipation or, how do we futurize Critical Theory with new radical Freudo-Marxian analysis of authoritarian personalities, the reified culture industry and social one-dimensionality? This project also looks into the critical demerits of the Frankfurt School, investigating whether it has been exclusively Euro-centric in its theoretical complexion, and whether its normative constructionist strands can be enriched by accommodating decolonial world views and polyphonic methodologies, forging the pathways for a new World Critical Theory.